John Morton

University of Greenwich · Department of Livelihoods and Institutions

Achieving water security remains one of the central challenges to many developing countries today. According to the South African Water Research Commission, the availability of safe and affordable water is crucial in ensuring a healthy and productive life for all. Despite the national standards set to measure the quality of water in South Africa, t...

This chapter examines the scientific understanding of how climate change impacts land degradation, and vice versa, with a focus on non-drylands. Land degradation of drylands is covered in Chapter 3. After providing definitions and the context (Section 4.1) we proceed with a theoretical explanation of the different processes of land degradation and...

This article aims to analyse pastoralists' adaptation practices to climate change (CC), taking into account their social categorization, as well as to determine the factors affecting the implementation of these endogenous adaptation responses. Data collected from a survey of 167 herders were analyzed using the Chi-square test of homogeneity, Kruska...

Adaptive capacity is the capabilities, resources and institutions of a country or region to implement effective adaptation measures. This article aims to highlight pastoral communities’ differential adaptive capacity to buffer household food insecurity. We use mixed methods including case households and key informants to provide qualitative data on...

Farmer-centred approaches are applied to engage smallholder farmers in agricultural research and development with the purpose of identifying and scaling out context specific innovations. Understanding the underlying processes that influence the decision of smallholder farmers to scale-out innovations is, therefore, paramount to effective farmer-led...

Since the late 1970s, extensive livestock production in the high plateaus of Eastern Morocco, particularly of small ruminants, has been seriously threatened by climate change (CC). Negative impacts include reduction in rangeland forage production and water availability, increased poverty and inequality, and increased degradation of rangelands. Diff...

Africa is highly vulnerable to changes in global climatic conditions due to its low adaptive capacity and sensitivity to changes in climatic variables, particularly in the agricultural sector. A key attribute of studies on climate change coping strategies and adaptation mechanisms in Africa is that they lack local specificity. Within a discourse do...

In the context of the major potential impacts of COVID-19 on agriculture and agricultural trade in developing countries, this Viewpoint discusses the advantages of adopting a conceptual framework previously used to discuss the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on agriculture and rural livelihoods. The framework is made up of two pairs of linked conce...

Technical approaches to food production are important to the food security of growing populations in developing countries. However, strategic investments in research and farm‐level adoption require greater coherence in agricultural, societal, and local policies. The Agricultural Innovation System (AIS) and formation of the Cassava Innovation Platfo...

Establishing short and long term measures that pastoral and agropastoral households use to ensure they have access to food in periods of climate extremes could provide insights into ways to support households in similar conditions. Using semi-structured elicitation, 15 purposively selected participants from case households and 13 community leaders,...

India is home to the largest number of people living in poverty in the world. To inform poverty alleviation strategies, we sought local insights on wellbeing trajectories from three generations of respondents in three communities in the Western and Eastern Ghats. An integrated thematic analysis was carried out using qualitative information from foc...

This paper examines drought characteristics as an evidence of climate change in two agro-climatic zones of Nigeria and farmers' climate change perceptions of impacts and adaptation strategies. The results show high spatial and temporal rainfall variability for the stations. Consequently, there are several anomalies in rainfall in recent years but m...

In this chapter we outline the two-way links between climate change and agriculture, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The direct and indirect impacts of climate change on agriculture are explored. How agriculture and land use change contribute to greenhouse gas emissions/global warming is outlined, and then supply-side and demand-side...

Pastoralists (broadly speaking, people dependent on extensively grazed livestock for their livelihoods), are a vulnerable group of people who have been marginalised in developmental and political terms, and whose problems are very different from those of people in mainstream agricultural areas. Pastoralist Parliamentary Groups (PPGs), groupings of...

The relationship between drought and loss of crops and livestock has long been known as an environmental challenge confronting agricultural production in many parts of Africa. Despite the great advancement of climate science in understanding and dealing with climate change and its impacts on the agricultural sector at the international and regional...

Africa is projected to experience diverse and severe impacts of climate change. The need to adapt is increasingly recognized, from the community level to regional and national governments to the donor community, yet adaptation faces many constraints, particularly in low income settings. This study documents and examines the challenges facing adapta...

