‘“Business as usual” is no longer an option for a food-secure future. Pastoralism can be an innovative system: a time-tested, undervalued alternative to high-input and resource-intensive farming, and a valuable lesson for the much needed evolution towards ‘farming with nature’, with...
This How-to-do Note focuses on how conflicts over land and natural resources in pastoral areas can be prevented or, if already present,transformed into positive outcomes.It identifies why land tenure is a complex issue within pastoralism, discusses the combination of factors that are contributing...
This How-to-doNote (HTDN) onGender and Pastoralism complements theIFAD Toolkitalong with the 2018HTDN on Pastoralism, which highlights the importance of gender in pastoral production systems. ThisHTDN builds on these priorintroductions by highlighting important issues and the tools to use to...
In Ethiopia, formal laws assert that women have equal rights regarding land use and access. However, the pastoral areas are often highly influenced by religious and customary systems under which women tend to have weaker land rights. The report“Women’s land rights: customary rules and formal laws...
On 15 March 2022, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declared 2026 the International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists (IYRP). This final approval is the culmination of an IYRP movement that grew over several years to become a global coalition of over 300 pastoralist and supporting...
The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has published “Pastoralism: making variability work”(2021, Animal Production & Health Paper 185, 58pp) written by Saverio Krätli and Ilse Koehler-Rollefsen with comments and guidance from FAO staff and pastoralist specialists...
The paper “Rush for the “wastelands”: revaluing pastoral land in the light of renewable energy”(2022) (Green energy + pastoralism paper,Powerpoint slides) by Ann Waters-Bayer and Hussein Tadicha Wario, was based on a study commissioned by the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung in Germany. It looked into how...
The change in relationship between pastoralists and central government brought about by Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is explored in the article “Development, governmentality and the sedentary state: the productive safety net programme in Ethiopia’s Somali pastoral periphery”...
Increasingly frequent and severe droughts pose a big challenge for pastoralists in the Horn of Africa. Livestock drought insurance (LDI) is being tested as a means to manage these risks. In the article “Ecological vulnerability through insurance? Potential unintended consequences of livestock...
This publication brings together the inputs made by over 120 participants in a web-based forum organised in 2006 and managed by the International Land Coalition on pastoral land rights. The paper has been further enriched with material from a number of projects from around the world and the...