The Mazingira Team during the 2018 Retreat. photo credit ILRI/Lutz Merbold

Vision

Our vision is to define and to create environmentally friendly, climate-smart, and food and
nutrition secure livelihoods for smallholder farmers and livestock keepers in the Global South.

Mission

We contribute to sustainable, food and nutrition secure livelihoods in the Global South for
smallholder farmers and livestock keepers by conducting leading-edge “Research for
Development”. Our work focuses on the process- and system-oriented understanding of
agroecosystems in order to fill existing knowledge gaps for both present environmental
circumstances and future climate change scenarios.

We assess the emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants across a range of agricultural
systems by focusing on individual system components (e.g. livestock, soils, manure) as
well as system-level processes (e.g. ecosystem nutrient transfer and exchange). In addition, we
investigate experimentally and with modelling approaches the systems responses to climatic,
biophysical and human drivers across temporal and spatial scales. Our main goal is to make
agroecosystems more productive and resilient to stresses while minimizing environmental
degradation and pollution. We use state-of-the-art technologies (animal respiration chambers,
trace-gas flux towers, laser absorption spectrometers), established and widely used methods
(activity data collection in farming environments), and innovative tools
(e.g. mobile phone applications) in our studies.

The Mazingira Centre is a hub for capacity building and encompasses working jointly with
farmers through bilateral knowledge exchange, training the next generation of scientists via
mentoring and supervision of students, graduate fellows and early-career scientists, and
engaging with national stakeholders in research and policy (e.g. national research centres,
ministries etc.).

Values

The Mazingira Centre’s values are professionalism, commitment, appreciation and support of
our team members and partners. Our work builds on the fair exchange of information and ideas
within and across disciplines at highest quality standards. Social and scientific responsibility
and integrity guide all our work and we embrace diversity and gender equality.