1. Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards
Where There Is No Evidence? Developing
international standards and guidelines with limited
“hard evidence”
Rob Allport, Philippe Ankers, Andy Catley, David Hadrill, Guido Govoni,
Solomon Hailemarium, Ong-orn Prasarnphanich, Cathy Watson
28th ALNAP Annual Meeting on Evidence and Knowledge in
Humanitarian Action, Washington DC, March 2013

2. Developing LEGS
• High demand
• Limited evaluation and impact assessment cf. humanitarian
assistance in general
• No peer-reviewed papers
• Description of activity – very common
– Tendency for agencies to view activity as impact
– Flaws in setting objectives/describing activity

3. Process
Multi-agency Steering Group
Field experience
Understanding contexts
Overall decisions on structure and content
Sphere Practitioner Plausibility “Hard evidence”
experience
Cross-cutting Email contributions Biological logic of Impact assessments
themes Review of drafts strategies and Benefit-cost analysis
Core standards activities Systematic
participatory impact
assessment
Triangulate

4. Handling weak evidence
• Acknowledge deficits in evidence, advise caution where
needed
• Encourage impact assessment
o M&E as a LEGS Common Standard
o LEGS as a reference point for evaluation
o Agency-level issues
• Continuous feedback; frequent revision
• Timeframes for change – accepting new evidence

5. http://livestock-emergency.net