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The Philippines Sustainable Livelihood Program: Providing and Expanding Access to Employment and Livelihood Opportunities

Key Findings

The Philippine Department of Social Welfare and Development has led in the provision of opportunities for income-generating activities and livelihood development through the implementation of the Sustainable Livelihood Program since 2011. This policy note describes the program and reflects on opportunities the program has for improving and complementing other social protection programs.

• The objective of the Sustainable Livelihood Program is to reduce poverty and inequality by generating employment among poor households and by moving highly vulnerable households into sustainable livelihoods and toward economic stability.
• It has two tracks:  The micro-enterprise development track provides participants with access to funds and training to set up their own microenterprise. The employment facilitation track provides employable individuals access to locally available jobs through public-private partnerships.
• The program has grown from serving 46,000 families in 2011 to 340,000 in 2015, and 166,000 families in 2017.
• Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) conditional cash transfers beneficiaries are the target population, with about 80% of participants in the program. Other beneficiaries are poor families identified by the Listahanan national household targeting registry.

The following key recommendations are highlighted in the policy note:

• Set realistic expectations and refine program goals. The program’s objectives have increased extensively from its early stages of enablers and financers of small enterprises to its current objective of transitioning households from poverty through creating self- and wage employment.
• Review the sustainability of the Seed Capital Fund under the micro-enterprise development track. Repayment rates under this track is low in comparison with other microfinance modalities in the country.
• Strengthen referral linkages to other programs. Effective collaborations of the Sustainable Livelihood Program with other agencies can significantly improve the efficiency of the program as well as ease the burden on the program implementers.
• Integrate SLP with other livelihood and active labor market programs in the country. A government wide inventory of all anti-poverty and livelihood interventions of programs is needed to assess which ones can be combined or coordinated to achieve the goals established for a unique Livelihood Program.
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International Journal of Social Economics

ISSN : 0306-8293

Article publication date: 14 December 2022

Issue publication date: 17 March 2023

The concept of sustainable livelihoods – commonly understood as managing of means of living without undermining natural resources – has gained momentum in international development discourse. This review focuses on broadening of conceptualisation of policy intervention process for sustainable livelihoods approach and synthesis of evidence to track development in their knowledge structure.

Design/methodology/approach

Evidence available in the literature systematically reviewed with the established methods and themes of interest are curated, to assess the characteristics, mechanisms and caveats arising in policy and practice.

The authors found seventy-five independent studies that fit into the pre-specified research protocol and objectives. The authors classify these studies into six major themes: Economic wellbeing; Opportunities and capabilities; Climate and natural resources; Policy design; Formal-informal institutional environment; and Labour, entrepreneurship and exports. Various research gaps and directions for future research are also discussed.

Research limitations/implications

The study provides a typology of reviewed literature examining the profile dynamics. Thematic analysis resulted into identifying complementarities and trade-offs and results demonstrate multiple heterogeneity in structures, processes and outcomes.

Originality/value

The definitive areas of interventions are discussed to broaden the utility of the concept in a structured way. This review paper brings a comprehensive view of livelihood intervention system and contribute in enriching the social policy perspective.

Peer review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2022-0402

• Sustainable livelihoods
• Development
• Social-ecological
• Systematic literature review

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Prof. Tapas K. Giri for insights and invaluable comments to an earlier draft.

Conflict of Interest: None

Kumar, S. , Sengupta, K. and Gogoi, B.J. (2023), "Interventions for sustainable livelihoods: a review of evidence and knowledge gaps", International Journal of Social Economics , Vol. 50 No. 4, pp. 556-574. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-06-2022-0402

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The Philippines Sustainable Livelihood Programme: Performance, opportunities and recommendations

Social protection schemes are considered a successful instrument to reduce poverty in most countries. In the Philippines, the importance of a social protection system to build resilience among Filipinos is emphasised in the 2017-2022 Philippine Development Plan (PDP). Since 2011, the Philippines’ Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has focused on providing opportunities for income generating activities and livelihood development through the implementation of the Sustainable Livelihood Programme (SLP). 

