Kenya’s Robin Mbae on livestock and climate change at Berlin’s Global Forum for Food and Agriculture

Robin Mbae, deputy director of livestock production at the Kenya Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, presenting at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (photo credit: ILRI/Susan MacMillan).

On 18 Jan 2018, one of ten expert panel discussions at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture (GFFA) was held on Sustainable solutions to the livestock sector: The time is ripe! This two-hour session was organized jointly by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL) and the Livestock Global Alliance (LGA).This session was moderated by ILRI Assistant Director General Shirley Tarawali. Following a welcome by ILRI Director General Jimmy Smith, Stefan Schmitz, head of BMZ’s division of rural development and food security and commissioner for BMZ’s special initiative on One World–No Hunger, gave an opening speech. Fritz Schneider, chair of the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL), then gave a short overview of livestock and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The first of the next three 10-minute presentations, on climate change, was made by Robin Mbae, deputy director of livestock production at the Kenya Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries. Mbae plays a central role in Kenya’s planning and implementation of interventions to address the impacts of climate change on the livestock sector and vice versa.The impacts of climate change on Kenya are significant, Mbae reported, particularly for animal husbandry and agriculture because Kenya relies on rainfall for its main source of agricultural water rather than on irrigation.He said the Kenya government is committed to meeting its global climate change commitments and has developed a series of policy documents to guide the country in moving towards more sustainable livestock systems. . . . Read the whole article on the ILRI News blog.