Policies that work for pastoral environments

The World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism (WISP) carried out a 6-country review of positive policy impacts on pastoral environments: Policies that work for pastoral environments (2008, 30pp).

Land degradation in drylands is partly due to constraints on pastoralism through restrictions of mobility, privatisation of land, and introducing less sustainable forms of livestock keeping. Pastoralism is the most viable form of production and land-use in the drylands but pastoralists face legal, economic, social and political disincentives and barriers to mobility of livestock and to communal management of rangelands. If such policy constraints are reversed, could pastoralism become a tool for reversing land degradation?

To answer this question, WISP worked with six partner organisations in Bolivia, Mongolia, Niger, Sudan, Switzerland and Tanzania, which had reported positive environmental outcomes as a result of policy changes in favour of mobile pastoralism. Although all countries report significant remaining challenges to securing pastoral livelihoods and promoting sustainable land management, they do reveal that gains have been made as a result of policy changes that have either deliberately or inadvertently enabled natural resource management by pastoralists.

The study built primarily on contributions from SAVIA (Bolivia), IPECON (Initiative for People-Centred Conservation) Mongolia), AREN (Association pour la Redynamisation de l’Elevage au Niger), PAS (Pastoralist Society Sudan), EFNCP (European Forum for Nature Conservation and Pastoralism), Switzerland, and PINGOS (Pastoralist Indigenous NGO Forum), Tanzania) and was peer-reviewed by members of WAMIP (World Alliance for Mobile Indigenous Peoples).

Posted on 16 October 2022 in Pastoralism & Natural Resources, Pastoralism, Mobility & Land Tenure