The Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock (GASL) is a partnership of stakeholders committed to sustainable development of the livestock sector. It unites the public and private sectors, producers, research and academic institutions, NGOs, social movements, community-based organisations and donors, including foundations. It seeks to build consensus on the path towards sustainability and to catalyse coherent and collective change through dialogue, consultation and joint analysis.
It addresses primarily the following issues:
- Global food security & health: GASL promotes an inclusive approach to managing disease threats at the animal-human-environment interface in the development and implementation of animal-disease and food-safety programmes.
- Equity & growth: GASL supports viable growth in value chains that have access to all necessary resources and services, and in which the poor can find secure livelihoods and participate in growing markets or take up other opportunities outside the sector.
- Resources & climate: Livestock production based mainly on materials not competing with direct use as human food, and incentives and rewards for environmental stewardship will allow the sector to transition to ways of production that use resources efficiently and contribute to climate-change mitigation.
GASL includes attention to pastoralism and other livestock-grazing systems, particularly silvopastoral systems.
See below the statement from Shirley Tarawali, Assistant Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and GASL Chair, speaking on behalf of both entities in support of the IYRP.
On 16 July 2024, GASL and the IYRP Working Group on Pastoralism & Gender (through Anthra, India) co-organised a side event at the Second Session of the COAG Sub-Committee on Livestock. The hybrid event entitled “Women & sustainable livestock transformation: advancing the agenda for sustainable development” focussed on gender issues in livestock production and drew attention to the IYRP.