The Pastoralist Livelihoods Initiative (PLI) program, implemented through a collaboration of the Government of Ethiopia, private sector, NGOs, and universities is a project focused on strengthening livestock-based livelihoods of these pastoralists through a variety of proven interventions including early market purchase of stock before severe drought; restocking with improved breeds of small ruminants (sheep and goats) while improving productivity of existing breeding stock; and by exploiting immediate opportunities for long term livestock market development (including policy reform and public/private partnerships for systems improvement). The PLI program seeks to urgently address the needs of an increasingly vulnerable population made so by climatic conditions, i.e. drought, and lack of access to markets.

Through a Pastoralist Livelihoods Initiative (PLI) project that began in October 2005, USAID/Ethiopia supported Ethiopia in undertaking urgent and timely interventions to respond immediately to emergencies and to improve livestock production and early warning systems targeted at reducing the prospect of disasters due to recurrent droughts. The GL-CRSP Livestock Information Network and Knowledge System (LINKS) Project is one of the multiple partners that contributed significantly to the implementation of the PLI project, focusing its efforts on the drought and conflict ridden regional states of Somali and Afar. The LINKS project worked in partnership with Save the Children-UK (SCUK) to establish an effective and sustainable district-level food and livelihood security monitoring and early warning system (EWS) within Somali and Afar focused on triggering timely and appropriate responses. The objective of the proposed EWS was to strengthen the capacity of the Somali and Afar Regional Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Food Security Bureaus (DPPFSBs) to establish and manage region-wide district-based pastoral EWSs that are linked to appropriate and early responses, through a food and livelihood security monitoring, reporting, analysis, and dissemination system. Such a system was proposed to complement the Ethiopian government’s Federal Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission’s efforts to establish a livelihood based EWS in the country.

The role of LINKS in the consortium is to augment and bolster the content of early warning information and products produced for and by the PLI project by offering a robust suite of livestock early warning and livestock market information products and technologies, and complement partner activities from SC-UK. The products that LINKS continues to provide include: current and forecasted forage production for livestock, generated automatically from satellite based weather data; NDVI data; and geo-referenced measured vegetation. This forage production information is delivered every 10 days via the Internet, along with monthly reports of 30, 60, and 90 day forecasts for forage production. The Livestock market information avails near-real time weekly market prices and supply transaction information for key markets, as well as an updated analysis and synthesis of market trends as they relate to the food security situation of pastoral areas.

For more on the LINKS Project and the PLI program please visit:
http://glcrsp.ucdavis.edu/projects/#LINKS