The SLP is linked to the country’s conditional cash transfer scheme, known locally as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Programme, or 4Ps. The 4Ps has one of the most comprehensive poverty targeting databases in the world and benefits about 20% of the population, catering to the majority of the nation’s poor. The Pantawid Pamilyang is therefore central to the Philippine government’s poverty reduction and social protection strategy. 

The Sustainable Livelihood Programme

1. Basic overview

i. Objectives

The SLP is a capability-building programme for poor, vulnerable, and marginalised families and individuals focused on generating employment among poor households and moving highly vulnerable households into sustainable livelihoods and economic stability. 

By creating synergies between transfers and productive inclusion interventions, the long-term goal of the SLP is to achieve socio-economic well-being of participants through their engagement in self- and wage employment.

ii. Targets

The target participants are poor households, primarily the beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang, which accounts for about 80% of the participants. Other beneficiaries are poor families identified by the Listahanan national household targeting registry. 

iii. Coverage and budget

The programme is implemented nationally, existing in all provinces where the 4Ps cash transfer programme is operational. It has supported 1.3 million households since it was initiated. It is considered one of the most successful programmes in Asia.

As part of the overall Social Protection budget, allocations for the SLP increased from U$ 1.7 million in 2011, to U$ 182 million in 2017. Correspondingly, the number of families served by the SLP increased from 46,000 families in 2011 to 166,000 in 2017. 

By linking social protection with sustainable employment opportunities, it created employment for over 1 million beneficiaries of the 4Ps cash transfer scheme from 2011 to 2015.

2. SLP tracks 

The programme provides two tracks of support:

i. Employment Facilitation (EF):  Connects participants to employment opportunities and appropriate training through public-private partnerships. Eligibility is 18 years of age or more. Individuals receive allocated funding for skills training. Participants are trained at private technical vocational institutions or through the governments’ Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). 

ii. Micro-enterprise Development (MD) : Gives support to microenterprises to become organisationally and economically sustainable. Participants have access to funds and training to set up their own microenterprise. Eligibility is 16 years of age or more. 

Households receive support for up to two years after receiving inputs, with Project Development Officer (PDOs) providing technical assistance where needed. During this period, the productive projects are assisted to become self-reliant and they can seek support from other programmes and services.

3. SLP modalities

4. Performance and opportunities

The World Bank Policy Note, The Philippines Sustainable Livelihood Program: Providing and expanding access to employment and livelihood opportunities (2018) explores the design and core processes of the SLP and reflects on opportunities for improvement to maximise its impact. The following key findings are highlighted in the publication and relate to the performance of each track and opportunities for improvement:

5. Recommendations

A way forward for the SLP is proposed based on previous evaluations, international experiences, and the review of the current field operations manual. The key recommendations highlighted in the World Bank Policy Note are divided into two groups: Business process recommendations and Programme design recommendations:

i. Business processes:

• Increase commitment of participants by providing more focused counselling and information, setting expectations for participants during the social preparation stage to reduce drop-outs. 
• The programme relies heavily on PDOs, therefore it is important to strengthen their capacity, provide adequate support, and revise PDO performance indicators, which put pressure on their performance and wrongly incentivise them to increase beneficiary enrolment, compromising programme quality. 
• The program needs to expand venues for programme outreach, giving more flexibility to PDOs to deliver their message. 
• The programme needs to enhance current and develop new monitoring tools to assess the cost-effectiveness and impact of each track, keep and scale up modalities that perform well, and redesign modalities that perform poorly. 

ii. Programme design:

