Addis Ababa

Cecilia Muriuki receives an award for her 40 years of service from Jimmy and Stella.

The first month of 2019 is over already. The Institute Management Committee (IMC) held its first meeting of the year in Addis Ababa on 23-24 January which then allowed us to attend the Addis Staff Party on the afternoon of 24^th. The party was a great success with good food, excellent entertainment and a great atmosphere. Congratulations to the organizing committee for arranging such a wonderful event. Unfortunately, I missed the Nairobi Staff Party in December as I was travelling in Europe. However, I want to congratulate and thank all the staff who received long service awards in both Addis and Nairobi. Your many years of service to ILRI make the institute what it is. Special congratulations goes to Cecilia Muriuki for her 40 years of service to ILRAD/ILRI in Nairobi. This is a truly remarkable achievement.

Farewell to Andrew Mude

On Friday 25 January we said farewell to Andrew Mude who is leaving ILRI to take up a new position with the African Development Bank in Abidjan. It was testimony to Andrew’s impact on ILRI that so many friends, colleagues and partners turned up to his farewell party. Andrew and I both joined ILRI in 2006 (Andrew in Nairobi and me in Delhi) and first met in Addis Ababa in April 2007 at the Annual Program Meeting. I can recall the impression he made on me as a young scientist who had a bright career ahead of him. He has developed and rolled out index-based livestock insurance, grown a strong team and extended his work to many aspects of building resilience and supporting the livelihoods of people in dry areas. He was the recipient of 2016 Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application, awarded by the World Food Prize. We will miss you Andrew, but we wish you well at the African Development Bank and we will continue to work together in your new role.

UN Global Compact

In 2018, ILRI signed up to the UN Global compact. This is a voluntary commitment by an organization to uphold a set of 10 principles around sustainability in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. These principles are:

Human rights
Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights

Principle 2: Make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses

Labour
Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining

Principle 4: The elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour

Principle 5: The effective abolition of child labour

Principle 6: The elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

Environment
Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges

Principle 8: Undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility

Principle 9: Encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies

Anti-corruption
Principle 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery

Organizations which sign up to the compact undertake to uphold these principles and work towards implementing them. On 29 January we had a visit from the Kenya Office of the Compact to discuss our obligations, including reporting publicly our activities and progress every two years and how we could engage with other members to support the achievement of the principles. We’ll provide more information on this in the coming weeks and months.

The EAT/Lancet Commission report on sustainable diets

A big global story this month was the publication of the EAT/Lancet Commission paper ‘Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems’ and the companion report ‘Healthy Diets From Sustainable Food Systems: Planet, Health, Food. Summary Report of the EAT-Lancet Commission.’ The report has fueled much discussion and debate. You will have seen a lot of blogging from our CKM team in the past couple of weeks. The paper makes recommendations on what the ‘ideal diet’ would be, based on health and environmental impacts.

The major recommendations are that ‘we’ should shift to a more plant-based diet and massively reduce consumption of meat, especially red meat, and eat a lot more plant-based foods. While the report does recognize that some people in the world should consume more animal-source foods (meat consumption in Africa is only half the recommended amount) this message gets a tiny part of the discussion and is completely ignored in 99% of the media attention that the report has generated. The report also ignores other aspects of sustainability such as the contribution of livestock to economic development, livelihoods, gender equity etc. Some of the evidence cited on the negative impacts of animal-source foods is also very questionable.

Since the report has a very developed country perspective we are working with partners to highlight and promote the view from a low- and middle-income country perspective. Watch this space – you can expect to see a lot more communication from ILRI in the coming weeks.

Till next month.

Iain