Understanding the Attitudes of Communities to the Social, Economic, and Cultural Importance of Working Donkeys in Rural, Peri-urban, and Urban Areas of Ethiopia.

Martha Geiger,Henry Buller,Mulugeta Getachew,Gebre Tefera Engida,Jo Hockenhull,Faith Adelaide Burden,Helen Rebecca Whay

doi:10.3389/fvets.2020.00060

Martha Geiger, Henry Buller + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2020.00060

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Abstract

Working donkeys (Equus africanus asinus) are vital to the development and support of people's livelihoods in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas of Ethiopia. However, despite their critical role in providing transport, food security, and income generation to some of the poorest and most marginalized households, donkey contributions to human livelihoods have been largely unexplored. Donkey users, veterinary surgeons, business owners, and civil servants were interviewed to investigate the role humans play in shaping donkey lives while furthering our understanding of the social and economic impacts of working donkeys to human lives. Findings are discussed through seven guiding themes; donkeys as generators of income, the relationship between donkeys and social status, donkeys and affect, empowerment through donkeys, the role of donkeys in reducing vulnerability and encouraging resilience, donkey husbandry, and gender dynamics all of which gave a broader and richer insight into the value of donkeys. Donkeys are an important support in rural, peri-urban, and urban settings through the creation of economic security, independence, and participation in local saving schemes. In addition, donkeys provide social status, empowerment to marginalized groups such as women and the very poor and provide a sense of companionship. Whether the interviewee was a donkey user or a key informant appeared to influence their views on donkeys and their welfare, as did their location. The variations in views and practices between urban and rural settings suggests that assessing the socioeconomic value of donkeys in different locations within the same area or country is critical, rather than assuming that similar views are held between compatriots. Despite their centrality to many people's lives in Ethiopia, working donkeys often hold lowly status, are misunderstood, and given little husbandry and healthcare.

Highlights

Information on how working animals offer social, cultural, and economic value to their owners is critical for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and policy makers working with both human and animal stakeholders given that how animals are valued by societies can affect the animals’ welfare status [1]
To address this situation and generate data on the socioeconomic value that working donkeys have for communities in different geographic locations, The Donkey Sanctuary worked in collaboration with researchers from the University of Bristol to develop and validate a tool that could be used with communities in a range of contexts to obtain standardized data on the socioeconomic value that working donkeys hold for these groups
The seven guiding themes of this paper have been donkeys as generators of income, the relationship between donkeys and social status, donkeys and affect, empowerment through donkeys, the role of donkeys in reducing vulnerability and encouraging resilience, donkey husbandry and gender dynamics, and differences between rural and urban settings all of which give a broader and richer insight into the value of donkeys. These themes can be applied to discussions of welfare for the donkey owners and the donkeys themselves. The interviews with both Key informants and Donkey owners/users yielded rich data on each of these themes, strongly indicating that together they form an effective framework upon which our tool to evaluate the socioeconomic value of donkeys can be created

Summary

Introduction

Information on how working animals offer social, cultural, and economic (socioeconomic) value to their owners is critical for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and policy makers working with both human and animal stakeholders given that how animals are valued by societies can affect the animals’ welfare status [1]. In order to develop a framework around which the tool could be based, the first step was to identify appropriate topic areas for the tool to encompass and thereby consider the concept of a donkeys’ value beyond commonly applied, over simplistic constructs To this end a qualitative approach founded on social science methodologies was adopted. Social science provides tools for examining sites where human-animal interactions occur and for understanding the human processes of valuing, caring for and treatment of animals [6, 7] To date, both natural science and social science methodologies used to understand the value and impact of working donkeys have generally consisted of gathering owners’ own accounts of the donkeys’ health status, self-measured livelihood reports, and researchers’ assessments of the impact donkeys have on owners’ income generation and work load [2, 8,9,10,11]. While these methods are effective in generating information about the economic utility of donkeys (their contributions to peoples’ households in terms of transport and household income), little is understood about the personal, social, and broader economic value of donkeys to rural, peri-urban and urban households

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