Scope
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) are investing an initial CAD13.5 million to lead, through IDRC, a fund for climate-smart livestock systems (CSLS) in Africa. The focus of the fund will be to develop new climate-smart livestock technologies and business models to improve animal productivity, promote climate adaptation and lower emission intensity for smallholder livestock farmers in climatic hotspots in Africa.
The CSLS programming will have two streams of research:
1. climate-smart innovations in livestock systems
2. delivery models to commercialize and scale mature climate-smart innovations
The CSLS will be implemented under two main streams, a first cohort of projects dealing with development of climate-smart technologies and innovations and a second one focussing on efficient ways or business models to deliver any scalable mature technologies to the farmers. This call for concept notes is for the climate-smart innovations in livestock systems research stream.
Thematic focus areas
Four thematic areas have been identified as being research priorities for CSLS program:
1. water, pastures and feed management
2. Indigenous knowledge systems, climate data and management
3. integration of renewable energy — circular economies
4. animal health