Background The agricultural sector remains the main source of livelihoods for rural communities in Ethiopia, but faces the challenge of changing climate. This study investigated how smallholder farmers perceive climate change, what adaptation strategies they practice, and factors that influence their adaptation decisions. Both primary and secondary...

This paper examines smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate change, climate variability and their impacts, and adaptation strategies adopted over the past three decades. We use ethnographic analysis, combined with Cumulative Departure Index (CDI), Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) analysis, and correlation analysis to compare farmers’ perceptions in...

The long-term viability of pastoralism has been a constant theme for discussions. The progress of knowledge on the sustainability of pastoralism under global environmental change has been notable in the last years. To better characterize this vulnerability, we have examined the existing scientific knowledge about the three dimensions of vulnerabili...

Livestock play a key role in the climate change debate. As with crop‐based agriculture, the sector is both a net greenhouse gas emitter and vulnerable to climate change. At the same time, it is an essential food source for millions of people worldwide, with other functions apart from food security such as savings and insurance. By comparison with c...

We explore the utility of a consumption coping strategy index (CSI) in characterising and assessing the factors influencing household food insecurity. We assessed 53 pastoral and 197 agro-pastoral households in Nakasongola and Nakaseke districts of Uganda, examining the use of 27 consumption coping strategies over a recall time of two 30-day period...

We explore how diet diversity differs with agricultural seasons and between households within pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihood systems, using variety of foods consumed as a less complex proxy indicator of food insecurity than benchmark indicators like anthropometry and serum nutrients. The study was in the central part of the rangelands in Uga...

Introduction 9.1.1. Rationale for the Chapter This chapter assesses the impacts of climate change on, and the prospects for adaptation in, rural areas. Rural areas include diverse patterns of settlement, infrastructure, and livelihoods, and relate in complex ways with urban areas. The chapter shows that rural areas experience specific vulnerabiliti...

The pioneering nature of the Australian Landcare movement in encouraging community action for the rural environment is well known and it has been promoted as a model for poorer countries. Australian Landcare movement in encouraging community action for the rural environment is well known and it has been promoted as a model for poorer countries. Dis...

Human interference with the climate system is occurring. [WGI AR5 2.2, 6.3, 10.3-6, 10.9] Climate change poses risks for human and natural systems (Figure TS.1). The assessment of impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability in the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (WGII AR5) evaluates how patterns of risks and potential...

This article explores some of the ways in which analyses based around Foucault's concept of 'governmentality' might cast light on the ways in which pastoralists in Africa are and might be governed, given the persistence of poor policy, poor governance and hostile attitudes towards pastoralism by central and local government officials. Key concepts...

Efforts to address the challenges faced by pastoralists in the HoA have met with little success. Pastoralists continue to experience chronic food insecurity. The consequences of climate change mean that there is little hope for sustainable improvements in household well-being apart from a radical shift in strategy among members of the development N...

This book takes a look at the key challenges of HIV and AIDS from a gender perspective, and describes positive responses in areas of the world as diverse as Cambodia, South Africa, the UK, and Papua New Guinea. The impacts of HIV on women and men across the world are devastating and wide-ranging. Girls may have to drop out of school to look after s...

Some of the most important impacts of global climate change will be felt among the populations, predominantly in developing countries, referred to as “subsistence” or “smallholder” farmers. Their vulnerability to climate change comes both from being predominantly located in the tropics, and from various socioeconomic, demographic, and policy trends...

W.E.Easterling, P.K. Aggarwal, P. Batima, K.M. Brander, L. Erda, S.M. Howden, A. Kirilenko, J. Morton, J.-F. Soussana, J. Schmidhuber and F.N. Tubiello, 2007: Food, fibre and forest products. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on...

While understanding of the links between HIV/AIDS and agriculture-based livelihoods is increasing, there has been very little research on the links between HIV/AIDS and pastoralism, despite the fact that pastoralists represent a large group of the poor and vulnerable in many countries long affected by HIV/AIDS. This article identifies key linkages...

