中国欧盟经理人协会 EU-China Managers Association

Germany and France have called on the European Union to consider banning speculative trading in credit default swaps and set up a compulsory register of derivatives trading

As if the healthcare debate could not get any more difficult, Democrats are coping with a series of ethical controversies, writes Anna Fifield

Burma has published new election laws that in effect deny Aung San Suu Kyi, the imprisoned opposition leader and Nobel laureate, any future formal political role in the country

The exiled Tibetan leader expressed solidarity and support for the Muslim people of western China’s Xinjiang region, which was hit by bloody riots last year, saying they had suffered ‘increased oppression’

Indonesian police have killed a most-wanted Islamist terror suspect in a shoot out capping a series of raids against a new militant network ahead of a visit next week by US President Barack Obama

British minister optimistic about restructuring conglomerate’s $26bn debts despite specific terms yet to be tabled, as creditors upbeat about avoiding a ‘haircut’ on principal

Gordon Brown has confirmed the Budget will be held on March 24 in what is expected to be his government’s last major political event before the start of the general election campaign

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process resumes, after a fashion

IT WAS a wretched beginning to what had been hailed as the hopeful resumption of peace talks, albeit indirect ones, between the Israelis and Palestinians under the aegis of an American mediator. Barely had America’s vice-president, Joe Biden, begun a visit to Israel to herald a new era of compromise and goodwill than it was announced, as if deliberately to poison the mood, that 1,600 new houses would be built for Jewish settlers in a big Jewish suburb in the Israeli-annexed eastern part of Jerusalem that Palestinians see as their fledgling state’s future capital. Palestinian politicians were united in fury. Arabs and other peacemaking outsiders viewed the action as the illest of omens. Mr Biden sharply “condemned” the action as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”

A sheepish-looking Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, let his aides claim implausibly that he had been unaware of the building decision. The next day his minister of interior dismissed it as a “routine, technical” step, while conceding that the timing was unfortunate, and apologised. Unsurprisingly, the incident increased scepticism towards the promised new round of talks. ...

游牧养殖方式在繁荣了非洲经济的同时还保护了牲畜免受干旱的威胁。即然如此，为什么它现在面临着威胁？赛德•海瑟撰文对此进行解读。

流动放牧，或称游牧的畜牧方式在非洲干旱地区的经济繁荣中扮演着至关重要的角色。据估计，在非洲东部和西部，大约有5千万畜牧养殖者完全依靠天然旱地草场来放养牲口，而这些牲 口是他们的家庭和村子的重要经济来源。同时，这些牲口还支撑着庞大的肉食产业以及原皮和生皮工业。面对全球气候变化，当其它土地利用体系无法发挥作用的时候，流动放牧能够为国家和地区创造巨大的经济利益。

如今，牧民不仅能够将最新的牲畜市场价格信息下载到他们的手机上，还可以骑上价格低廉的中国产摩托去追赶跑远的牧群或迷路的骆驼，或者通过步行、陆路、或海路的方式将他们的牲口运送到千里之外的地方进行内贸交易或国际交易。人们普遍认为牧民是小众群体。他们与世界脱节，生活方式也因循守旧。然而现实中，牧民早已完全融入到全球发展的进程中。

但是现在，流动放牧正逐渐成为一个严肃的问题。出于各种各样其它的用途，草场被一点点的瓜分。而草场的水源供给以及与市场的联系也越来越困难。随着流动放牧的活动范围日益狭窄，畜牧养殖的经济收益也受到严重的威胁。牲口的出肉率降低，产奶量减少。此外，它们对干旱和疾病的抵御能力也有所下降。而这正把人们引向一条充满贫困、资源退化，以及冲突的道路。

针对游牧流动性的问题，一些新的思维、新的政策和创新实践正在许多非洲干旱地区扎下根来。非洲联盟和其他一些地区性组织正逐渐认识到增强牲畜的移动性所产生的巨大利益。这也促使一些政府开始制订各种信息充分、循序渐进的政策，从而反映出现代游牧民的需要。

