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Building the resilience of pastoralists - GCP/GLO/536/GER

Building the resilience of pastoralists - GCP/GLO/536/GER

Year of publication 2018

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 2

Author FAO

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Document

Edition 1

Synopsis (short abstract) The number of pastoralists around the world is estimated to be between 200 and 500 million. Pastoralism provides a major boost to agriculture by providing manure, livestock, labour and knowledge. International organizations have increasingly shown interest in and support to pastoralists, yet, at national level, pastoralist policies remain rare. With their unique cultural particularities –nomadic life, transnational status and mobility –pastoralists have often been marginalized and overshadowed by more dominant groups, such as small crop farmers. The enhanced knowledge base on their breeds, feeds, land management and early warning was expected to contribute to enhancing their livelihood options and strategies.

Language English

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    Renforcer la résilience des éleveurs pastoraux - GCP/GLO/536/GER 2018
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    Le nombre d’éleveurs pastoraux dans le monde est estimé entre 200 et 500 millions. Le pastoralisme stimule considérablement l’agriculture en fournissant du fumier, du bétail, du travail et des connaissances. Les organisations internationales s’intéressent de plus en plus aux pasteurs qu’ils ont aidés, mais au niveau national, les politiques pastorales sont rares. Avec leurs particularités culturelles uniques —la vie nomade, le statut transnational et la mobilité —, les pasteurs ont souvent été marginalisés et éclipsés par des groupes plus dominants, tels que les petits agriculteurs. L’amélioration des connaissances sur les races qu’ils élèvent, les aliments utilisés, la gestion des terres et le système d’alerte rapide devraient contribuer à améliorer leurs options et stratégies de subsistance.
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    Between 200 and 500 million pastoralists manage rangelands that cover over a third of the earth’s land. They produce food where no crops grow, and rely on their mobility to adapt to climatic variability and mitigate risk. Yet, pastoralists are often misunderstood, marginalized and neglected from decisions that affect them. The lack of data on pastoralism poses challenges at various levels. Animal health and disease surveillance programmes are difficult to plan if pastoral migratory routes are not considered, or if the number of livestock is unknown. Social services adapted to pastoral mobility cannot be designed if governments do not exactly know how many pastoralists there are. Against this background, the project aimed to improve pastoralist communities’ capacities to collect, process and share information from their areas, in order to boost their ability to influence policy processes. It focused on three countries where pastoralism plays an important role: Argentina, Chad and Mongolia.
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    Book (stand-alone)
    Pastoralism in Africa’s drylands
    Reducing risks, addressing vulnerability and enhancing resilience
    2018
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    Pastoral livestock production is crucial to the livelihoods and the economy of Africa’s semiarid regions. It developed 7,000 years ago in response to long-tern climate change. It spread throughout Northern Africa as an adaptation to the rapidly changing and increasingly unpredictable arid climate. It is practiced in an area representing 43% of Africa’s land mass in the different regions of Africa, and in some regions it represents the dominant livelihoods system. It covers 36 countries, stretching from the Sahelian West to the rangelands of Eastern Africa and the Horn and the nomadic populations of Southern Africa, with an estimate of 268 million pastoralists. The mobility of pastoralists exploiting the animal feed resources along different ecological zones represents a flexible response to a dry and increasingly variable environment. It allows pastoral herds to use the drier areas during the wet season and more humid areas during the dry season. It ensures pastoral livestock to access sufficient high-quality grazing and create economic value. The objectives of this report are to investigate the current situation of pastoralism and the vulnerability context in which pastoralism currently functions and to outline the policy, resilience programming, and research areas of intervention to enhance the resilience of pastoral livelihoods systems. Scholarly views of pastoralism’s ecological impact have grown more positive since the early 1990s, when a new understanding of dryland dynamics led to the so-called new rangeland paradigm. The new rangeland paradigm represents a shift in the wider discourse on pastoralism from the earlier debates based on the “tragedy of the commons.” The new rangeland paradigm has provided a more comprehensive understanding of the drylands and shown that mobility is an appropriate strategy to exploit the natural resource base in these areas. In recent decades, the adaptability and mobility of pastoralism in relation to resource variability have been undermined by factors that are embedded in the institutional environment and policy that shape the vulnerability context of pastoralism. The report analyzes five factors that undermine the pastoral livelihoods resilience and the implications of these factors for the viability of pastoralism. On the basis of the analysis of vulnerability contexts that shape pastoralism, the report identifies interventions for increasing pastoral resilience.
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