Accounting for pastoralists, also in Kenya & Uganda

Pastoralists are important for food production, ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation and maintaining landscapes. They practise a sustainable, low-carbon, animal-welfare-friendly way of livestock production. To put the livestock sector on a sustainable trajectory, it is necessary to support such systems in favour over other livestock-production systems that are less beneficial.

As the UNEP gap analysis clearly revealed, nobody knows how many pastoralists there are. Most figures provided are pure conjecture. Therefore, the CELEP member organisation League for Pastoral Peoples (LPP) commissioned five country studies to look at the available data sets for pastoralism. As was found in most cases in the gap analysis, in none of these five cases did the government actually uses “pastoralism” as a category for data collection.

The LPP briefs on “Accounting for pastoralists” cover Argentina, Germany, India, Kenya and Uganda. The summary brief analyses the results of all five studies and makes recommendation to the FAO to take the lead in initiating data collection on pastoral systems at country level.

Posted on 18 October 2020 in Pastoral Research & Innovation, Value of Pastoralism