Rwandan women selling eggs to people visiting the Kimironko market in the country capital city, Kigali (photo credit: Shutterstock.com/Sarine Arslanian) All rights reserved.

Rising demand for milk, meat and eggs in developing countries is opening up big new opportunities to establish and grow businesses and create jobs. While rapidly changing livestock systems pose a range of environmental, health and equity challenges across the highly heterogeneous livestock production systems worldwide, targeted investment in sustainable livestock research for development can produce more food, increase resilience in communities and the environment, and drive equitable and broad-based economic growth. Helping to ensure that hundreds of millions of poor small-scale livestock farmers, processors and marketers, many of whom are women, benefit from these opportunities will be crucial to achieving many of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Board of Trustees, management and staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) take great pleasure in announcing the publication of the ILRI corporate report 2016–2017. Each chapter in the report outlines how research for development approaches—undertaken by an array of national and international private, public and research partners—have brought tangible benefits to low-and middle-income countries and communities, and offer lessons for adoption more broadly for livestock producers, marketers and farmers elsewhere.

The report provides examples of how ILRI and its many partners are helping to meet specific SDGs. These include in reducing incidence and impact of livestock diseases; increasing household incomes; improving food safety; ensuring greater gender equity and inclusive growth; breeding climate-smart as well as more productive livestock; mitigating livestock-generated greenhouse gas emissions; and enabling policies and partnerships for a healthy, safe, sustainable and equitable livestock sector.

By working closely with national and international research, the private-sector, government and non-governmental organizations in providing evidence to decision-makers, ILRI is facilitating the adoption at scale of science-based livestock practices and building capacities of key stakeholders. In furthering better lives through livestock, the outcomes of our research-for-development approach—the scientific evidence, proven technologies and development pathways—directly contribute to meeting the SDGs.

None of our achievements would be possible without this broader community of gifted and dedicated livestock-for-development workers. The collective achievements outlined in this report are a testimony to all those who have invested their resources in helping capitalize on the ‘livestock revolution’, ensuring sustainable livestock development can do much more than produce more food, it can nourish the world’s populations and drive equitable and broad-based economic growth.

Over the course of the next month, chapters of this report, each highlighting how ILRI and its many partners are helping to meet specific SDGs—no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, gender equity, decent employment and growth, responsible production, climate action, life on the land and partnership—will be published on this blog, with links to articles for the reader to dig further into each specific issue. So, delve into the full report now or wait to read the individual chapters in the coming weeks.

Download the full report here: http://hdl.handle.net/10568/92517