A Note on Comparing International Experiences of Drought Management in the Pastoral and Agro-pastoral Livestock Sectors

Approaches to drought management in the livestock sector depend very heavily on the level of resources that national governments or donors or both are able and willing to commit. This level of resources is determined by a country’s per capita income, its size, and the priority it enjoys among donors, but also by historical, political and cultural factors. Thus Morocco has committed massive resources to drought management, including very large amounts to the distribution of free and subsidised feed. These amounts have shown a pronounced tendency to grow until last year, when a radical policy shift on drought management in the livestock sector was undertaken. Morocco is a middle income country, and although drought management is funded from the government’s own resources, the current levels of aid flows to other parts of the economy must make such expenditure easier. However the high levels of expenditure have also been favoured by an explicit concern with combating drought in order to prevent unplanned and disruptive ruralurban migration, by a political culture emphasising the government’s, and the monarchy’s, responsibility for its subjects, and by the tendency of droughtrelated expenditure to become delinked from objective drought conditions under pressure from local political and bureaucratic interests.