Background

Between 1994 and 1997, a consortium of major donors commissioned a large number of studies on interactions between livestock and the environment in a number of production systems and "impact domains", summarised in a series of public documents (Steinfeld et al. 1997, de Haan et al. 1997). The context of these studies was the growing association, in Northern public opinion and among some Southern policy-makers, between livestock production and environmental degradation of various kinds: overgrazing in semi-arid rangelands, supposedly livestock-driven deforestation in the humid tropics, and environmental pollution from industrial livestock production and processing. At the same time the donors were increasingly subscribing to a belief in what has subsequently been called the "livestock revolution" (see Delgado et al. 1999). According to this paradigm, demand for livestock products in developing countries, and thus in the world as a whole, is set to increase dramatically, "fuelled by a growing population, rising income and growing urbanisation" (FAO 1998). Unless carefully managed, this rising demand would increase the negative environmental impacts already apparent.

The idea of the Livestock-Environment Toolbox was conceived to convert the analysis of livestock-environment interactions into "concepts, terms and tools, which can be applied in a systematic fashion to different agro-ecosystems and agricultural production systems to arrive at environmentally friendlier livestock policies and investments". The Toolbox was to be "a practical aid to decision making (for) policy makers and others" (FAO 1998). It was to contain modules on the major livestock production systems, environmental assessment, technology options, policy/institutional options^[3] and Training, Extension and Public Awareness. The policy module was seen by the donors as essential given that "the negative role attributed to livestock is frequently a result of other pressures and distorted policies" (de Haan et al. 1997). Changes in livestock-producer behaviour can be best accomplished through government action with a mixture of motivational, financial, property-rights and regulatory policies, which change the structure of incentives (de Haan et al. 1997, Young 1999).

On behalf of the donor consortium, FAO, using EU funds, commissioned a consortium of European research organisations^[4] to construct the Toolbox. At this stage it was not completely clear that the Toolbox was to be electronic in form, still less that it would use any particular IT applications. The consortium adopted the approach of constructing the Toolbox as a set of linked pages in html format, which could be accessed by freely available browsers such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer. Users could navigate between pages using hypertext links or buttons in the text, as well as view or download documents with more detailed treatments of specific topics. In constructing the Toolbox, over a period of about 18 months, the consortium was helped by two large workshops attended by donors, counterparts from Southern research agencies, and (in the second workshop) by senior policy-makers from developing countries. Consortium members, in collaboration with Southern researchers, also carried out case studies (see Morton et al. 1999a, Nell 1999, Anon. 1999, BAIF Development Research Foundation 1999), which tested (using partially-completed versions) the utility, acceptability and relevance of the Toolbox in terms of conception, design and content.