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.