Farmer–herder conflicts and water governance in a semi-arid region of Africa
Sedentary farmers in the Volta Basin are endangering the activity of transhumant herders relying on grazing ranges between 9° and 11°N. Despite mutual benefits, farmers try to deny them access to water and thereby the possibility to graze their stock on crop residues. This new behaviour is changing the geographical distribution of traditional activities and risks endangering herding activity, a leading economic resource in these regions. Meeting livestock watering requirements is thus a matter of local conflict resolution and good governance. Countries should be encouraged to adopt legislation to maintain or even promote the mobility of herding activities.
Fostering Institutional Creativity at Multiple Levels: Towards Facilitated Institutional Bricolage
Problems occur when institutional arrangements for collective management of food and water systems fail to meet demands. Many of the problems characterising river basins and other collectively managed water resource systems can be ascribed largely to the failure of institutions to enable problems beyond the individual to be managed collectively. The nature of these demands, and the institutional responses to them, vary widely and are not amenable to simple definitions and prescriptions. We begin with a brief review of conventional approaches to analysing institutions and organisations, focused largely, but not exclusively, on river basins. We observe that attempts to reduce the institutional landscape of river basins to over-simplistic formulas introduces more problems than solutions, because the reality is that institutions evolve through complex creative processes that adopt and adapt diverse ingredients – rather like making a stew. Despite such intricacies, institutions are clearly non-random, so we continue a search for a means of describing them. We adopt the concept of bricolage, as proposed by Cleaver and others, and use it to show the value of promoting and facilitating an organic creative approach to building and strengthening river basin and other water management institutions.
The status of FAO and codex alimentarius developments on vegetable proteins
The FAO is interested in increasing world protein supplies both by advising and assisting developing countries to increase their production of staple foods and by encouraging the development of technology to produce protein concentrates both from vegetable and animal sources to supplement diets which are low in protein content. Recent revisions of the amount of protein required in the diet in relation to total per capita energy requirements and the difficulties encountered in introducing novel foods into established dietary patterns has led FAO to concentrate on increased agricultural productions in developing countries as the primary means of combatting malnutrition. In the meantime, in North America and Europe, advances in the technology of processing vegetable proteins has given highly acceptable products simulating meats which are being used as meat extenders and meat analogues. The consequent increase in vegetable protein production has revealed a need for international, agreement on standardization, and it has been agreed that this will be undertaken by the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards’ Programme. The program operates chiefly through the Codex Alimentarius, Commission, an international governmental body, the purpose of which is to protect consumers against health hazard in food and against fraud. The Commission, which has 116 member governments, controls an intensive program of work covering the composition, labeling, additives, contaminants, pesticide residues, hygiene, sampling and analysis aspects of foods and has established a procedure which allows member governments ample opportunity to reach agreement on food standards and to accept them for incorporation into national legislation. The Codex Commission, at its 12th session, decided to establish a Committee on Vegetable Proteins with the following terms of references: “to elaborate definitions and world-wide standards for vegetable protein products deriving from soybeams, cottonseed, groundnuts, cereals and from other vegetable sources as they come into use for human consumption, and to elaborate guidelines on utilization of such vegetable protein products in the food supply system, on nutritional requirements and safety on labeling and on other aspects as may seem appropriate.” The question of which country will host the Committee is still under discussion.