• Set realistic expectations and refine programme goals: To overcome the challenge of creating and/or finding employment for a large group of uneducated people, the programme should focus on providing skills and linking beneficiaries to other programmes.  
• Select SLP participants through an objective procedure: Eligibility criteria should rely on an objective tool to classify participants into tracks and modalities that fit their characteristics best, instead of leaving the decision solely to the participant. Accordingly, PDOs must be advised not to encourage participants to go into one track over another. 
• Involve local experts in implementing modalities of the MD track to increase the likelihood of success for microenterprises: Similar programmes implemented in other countries emphasise regular coaching or transfer of knowledge to guide projects. 
• Study further the added value of SLPAs: The process to form, constitute, and formalise a SLPA adds to the costs of beneficiaries and may have a negative impact in opportunities for some participants. Moreover, evaluation findings demonstrate that SLAPs may not be working as expected, since programme beneficiaries tend to prefer to set up their individual enterprises even though they belong to the SLPAs. 
• Review the sustainability of the Seed Capital Fund under the MD track: As mentioned before, repayment rates under the MD track are low in comparison with other microfinance modalities in the country. Given these findings, it is worth looking into the current repayment performance of beneficiaries to assess the financial sustainability of the modality as it is currently designed.
• Strengthen referral linkages to other programmes: The SLP should look into developing effective collaborations with other national and local agencies with capacity to provide further guidance and resources for their entrepreneurial projects and job search. 
• Integrate the SLP with other livelihood and active labour market programmes in the country: There are several livelihood programmes across national agencies, among which the SLP is the larger one. Fragmentation means that each programme has its own systems and different databases, which creates considerable inefficiency both from the perspective of the implementers and beneficiaries. 
• Improve integration of livelihood/graduation programmes with social assistance programmes: Safety net programmes can complement and enhance a livelihood programme. The guarantee of reliable support can also have a psychosocial impact, inspiring confidence and promoting a beneficiary’s ability to plan with a degree of certainty.

Please find the World Bank Policy Note in full here . For the recording of a webinar held on this topic, please see here . For more information about linking social protection to sustainable employment, check out this SPEC publication . 

Are you interested in the topic of linking social protection to employment more widely? Join the socialprotection.org online community: Social Protection for Employment Community (SPEC) .

This blog post is published as part of the Social Protection for Employment Series in partnership with SPEC (Social Protection for Employment - Community). SPEC, established by Australian DFAT and German GIZ, promotes South-South learning in social protection for employment . This series presents contributions focused on social protection and sustainable employment”. 

References:

Acosta, P. A. and Avalos, J. (2018). The Philippines Sustainable Livelihood Program: Providing and expanding access to employment and livelihood opportunities, World Bank Policy Note n.13. Accessible: http://socialprotection.org/discover/publications/philippines-sustainable-livelihood-program-providing-and-expanding-access  

McCord, A. (2018). Liking Social Protection to Sustainable Employment, Current Practices and Future Directions, SPEC. Accessible: http://socialprotection.org/sites/default/files/publications_files/Report-Social%20Protection%20and%20Employment.pdf  

National Economic and Development Authority/NEDA (2017). Philippines Development Plan 2017-2022, National Economic and Development Authority. Accessible: http://socialprotection.org/discover/publications/philippine-development-plan-2017-2022  

Pornares, A. (2017). Presentation on Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP), Social Protection Hub Jakarta. Accessible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kXDP67iE8U

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BRINGING SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOOD FRAMEWORK TO LIFE: A STUDY ON THE POSSIBLE DETERMINANTS OF SUSTAINABILITY OF THE DOLE INTEGRATED LIVELIHOOD PROGRAM (DILP)

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To contribute to the realization of the national goal of poverty reduction and inclusive development, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) implements the DOLE Integrated Livelihood Program (DILP) Kabuhayan Program. DILP specifically seeks to assist vulnerable workers such as the self-employed, landless farmers, unpaid family workers, displaced workers, parents of child laborers and low-wage seasonal workers. Selected beneficiaries are provided with livelihood opportunities, as well as training support, to help them augment their incomes and consequently reduce their vulnerability.

