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Development aid: Give a green goat

At the height of the Christmas rush – and while DanChurchAid sold thousands of goats and flocks of chickens, an exciting but gloomy report was published, ’Livestock’s long shadow – Environmental issues and options’.

The report is the result of an extensive project in which FAO , the World Bank and Danida among others participated. It underlines that livestock are the top-two or top-three threats to the environment.

Livestock contribute almost one fifth of the total emission of greenhouse gasses (CFC). They affect heavily the sweet-water resources – both because of what they consume and the amount of water used for animal feed production, but also because of the pollution they are making.

They are among the biggest threats to the global biodiversity because of deforestation, desertification and intensive agricultural methods, as well as polluting fertilizers and medicine residue. They tax the resources – both on the ground and in the waters, because fish has become an increasing source of protein for animal feed production. In this way, they occupy approximately one third of the Earth’s arable land.

Food for millions of people

These conclusions should keep any goat trader awake at night. And they almost did. But on the other hand, the report also points at the positive consequences of livestock production, which provides income for around 1.3 billion people as well as protein and micro-nutrients for more than 800 million people who get too little food or are malnourished.

Advantages and disadvangtages of goats

The big advantage of goats is that they eat almost everything and produce meat, milk and income for poor people in vulnerable areas and with very limited resources.

The big disadvantage of goats is that they eat almost everything and thus may be a serious threat to the cover plants that are crucial to avoid erosion and total degradation of the soil. The strength of the goat is also its weakness. This can be said about most development processes.
The huge challenge is to combine animal production with conservation of the environment and nature protection.

You give more than a goat

The report has a number of recommendations, including change of feed, production in stables, use of manure and paying the local population for nature conservation. That is why DanChurchAid has stressed, that when you give a goat, you give more than a goat. You give counselling, training, immunisation – and still more nature conservation. DanChurchAid is very conscious of such a responsibility. The sale of 16,000 goats and more than 14,000 flocks of chickens is an obligation, but at the same time it gives us the opportunity to focus on the correlation between livestock and environment.

Next Christmas the headline should be: Give a green goat!

By Christian Friis Bach, ( cfb@dca.dk )
International Director, DanChurchAid