小标题：为何采取游牧的方式？

其实，游牧民迁徙是为了带着他们的牲畜辗转于牧草最丰美的地方。不同时期分散于不同地方的草场才是游牧养殖在如此困难的环境里保持高产的原因。而对于那些依 靠单一牧场和规模经济的定居牧民而言，牧场上随机分布的牧草中的营养含量将使产量受到严重的影响。但是，对于那些四处迁徙，有选择地控制放牧数量的游牧民 而言，这却是一种资源。

人们常常认为，相对于传统的畜牧管理方式，现代化的牧场养殖方式是一种进步。然而，在对埃塞俄比亚、肯尼亚、博茨瓦纳、以及津巴布韦等国牧场养殖和游牧养殖的产出进行比较研究后却得出了一致的不同结论：这些国家游牧养殖的表现不仅均优于牧场养殖，而且，优势还很明显。不论是从出肉率、热量值（卡路里）、还是需提供的现金等各个方面衡量，游牧养殖每公顷土地的回报率都要高于牧场养殖。

区域内牲畜贸易是非洲东部地区的一个主要产业，其规模正不断扩大，年产值超过6500万美元（人民币4.44亿元）。该产业的收益取决于牲畜的迁移，特别是跨界迁移。在萨赫勒地区的许多国家中，畜牧养殖占农业GDP总值的40%以上。这些数据虽然非常可观，但是仍然没有反映出畜牧生产系统对国民经济的全部贡献。国民核算是以肉和生皮等最终产品的价值为基础，而忽略了游牧养殖方式在社会、安全、以及生态等方面所带来的好处。

当干旱和灾难发生时，牧民迫于生计不得不四处迁移。因此，对于牧民而言，保持流动性就变得极为重要了。干旱地区经常发生干旱，这也就是为什么相对农作物生产而言，游牧养殖是当地生产战略的最佳之选的原因。

小标题：面临的障碍

游牧民的活动范围日渐受到限制。大片大片的农场时不时地挡住他们通往放牧区的道路；边境管制又妨碍了他们的交易模式；他们过去保留下来作为干旱时期放牧场所的地区现在不是变成了国家公园就是被各种各样的农业计划所占用。政府所颁布的政策也积极鼓励游牧民在其它地区定居下来，并且适应“现代化”的畜牧方式。这些政策的立脚点往往是一些毫无根据的观点。这些观点认为，游牧养殖不仅经济效益低下，而且还对 环境造成破坏。人们认为将土地用作它途，如大规模农业生产以及国家公园等，能够创造更多的国民收入，并且对环境的影响也较小。但是这些观点都缺乏切实的证据。

农业是游牧养殖面临的最大的挑战。家庭农场缓慢而坚定推进。此外，某些地区大型商业化农场的建设也正在不断地吞噬大片的放牧区。联合国环境规划署已经叫停了一些建在苏丹中部半干旱地区的大型机械化农场的扩张计划，并警告说，这些项目将在未来成为农民与游牧民之间冲突的导火索。苏丹北部的大型商业化农场已经由于助长了冲突、环境退化、以及侵犯人权等原因而备受指责。

特别是在非洲东部，国家公园、猎物繁殖保护区、狩猎区及保护区侵占了大量的土地，从而使游牧迁移受到了严重的限制，因为这些土地不仅包括旱季和雨季主要的放牧区，而且还切断了季节性迁移的必经之路。设立于二十世纪六十年代的乌干达基代波河谷国家公园位于乌干达与苏丹和肯尼亚的边界，严重阻碍了托普沙人从苏丹南部到乌干达北部卡邦地区旱季牧场的迁移。多多斯游牧民同样失去了位于东北部提姆森林的雨季主要牧场。根据卡拉莫贾农牧开发项目的迈克尔·戈德温·万苏斯的研究，这片地区在2000年被宣布划为森林保护区。然而，有大量的证据显示，较之其它方式，特别是农作物生产，游牧是一种更能够与野生动植物和平共处的土地使用方式。

不论是非牧民还是牧民都开始了圈地。从埃塞俄比亚南部的波拉娜人到尼日尔和布基纳法索的富拉尼人以及索马里兰的索马里人，非洲之角的范围内，游牧家庭正纷纷把牧场圈起来。牧群规模缩小所引起的贫困使非洲东部和西部地区数以千计的游牧家庭不得不将牧场土地划分出来从事雨养农业，或者在有水源供给的地方从事旱季农艺。而其他人由于害怕越来越多的土地被占用而变得一无所有，或者出于保护牧场不被用于农业或伐树烧炭等其它用途的目的，也不得不圈起大片土地。