Although regular monitoring is done in terms of output, not much is known as to whether the DILP has achieved its intended outcomes. This study therefore seeks to make an important contribution to DOLE’s understanding of how livelihood projects are shaped, sustained or constrained. A solid grasp of these factors would later assist DOLE in determining which outcomes to measure in order to evaluate the responsiveness and sustainability of livelihood projects. To achieve its objectives, the research employs a mixed method approach comprising of qualitive interviews with program implementers and survey of DILP beneficiaries. The findings show that the program has created positive effects, particularly on the beneficiaries’ self-esteem. However, factors such as rigidities in government processes and fragmented government support are constraining livelihood expansion. Hence, effects on incomes are minimal as evidenced by the beneficiaries’ desire for additional job or hours of work aside from their existing livelihood projects. It is therefore recommended to revisit the process and documentary requirements, that may actually be burdensome to the target beneficiaries. Moreover, livelihood projects, that are complementary with the long-term development plans, must be pursued to ensure consistency in the priorities of the national and local governments. Lastly, given the limited personnel complement of DOLE, the beneficiaries themselves may be tapped to assist in project monitoring efforts and initiatives aimed at expanding market access for DILP-assisted projects.

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Titl e: BRINGING SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOOD FRAMEWORK TO LIFE: A STUDY ON THE POSSIBLE DETERMINANTS OF SUSTAINABILITY OF THE DOLE INTEGRATED LIVELIHOOD PROGRAM (DILP) Researcher : Maria Isabel D. Artajo || Franchesca Rose S. Castillo || Malorie Joy O. Mones

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Livelihood resilience in context of crop booms: insights from Southwest China

• Published: 07 May 2024

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• Jiping Wang 1 , 2 &
• Jun He   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1994-8075 1 , 3  

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In the last two decades, commercial crop production has boomed to meet global food and biofuel demands as well as produce industrial commodities, while also being promoted as an effective approach for poverty alleviation in the Global South. Despite possible new economic opportunities, scholars are concerned that crop booms could exacerbate vulnerability in farmer livelihoods. However, it is little known how local resilience can be built in the context of crop booms. Through mixed methods of combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches, this research conducted a multidimensional assessment of livelihood resilience by focusing on absorptive, adaptive and anticipatory capacities of local people in Southwest China. Unlike existing literature, this research found that farmers who adopted a hybrid livelihood strategy that was partially involved in crop booms under agriculture modernization while simultaneously maintaining some degree of traditional agricultural practices had a higher level of livelihood resilience. In contrast, those who were fully involved and put all of their capital into cash crop planting as well as those who did not participate in cash crop production and completely avoided crop booms both showed a relatively low level of livelihood resilience. The paper argues that crop booms might provide more possibilities for farmers to diversify their agricultural systems and livelihood strategies to strengthen livelihood resilience when they have better access to land and markets.

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Agroecological principles and elements and their implications for transitioning to sustainable food systems. A review

Climate-smart agriculture: adoption, impacts, and implications for sustainable development

Climate change and agriculture in South Asia: adaptation options in smallholder production systems

This influential framework is based on five baseline categories — financial, human, social, physical and natural — for assessment (Thulstrup 2015 ), which has been widely applied for household-level analysis (Quandt 2018 ). Later, multidimensional capacity analysis further enriched the framework. Speranza et al. ( 2014 ) developed a complicated framework consisting of three major attributes, which are buffer capacity, self-organization, and capacity for learning, including the abovementioned five livelihood capitals and further incorporating indicators about people’s networks and knowledge practices. Moreover, Béné et al. ( 2012 ) and other scholars have proposed absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity, and transformative capacity to evaluate resilience capacity (Béné 2013 ; Smith and Frankenberger 2018 ; Fallon et al. 2022 ).

Administrative village is rural management unit established by the state in accordance with the law, while natural village refers to settlement that has formed naturally. Typically, an administrative village comprises multiple natural villages.

1 mu = 0.067 ha.

