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Rinderpest is a severe viral disease of cattle and wildlife. It was introduced to Africa in the 19th century through colonial imported Asian cattle. It had catastrophic consequences killing as much as 90% of cattle in the decade proceeding its introduction. This paper traces the evolution of ideas and reviews some of the key lessons learnt from the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme which was established to coordinate and promote rinderpest eradication worldwide. The strategy focuses on vaccination and epidemiological surveillance. It has progressed from top-down institutional design to grass-roots empowerment where dialogue has mobilised communities and professionals to meet local and international goals.|It concludes that community-based animal health approaches have made a considerable contribution to the global eradication of rinderpest, combining appropriate technology, community participation, and international support to give programmes a broad-based appeal. The process has resulted in a significant exchange of ideas and an increased understanding of the need for alternative methods to meet a common goal.

This article reports on the Operations Lifeline Sudan (OLS) Southern Sector Livestock Programme which aims to improve food security for war-affected communities in southern Sudan through improving animal health. A change in project strategy recognised as being was required, from mass vaccination to surveillance to see whether diseases re-appeared. This presented a challenge to programme staff to explain the new strategies to the communities and gain their support. The programmes three stages - explaining the new strategy to programme managers and technical staff, developing messages and methods with communities, and scaling up - are described.|The lessons learnt were seen as being:|Despite difficulties in adjustment, artists, songwriters, poets and others were able to grasp the idea and transform it into locally appropriate messages;|Animal health workers have reached a wide audience;|The approach has increasingly moved the responsibility for communication to the animal health workers and away from field veterinarians.

This paper looks at a Community Originated Livestock Training programme in Bolivia which began in the late 1980s. The programme involved community training in livestock production and healthcare in a sustainable farm system. The priorities were to provide training, and build local people's capacity to develop and administer their own programmes. Three basic premises guided these programmes:|Every farmer should have as much access to information about livestock in their primary language as they want;|If farm families have an understanding of some farm economics, and have good income and nutrition from their livestock, they will want to invest in the health and care of their livestock so that they keep producing a good income;|CAHWs are most valuable in the long term as an integral part of a local organisation rather than only as an individual entrepreneur.|Approaches that are common to these premises are presented in the paper.

This article considers the Sustainable Development Observatories of Manizales, Colombia, as an example of shared management and citizen participation in local sustainable development. The success has been due to the active participation of the city municipality, university, trade unions, institutions, NGOs and community organisations. The purpose of the observatories is to support local urban governance by updating economic, social, and environmental indicators which are formulated by citizens and technical staff. This provides communities with easily accessible information about the municipality. The paper discusses in detail the objectives of the project, various aspects relating to its function, and challenges to its operation.

This article considers the development of a series of tools developed in the Philippines and Namibia to improve the quality of agricultural extension advice at the level of individual farmers, farmer groups, and cooperatives. The tools allow these actors to build a local market picture which can be used for interaction between service providers, and act as a starting point for a more in-depth consideration of marketing and business plans and strategies.|The rationale for why it is necessary to understand the immediate marketing environment is discussed, and tools are presented which assist this process.

This article presents a number of contributions from an e-forum debate on issues of engagement with the policy process in Deliberative and Inclusionary Processes which grew out of a citizen jury and scenario workshop in southern India. It is based around the questions:|How can citizen juries and related approaches help create spaces for constructive exchanges between key stakeholders?|How can they be used to foster effective links between research and advocacy?|How can donors engage effectively with democratically elected governments and civil society organisations through the use of participatory approaches, such as citizen juries?

This article reports on Participatory 3-D Modelling (P3DM), a community-based mapping method developed in Thailand, which integrates people's knowledge and spatial information to produce stand-alone scale relief models. These have proved to be user friendly and relatively accurate. The case of a P3DM exercise in Pu Mat national park, Vietnam, is presented which included training participants in the use of the technique, acquiring data on the application of the method in the local socio-economic and environmental context, while facilitating joint learning and dialogue between ethnic minorities living within or close to the park.