具体有多少曾经的牧场被占用还不得而知。但是，有不少已经被用来种植小麦、甘蔗、灌溉烟草、棉花、高粱、鲜花、以及蔬菜等作物。还有一些成为狩猎场和养牛场、国家公园、以及森林保护区。重要的不仅仅是土地流失的严重程度，关键的是这些土地的性质。大部分被割据的土地关系到湿地或沿河森林等战略性区域的安危。这些地区不仅湿度较高，而且也较为稳定。因此，特别是当旱季，周围牧场的牧草枯萎贫乏的时候，这里却可以找到营养成分更高的牧草。

这些地区有着肥美的牧草，就像是“逃生的小岛”一样，在下一个雨季来临，重新长出新鲜的牧草之前，让牲口们可以有地方吃饱肚子。失去了这些地区会对整个畜牧系统的收益及适应能力造成伤害。失去这些土地究竟会对国民经济造成多大的经济影响和环境影响，新的土地使用体系的预期收益是否会大于取代畜牧业所带来的收益损失，针对这些问题迄今所做的研究非常少。

冲突也是阻碍流动性、改变放牧方式、降低产出、以及加剧环境退化的一个主要因素。乍得和苏丹两国之间长期的冲突就意味着牧民们出于安全问题的考量不得不聚集起来形成一个更大团体。但是，结果却发现，这么做反而更难找到高质量的牧草和水源。苏丹与埃及之间的冲突同样使苏丹西北部红海州的贝贾族牧民通往主要牧场的道路被阻。牧群无法到达牧场使牧场的使用率偏低，从而导致灌木的生长乘虚而入。另一方面，当牧民拥挤在面积不断缩小的牧区中时，为了争夺日益减少的资源，竞争便会加剧，冲突就变成一个无法避免并且具有自身延续性的问题。

干旱地区的各种不合理政策限制了牲口的迁移。人们一直认为游牧养殖方式是一种落后、经济效益低下、破坏环境的土地利用方式。而在这种观点的不断驱使下，非洲 大部分地区针对牧场和牲畜制订了相应的政策 。然而，所有这些观点中没有一个是以事实或曾经的失败经验为依据，也没有反映当前所掌握的干旱地区环境和生计体系的动态学知识。而且，牧民团体也没有参与政策的制订。二十一世纪，我们必须摒弃这些冥顽不化的看法。


赛德·海瑟：国际环境与发展学会（IIED）气候变化小组首席研究员。本文作者还有塞弗里奥·克拉缇里、伊兹·伯奇、及玛格达·那赛弗。

本文的全文曾以图书形式由IIED出版，书名为《现代化与流动性之争：非洲干旱地区畜牧生产的未来》。本文为该书的摘要，经授权在此发表。

下一篇：全球优势的觉醒

首页图片来自世界银行

Nomadic pastoralism boosts African economies and protects livestock from drought. So why is it under threat? Ced Hesse explains.

Mobile-livestock keeping, or pastoralism, plays a critical role in the economic prosperity of Africa’s drylands. Across east and west Africa, an estimated 50 million livestock producers support their families, their communities, and a massive meat, skins and hides industry based on animals that are fed solely on natural dryland pastures. Where other land-use systems are failing in the face of global climate change, mobile-livestock keeping is generating huge national and regional economic benefits.

Today’s pastoralists download the latest market prices for cattle on their mobile phones, use cheap Chinese motorbikes to reach distant herds or lost camels and trek their livestock thousands of kilometres by foot, truck or ship to trade them nationally and internationally. Prevalent perceptions of pastoralists are that they are a minority, out of touch with the rest of the world and practicing an archaic and outmoded lifestyle. The reality is that pastoralists are fully integrated with wider global processes.

But moving is now becoming a serious problem. Grazing lands are being taken over for other uses and access to water and markets is increasingly difficult. With reduced mobility the economic profitability of livestock keeping is being critically undermined. Animals are producing less meat, less milk and are more susceptible to drought and disease. This is contributing to poverty, resource degradation and conflict.

