Climate Change, Economic crisis and their implications for a Gendered Livestock- Water Productivity, reflections from Ethiopia and Zimbabwe

Climate Change and the global economic crisis are negatively impacting on the resilience of agriculture and rural development in countries such as Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. Livestock Water Productivity (LWP) is becoming a major area of research which aims at increasing agricultural productivity through the use of less water for both livestock and crops as an adaptation and mitigation strategy to Climate Change. Via BMZ funded research, IWMI and ILRI are attempting to understand the gender implications of different interventions to increase livestock water productivity. This paper draws on research conducted in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe and also the wealth of information emerging from the Multiple Use Systems Project. Some of the emerging results show that technological innovations are not gender neutral, as their design, timing and labor requirements have differential gender implications. Some technological interventions to increase livestock water productivity might result in more work for poor women and men with little benefits going to them. Secondly, gender and power relationships also shape the benefit terrain which results in differential access and control of the benefits from the improved livestock water productivity. Thirdly, what matters is not just improving livestock water productivity, but the type of livestock targeted. Small livestock development interventions are likely to contribute towards improvements in the livelihoods of both poor women and men. This paper concludes that responses to Climate Change and the current Global Economic Crisis should not only focus, broadly, on the resilience of agriculture in developing countries, but it should also take into account the differential impacts that climate and global economic crisis responses have on gender.