CELEP strategy-planning workshop 7–9 Dec 2022

The Coalition of European Lobbies for Eastern African Pastoralism (CELEP) was formed in 2009 by Cordaid Netherlands, which was its first host. In more recent years, VSFB (Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Belgium) had served as host. CELEP members in Europe seek to lobby their national governments, European Union (EU) bodies and other policy-formulating agencies in Europe to explicitly recognise and support pastoralism and pastoralists in Eastern Africa (EA).

In 2022, the CELEP Core Group decided that a more focused approach to advocacy work was needed to be able to achieve more impact and clearly show the added value of CELEP. On 7–9 December 2022, 19 participants from Europe and Eastern Africa met in the VSFB offices in Brussels to agree on the Coalition’s main objectives in lobbying the EU with an overall aim of influencing its policies and programmes to be more amenable for mobile pastoralism in EA – and also elsewhere in the world.

The main aims of the workshop were to:

• enhance CELEP members’ understanding of EU decision-making processes and of the role CELEP can play in influencing relevant EU policies;
• assist CELEP in identifying key threats and opportunities for EA pastoralism; and
• define corresponding priority advocacy objectives at EU level.

Marc-Olivier Hermann from EUChanger informed the workshop participants about how EU bodies operate and provided guidance in identifying CELEP’s advocacy objectives. The workshop was a first step towards exploring concrete openings for this advocacy within the European Commission, Parliament and Council.

The report on the workshop, including the greed action plan, can be found here.

The CELEP strategy-planning workshop was held in the same week as other pastoralism-related events in Brussels, co-coordinated by CELEP. These were:

• 7 Dec 2022: Mini-conference on “Pastoralists, embracing uncertainty in a turbulent world” at European Commission’s International Partnerships (INTA) InfoPoint, organised by the PASTRES (Pastoralism, Uncertainty & Resilience: Global Lessons from the Margins) research project together with CELEP members VSFB ((Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Belgium) and Agrecol Association (Germany). See news item here: https://www.celep.info/celep-co-organises-brussels-infopoint-on-pastoralists/
• 8 Dec 2022: Photo exhibition and “Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival” in Cinema Galeries, organised by the same partners. See news item here: https://www.celep.info/celep-film-festival-pastres-photo-exhibit-in-brussels/

These events were in support of the International Year of Rangelands & Pastoralists (IYRP) 2026.

Posted on 16 December 2022 in CELEP Documents, News