New thinking, new policies and innovative practices for pastoralist mobility are beginning to take root in many parts of dryland Africa. The African Union and other regional institutions are recognising the huge benefits to be reaped from supporting livestock mobility. This is encouraging several governments to develop informed, progressive policies that reflect the needs of modern pastoralism.

Crosshead: Why move?

Essentially, pastoralists move to take their animals to places where they can find the best quality grazing. It is the scattering of different pastures over different places at different times that makes mobile-livestock keeping so productive in what is otherwise a difficult environment. To sedentary-livestock keepers, who rely on uniformity and economies of scale, randomly variable concentrations of nutrients on the range would be a serious constraint to productivity. But to pastoralists, who are mobile and maintain populations of selectively feeding animals, it represents a resource.

Modern ranching is often believed to be an improvement over traditional livestock management. But research in Ethiopia, Kenya, Botswana and Zimbabwe comparing the productivity of ranching against pastoralism all came to the same conclusion: pastoralism consistently outperforms ranching and to a quite significant degree. Whether measured in terms of meat production, generating energy (calories) or providing cash, pastoralism gives a higher return per hectare of land than ranching.

In east Africa, the intra-regional livestock trade is a major and growing industry, with an annual value in excess of US$65 million (444 million yuan). The profitability of this trade is dependent on livestock being mobile, particularly across borders. In many countries of the Sahel, livestock’s contribution to total agricultural GDP is above 40%. These figures are sizable, and yet they still fail to capture the full contribution of pastoral production systems to national economies. National accounts are based only on the value of final products such as meat and hides and leave out the many social, security and ecological benefits mobile-livestock production adds.

During periods of drought or disaster, mobility becomes absolutely essential for pastoralists, when they are forced to move in order to survive. Drought is a normal occurrence in drylands, and is a key reason why mobile-livestock keeping, rather than crops, is the production strategy of choice.

Crosshead: Obstacles

Pastoralists are increasingly constrained. Farms frequently block access to their grazing areas; national border controls hinder their trade patterns; and the areas they traditionally preserve for times of drought are now national parks or agricultural schemes. In other areas national government policies actively encourage pastoralists to settle and be “modern”. These policies are often driven by unfounded perceptions that pastoralism is economically inefficient and environmentally destructive. Alternative land uses, including large-scale agriculture and national parks, are believed to bring in more national revenues and to have less environmental impact. But this is not evidence based.

Farming is one of the biggest challenges to pastoral mobility. The slow but inexorable advance of family farms, combined in places with the establishment of large-scale commercial farming, is swallowing up vast areas of grazing lands. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has called for a moratorium on the expansion of large mechanised farms in Sudan's central semi-arid regions, sounding a warning that it was a “future flashpoint” for conflict between farmers and pastoralists. Northern Sudan’s huge commercial farms have been blamed for fuelling conflict and for environmental degradation and human rights abuses.

Particularly in east Africa, the loss of land to national parks, game reserves, hunting blocks and conservation severely restricts pastoral mobility as much of this land either consists of critical dry- or wet-season grazing or cuts across seasonal migration routes. The creation of Uganda’s Kidepo Valley National Park in the 1960s, on the border with Sudan and Kenya, severely restricts the movement of the Toposa from southern Sudan to dry-season grazing in Kaabong district, northern Uganda. Within Kaabong District, Dodoth pastoralists have also lost critical wet-season grazing in the north-eastern Timu forest when it was declared a forest reserve in 2000, according to research by Michael Godwin Wantsusi of the Karamoja Agro-Pastoral Development Programme. Yet a lot of evidence suggests that pastoralism is far more compatible with wildlife than other forms of land use, particularly crop farming.

Both non-pastoralists and pastoralists are enclosing the rangelands. From the Borana in southern Ethiopia, to the Fulani in Niger and Burkina Faso and Somali groups in Somaliland, a territory in the Horn of Africa, pastoral families are fencing grazing land. Poverty, due to shrinking herd sizes, is driving thousands of pastoral families throughout east and west Africa to fence off the rangelands to practice rain-fed agriculture and, where water is available, dry-season gardening. Others are enclosing land from a fear of losing out as more and more land is taken or are seeking to protect the rangeland from farming or the cutting of trees for charcoal.

