Afghanistan Initiative
Note: The Afghanistan
Initiative is no longer considered an "emerging program." It has been transferred to the "collaborative
programs" section."
Following a request by Senator Clinton's office to join the New York Campaign
for a Green Afghanistan, faculty at the College of Agriculture and
Life Sciences met to determine how Cornell might become involved.
Initially, the thrust of this initiative involved rebuilding the orchards,
working with a small NGO Global Partnership
for Afghanistan. Faculty members
with expertise in the areas of fruit breeding, production and disease and insect
management initially met to consider how they could contribute to the revitalization
of Afghan fruit farms. [more...]
Contact: Alice
Pell, CIIFAD Director
Southern Africa Initiative
CIIFAD is collaborating with the College
of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the WCS project, Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO), on a project called "Developing a Participatory Socio-economic Model for Food Security, Improved Rural Livelihods, Watershed Management and Biodiversity Conservation in Southern Africa." This effort is supported by the SANREM-CRSP (through Virginia Tech) and USAID.
Unsustainable agricultural and natural resource management practices and
unsound economic strategies contribute significantly to food insecurity,
limitations in livelihood opportunities, and diminished biodiversity
throughout southern Africa. In Zambia, a market-driven approach called
“Community Markets for Conservation” (COMACO) is being developed to
improve biodiversity conservation via explicit linkages to improving food
security and livelihoods. This community-owned enterprise implements
sustainable agricultural practices at the level of individual farms using
extension support, marketing, and pricing strategies organized around
COMACO's regional trading centers to increase small stakeholder profits.
Preliminary data show that these market incentives are sufficient both to
foster sustainable agricultural practices and to increase wildlife
populations, making future game-based economic opportunities possible.
Due to its preliminary successes, COMACO has been invited to expand into
Malawi and possibly Mozambique. Through broad stakeholder consultations,
a multi-disciplinary team has identified key research issues regarding
soil, crop, food, veterinary, and social sciences that are needed to
optimize this model. Targeted research and the training of host country
nationals will inject the new technologies and generate the critical
knowledge needed to scale-up the COMACO approach within Zambia and across
southern Africa to improve food security, rural livelihoods, and
biodiversity conservation.
Contacts:
Alex
Travis, Asst. Professor. of Reproductive Biology, CU College
of Veterinary Medicine
Alice
Pell,
CIIFAD Director and Professor of Animal Sciences
