LPP's partner in India, Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan, has launched the Camel Conservation and Livelihoods Project. This aims to show that the conservation of animal genentic resources can go hand-in-hand with rural income generation and create jobs not only for the livestock keepers, but also for other rural people. The project aims specifically to serve widows in isolated desert villages who process camel wool.
The project is still at the beginning, but it opens up exciting vistas about how conservation can be integrated into other rural development activities and thereby more or less pay for itself.
It also shows the importance of collaboration with a wide range of other actors: in this case designers and technical experts are crucial.
"We believe that this approach has wide applicability", says LPP's Ilse Koehler-Rollefson. "It contextualizes indigenous breeds within the major policy debates (climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, etc.) and thereby turns breed conservation from its 'niche activity' status into a fundamental strategy for
addressing these issues."
"We would be glad to hear from anybody interested in this approach", adds Ilse. Contact her at ilse@pastoralpeoples.org 
Download the project brochure.

An investment in our future
Evelyn Mathias

Presentation at the conference on "Ethnoveterinary medicine: Tradition, science, cultural richness". Bologna, 29 October 2010. Società Italiana di Veterinaria e Zootecnia Tropicale per la cooperazione internazionale Veterinari Senza Frontiere Italia
Download presentation 1413 kb
Download summary 19 kb

Evelyn Mathias
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), 2010

"When it rains and drylands bloom, one realises the remarkable diversity of living organisms they harbour. Long overlooked, this diversity is crucial to the food security of a large share of the world’s population."
This information brief describes the importance of dryland agricultural biodiversity, outlines the threats facing it, and points to the key role that local people play in conserving it.
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A rights-based approach to invoking justice for pastoralists and biodiversity conserving livestock keepers
Ilse Köhler-Rollefson and Evelyn Mathias
Policy Matters 17, pp 113-115. 2010


This article summarizes the three principles and five rights that make up Livestock Keepers' Rights.
Download article 1341 kb
Complete issue of magazine

Issue 2 of Common Voices, a magazine published by the Foundation for Ecological Security, focuses on pastoralism. It contains an article by LPP's Ilse Koehler-Rollefson: "Biocultural Community Protocols: A Tool for Pastoralists to Secure Customary Rights to the Commons?".
Click here to download.