It is not known how much former pastoralist-grazing land has been lost overall but much of it is in the form of wheat farms, sugar farms, irrigated tobacco, cotton and sorghum schemes, flower and vegetable farms, game and cattle ranches, national parks and forest reserves. And it is not just the sheer extent of the lost land that is so important; it is the nature of that lost land that is critical. Much of the alienation concerns strategic areas such as wetlands or riverine forests. Here, because of higher and more stable moisture, pastures of higher nutritional content can be found, particularly in the dry season when the surrounding range is dry and poor.

These areas represent “islands” of high-quality pasture where livestock feed until the arrival of new, fresh grass with the next rainy season. The loss of these areas undermines the profitability and resilience of the whole pastoral system. Little research has been carried out to calculate the economic and environmental impacts the loss of these areas has had on national economies, and whether the expected benefits from the new land-use systems are greater than the benefits lost as a result of displacing pastoralism.

Conflicts are also a major block to mobility, altering grazing patterns, reducing productivity and increasing environmental degradation. The enduring conflicts in Chad and Sudan mean pastoralists move together in larger groups for security but have subsequently found it more difficult to access high quality pasture and water. Sudan’s conflict with Egypt also reduced access to key grazing areas for Beja pastoralists in Red Sea state, north-west Sudan. Where grazing areas cannot be accessed, the under-utilisation of pasture leads to bush encroachment. Where pastoralists become squeezed into smaller grazing areas, competition for a dwindling resource increases and conflict becomes inevitable and self-perpetuating.

Across the drylands inappropriate policies are blocking livestock mobility. Enduring perceptions of pastoralism as an outdated, economically inefficient and environmentally destructive land-use system continue to drive rangeland and livestock policy in much of Africa. Yet, none of these perceptions are evidence-based, informed by past failure or reflect current scientific knowledge of the dynamics in dryland environments and livelihood systems. Nor are they designed with the participation of pastoral communities. These persistent beliefs must be left behind in the twentieth century.


Ced Hesse is principal researcher in the climate-change group at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Co-authors of this piece were Saverio Kratli, Izzy Birch and Magda Nassef.

An earlier version of this article was published in book form by the IIED as “Modern and mobile: The future of livestock production in Africa’s drylands”. It is summarised and used here with permission.

NEXT: recognising global advantages

Homepage image from World Bank
 

Art dealers are slow to catch on to the value of branding

VIPs criss-crossed Manhattan last week to attend museum shows, conference panels, champagne brunches, curator tours and the stands of nearly 500 galleries exhibiting in 11 fairs. The week was vibrant but confusing due to poor co-operation between event organisers and some amateur branding.

The first problem was an illogical association of name and place. Every March the Armory Show sets up shop in New York. This year, the Art Dealers' Association of America (ADAA) decided to hold its smaller but more prestigious fair in the same week. While the ADAA's exhibition took place in the historic Armory building on Park Avenue, the Armory Show was held in two piers on the Hudson River. “It must drive them as crazy as it drives us,” admitted Giovanni Garcia-Fenech, the Armory Show's communications director. ...

Turkey’s two-year saga of on-off negotiations with the International Monetary Fund ended as prime minister says country can “stand on its own feet”

各省2009年和2010年节能减排目标完成情况将接受评价和考核
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通过向显示终端产业链延伸，TCL意图实现上下游垂直一体化整合的全产业链布局
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通过向显示终端产业链延伸，TCL意图实现上下游垂直一体化整合的全产业链布局
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Lady Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, hit back at her critics, by blaming rivalry among the EU’s institutions for slow progress in establishing the bloc’s new diplomatic service

Iran’s president acknowledges for the first time that Afghan and Pakistani intelligence helped his government to hunt down the leader of an ethnic opposition movement

China reported 45.7 per cent growth in exports for February from a year earlier, providing fresh evidence of a robust recovery in an economy poised to overtake Japan in size

目前，中国国内没有种植任何转基因粮食作物
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要求担保机构限制投资限额，足额提取担保赔偿准备金，建立市场化运作的审慎经营模式
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