The first rubber boom was initiated by the government in the 1950s when they established 22 state-owned farms in Xishuangbanna for rubber cultivation. The planted area of rubber increased steadily from 56 mu at the establishment of state-owned farms in 1955 to 616,300 mu by the time of land tenure reform in 1983 (Annals of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, 2001). The second rubber boom was primarily driven by individual peasants following the forest tenure reform in 1983. Private rubber cultivation in Xishuangbanna reached 228,300 mu in 1985 and continued to increase annually. In 2017, the rubber plantation area in Xishuangbanna reached a historical peak of 4.57 million mu (Xishuangbanna Statistical Yearbook, 2018). However, due to low prices and frequent outbreaks of rubber powdery mildew in certain regions, some farmers have opted to replace rubber trees with other cash crops, resulting in a slight decline in rubber acreage. As of 2021, the rubber area has stabilized at approximately 4.42 million mu.

Banana booms began in 2004 when numerous outside investors flocked to Xishuangbanna to lease land for banana cultivation. The plant area was only 5,440 mu in 2003 but rapidly increased to 12,460 mu in 2004. The peak of banana planting was reached in 2015, with a planting area of 401,000 mu (Xishuangbanna Statistical Yearbook, 2016). However, the banana industry experienced a downturn in 2016 due to banana disease outbreaks and a drop in prices. By 2020, the banana area in the entire prefecture had decreased to less than 215,000 mu, which was less than half of the peak period and continued to decline yearly (2017 Banana Industry Research Report of the Prefecture, Xishuangbanna Statistical Yearbook, 2021).

According to statistical data, Manjing Village has a total paddy fields of 4703 mu. Among them, pomelo cultivation covers 3590 mu, accounting for 76.3% of the total paddy field area, while rice cultivation occupies 703 mu. Additionally, vegetables are typically planted in the winter and can be rotated with rice, with a vegetable planting area of 1074 mu.

According to statistical data, Manjing Village has a total forest area of 395,60.1 mu, with 9115.1 mu of natural forest and 30,445 mu of economic forest. The rubber plantation covers an area of 21,154 mu, accounting for 69.5% of the total economic forest area.

The primary land tenants are agricultural business owners, with small-scale fruit traders being the next prominent group.

According to the survey data, two primary factors contribute to the high land rental rate. 33% of farmers attribute it to a labor shortage, as they lack sufficient energy to manage both mountain field and paddy farm work simultaneously. Additionally, 32% of farmers are influenced by their surroundings, as they observe others renting out their land and follow suit.

We also observed local resilience during the Covid-19 control restrictions. The diversification of the local cropping system allowed them to be less impacted by price drops resulting from restrictions on transporting fruits to other places for sale. The decrease in fruit prices has given local people the opportunity to invest more time in rubber management, which has provided them with a good economic return, as the price of rubber continues to increase.

Abbreviations

Department for International Development, UK

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Montane Mainland Southeast Asia

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Acknowledgements

This research financially benefited from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 72063037), Yunnan Provincial Senior Talent Support Program and Research Project of Humanities and Social Science of the Ministry of Education of China (Project No. 22YJC850011). English editing from Austin G. Smith and mapping from Ning Chen are also acknowledged. We are sincerely grateful to the critical and constructive comments from the editors and anonymous reviewers, as their insights have greatly enhanced the quality of our paper.

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Advancing social justice, promoting decent work ILO is a specialized agency of the United Nations

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13 May 2024

İzmir (ILO News) - The closing of the "I'm Trained for My Job" Program, funded by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) of the US Government and implemented jointly by the International Labour Organization (ILO) Office for Türkiye and the Youth Deal Cooperative, was held on 9 May in İzmir.

Business and training experts, project coordinators, beneficiary employers and employees from various sectors, as well as representatives of municipalities, the private sector, international organizations and NGOs, came together for the event to discuss the onsite experiences and successes gained from the “I’m Trained for My Job” Program, as well as the lessons learned and the potential for future collaborations. Among the topics on the agenda were the positive contribution of the programme to institutionalization, the importance of social dialogue, the currently applicable labour and decent work policies, the status of young people in the labour market, the impact of on-the-job training on employee retention, the positive effects of premium supports on firms and their employees, the employment of disadvantaged groups and Türkiye’s status in green jobs.