Droughts on the dry-lands of East Africa appear to be more frequent, more severe and more widespread than in the past. Governments of affected countries, donors and NGOs, in turn, are increasingly trying to move beyond food-aid and relief as the sole way of responding to and managing drought. In this context, there is growing interest in what is va...

HIV/AIDS is having profound impacts on livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. These include the deaths of working-age adults, the diversion of resources to caring, and the rupture of traditional chains of knowledge transmission. NGOs are responding by providing assistance to communities affected by the epidemic in the fields of agriculture, skills trai...

This manuscript provides a summary of the results presented at a symposium organized to accumulate information on factors that influence the prevalence of acaricide resistance and tick-borne diseases. This symposium was part of the 19th International Conference of the World Association for the Advancement of Veterinary Parasitology (WAAVP), held in...

Tick- and tsetse-borne diseases cost Africa approximately US$4-5 billion per year in livestock production-associated losses. The use of pyrethroid-treated cattle to control ticks and tsetse promises to be an increasingly important tool to counter this loss. However, uncontrolled use of this technology might lead to environmental damage, acaricide r...

The idea of externally assisted emergency destocking of pastoralists has gained currency in recent years: increasing the incentives for pastoralists to sell animals, or removing the constraints to selling animals in the early stages of drought. We identify two separate rationales put forward by proponents of destocking: environmental benefits and p...

This article discusses major issues that confront attempts to introduce participatory methodologies into livestock production research, based on experiences during two projects in East Africa, and interviews with researchers and others in the region. The extent to which research can be participatory is strongly influenced by the institutional conte...

Vulnerability to environmental degradation and natural hazards is articulated along social, poverty, and gender lines. Just as gender is not sufficiently mainstreamed in many areas of development policy and practice, so the potential impacts of climate change on gender relations have not been studied, and remain invisible. In this article we outlin...

There has been an assumption that agricultural research carried out by developed country research institutions would be ultimately transferred to developing countries through national research and extension organizations. In recent years, this paradigm has been increasingly challenged by the increased prominence of nongovernmental organizations (NG...

There has been an assumption that agricultural research carried out by developed country research institutions would be ultimately transferred to developing countries through national research and extension organizations. In recent years, this paradigm has been increasingly challenged by the increased prominence of nongovernmental organizations (NG...

Among the many implications for development of the global revolution in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is the possibility of using ICTs to assist policy makers. This paper reflects on the author's experience drafting the policy modules of the 'Livestock-Environment Toolbox.' Using an electronic web-based format for the Toolbox al...

The article examines the perceptions held by smallholder dairy producers of the various livestock services delivered to them and the organisations that deliver them. In particular it examines perceptions of the dairy cooperatives, formerly part of the state marketing system and now liberalised, and of newer and less formal self-help groups. In Kiam...

Opening Paragraph This article is an ethnographic account of the economic importance of information in a particular society, that of the Northern Beja of Red Sea Province, Sudan, and of one social institution, the greetings ritual, vital in the transmission of information. As such it is intended as a contribution to the anthropology of information...

Approaches to drought management in the livestock sector depend very heavily on the level of resources that national governments or donors or both are able and willing to commit. This level of resources is determined by a country's per capita income, its size, and the priority it enjoys among donors, but also by historical, political and cultural f...

There is some evidence that companies, both multinational and African, operating from motivations that can be very broadly labelled "Corporate Social Responsibility", can make real and significant contributions to pastoral development and that useful development dialogues can be held with them. But three case studies, from Uganda, Ethiopia and Sene...

"Transmitting information on livestock production has rarely been a priority for centralised extension services in developing countries. National agricultural extension services are usually designed around the need to transmit information on annual crops, while livestock ministries and departments are dominated by vets and animal health concerns. Y...

"Balochistan is Pakistan's largest, least populated and most arid province. Flood or spate irrigation, using flash floods coming from mountainous areas, has traditionally been practised in most parts of the province. Both to maximize opportunities for cultivation and for protection against the destructive effects of floods, local people have long c...

"This paper summarises a research project on pastoralist parliamentary groups (PPGs) in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. It was a joint venture between the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) and the Pastoral and Environmental Network in the Horn of Africa (PENHA). The objective of the project was 'to assess the circumstances in which pastoralist parliame...