Implemented in İstanbul, İzmir and Adana, as the metropolitan areas hosting the three largest migrant populations, the Program “I'm Trained for My Job” has promoted social cohesion and contributed greatly to the economic integration of Syrians under Temporary Protection and Turkish citizens by ensuring their access to on-the-job training programmes from the first day of their employment. Carried out jointly by the ILO Office for Türkiye and the Youth Deal Cooperative with funding from the US Government, the initiative has promoted cooperation and integration between local communities and refugees, and has achieved significant results. 

The programme has seen the provision of support of various kinds to participants in Adana, İstanbul and İzmir, including employer outreach, activities promoting registered employment, financial support incentives for employers and employees, and workplace monitoring. Between November 2023 and May 2024, 485 people were placed in jobs and were offered sector-specific on-the-job training and orientation programmes.

The comprehensive training, employment support and financial incentives provided by the “I’m Trained for My Job” programme have contributed not only to individual employment, but also to making the Turkish labour market more inclusive and flexible and can be considered an important step towards social integration and economic development.

About the Youth Deal Cooperative

The Youth Deal Cooperative is a non-profit cooperative operating in the fields of scientific research, development and education. The İzmir-based cooperative has been active since February 2015.

It is a member of the New Generation Cooperatives Society at a national level, and a member of the Youth Committee of the International Cooperative Alliance at a global level.

The cooperative aims to support disadvantaged groups in gaining access to employment, livelihoods and socio-economic rights, and to disseminate its egalitarian, democratic and sustainable values through capacity building and research activities to this end.

Founding a Cutting-Edge Aquatic Animal Health Research Program at WorldFish  

Aquatic animal health is a major constraint on sustainable aquatic food farming systems, with global annual disease-related losses estimated at more than USD 6 billion .  In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where aquatic animal diseases often spread quickly between small-scale aquaculture farms, vulnerable communities and their incomes can be especially hard hit.

A concerted focus on research and capacity sharing on controlling and preventing these diseases will, therefore, be critical to unleashing the sustainable development potential of aquatic food systems in LMICs. This is particularly true for diseases faced by affordable, low-commercial value species – such as carp, tilapia and catfish – that form a mainstay for many aquaculturists in Africa and Asia. And with aquaculture production projected to reach over 200 million tons by 2030 , the importance of aquatic animal health research programs will only intensify.

At WorldFish, a CGIAR center, the importance of this critical area in advancing its mission of sustainably transforming aquatic food systems was recognized a decade back. Below is a look back at its journey as it bid farewell to Dr. Mohan Chadag, the lead for Aquatic Animal Health research area and welcomed its new lead, Dr. David Verner-Jeffreys .

From Barely There to an Award-Winning Program

Despite the importance and urgency of aquatic animal health, until 2014 WorldFish lacked a comprehensive program dedicated to it. This changed with the arrival of Dr. Chadag as one of WorldFish’s principal scientists. Carving out space in CGIAR’s then Livestock and Fish research program, coordinated by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Dr. Chadag created the beginnings of WorldFish’s aquatic animal health program .

“The main purpose of the program was to help farmers in Bangladesh and Egypt, but also to generate scientific evidence that can be used by policymakers,” explained Dr. Chadag. “Ultimately, our goal was to support and enable national governments and partners to implement sound national aquatic animal health strategies and biosecurity governance mechanisms.”

After its establishment as part of the CGIAR Livestock and Fish program, WorldFish’s aquatic animal health work found a home in the Fish Agri-Food Systems CGIAR research program from 2017 to 2021, and under an ILRI-coordinated One Health initiative from 2022 to 2024. Over the past decade, the program has been at the cutting edge of aquatic animal health research and practice, producing reports, forging international partnerships and publishing 63 scientific papers.

These outputs explored a wide range of topics, including epidemiology, diagnostics and surveillance for improving animal health, sampling for disease diagnosis, the role of microbiomes in aquatic animal health, and the interactions between genetics and disease. The program’s groundbreaking work on the rapid genomic detection of aquaculture pathogens was awarded first prize in the 2019 CGIAR Inspire Challenge .

In-line with WorldFish’s geographic focus on Asia and Africa, the program focused on improving the health and diagnostics of carp, tilapia and catfish to support underserved fish farmers in these regions. The Aquatic Animal Health team developed digital tools for farm surveys as well as fish epidemiology and disease diagnostic tools – such as the Lab-in-a-backpack , which enables rapid genomic detection of pathogens to control disease outbreaks in fish farms.

One Health and Aquaculture

In recent years, WorldFish’s aquatic animal health program has become increasingly involved in One Health – an approach that encompasses human, animal and environmental health. With a focus on reducing and managing human health risks from aquatic foods, One Health-related research at WorldFish centers on zoonotic pathogens, foodborne pathogens and food contaminants.

Mitigation of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is another important component of WorldFish’s One Health work – a challenge listed by the World Health Organization as one of the top 10 global health threats for humanity.

“The contribution of aquaculture to AMR is less studied but an extremely important area for aquatic animal health research,” highlighted Dr. Chadag.

The aquatic animal health team at WorldFish are leading the way in this emerging field, producing a series of scientific papers that use systems thinking to study AMR in aquaculture food systems. For example, a seminal paper studied hotspots for the emergence of AMR in aquaculture systems in Vietnam, while another identified feasible interventions to reduce antibiotic use in farmed tilapia in Egypt, the world’s third largest tilapia producer.

Building In-Country Capacities

Aside from advancing global research, WorldFish scientists are building in-country capacities to implement national aquatic animal health strategies and farm-level biosecurity governance mechanisms, which will help prevent and control the spread of infectious diseases in animals.

The team has developed 15 introductory online courses for improving aquatic animal health. Ranging from fish sampling techniques to farm biosecurity, these resources are freely accessible to field enumerators, extension workers, fisheries officers, service providers, farmers and students in all partner countries.

In 2022-2023 alone, the team reached over 960 participants from national research institutions and governments in countries across Africa and Bangladesh with online and in-person trainings on aquatic animal health and One Health approaches.

Moving Forward with Continued Partnerships and Excellence

After 10 years at WorldFish – which caps an impressive 40-year career in aquaculture – Dr. Chadag has now retired, becoming WorldFish’s very first emeritus scientist. As he begins his new role, Dr. Chadag looked back at his time at WorldFish with pride. “After 10 years of work – including excellent partnerships with highly accredited research institutions around the world, a lot of donor-assisted projects and a prominent place in CGIAR research programs – we were able to establish a good program of aquatic animal health and One Health activities,” he concluded at a farewell presentation at WorldFish headquarters on 21 March 2024.

Leadership of WorldFish’s aquatic animal health research is now passed to Dr. David Verner-Jeffreys , who joined WorldFish in March 2024. Serving at the Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) as its head of the UK Antimicrobial Resistance Reference Centre , Dr. Verner-Jeffreys brings expertise developing One Health-based solutions to developing and implementing AMR surveillance in countries in Asia and Africa.

“I am delighted to be given the opportunity to build on the strong legacy bequeathed by Dr. Chadag,” says Dr. Verner-Jeffreys. “I look forward to working with the excellent team of scientists assembled by him to continue to develop One Health-based innovative solutions to the challenges posed by disease to the sustainable development of aquaculture. This will require working in close and truly interdisciplinary partnership with scientists both at WorldFish and CGIAR center, International Livestock Research Institute. As well as our stakeholders in industry, academia, civil society organizations and governments in the countries WorldFish operates in.”