Earlier on this is worded as ‘Strengthening forest and natural resources conservation and development activities in pastoral areas’ (p.33).

This sectoral strategy is justified on the basis of the following premises:

1. ‘in pastoral areas, population increase, natural resources degradation, spread of invasive plant species, and in general, rangelands, water, and forest resource conservation activity has not been conducted effectively’;
2. ‘these areas have become vulnerable to climate change’;
3. it is ‘important to protect the areas from environmental pollution and degradation; and reduce damage to forest and natural resources to ensure sustainability’.

The strategy is described as aiming to act on these premises in the following directions:

1. conducting a ‘wide range of activities in soil, water, natural resources and forest conservation’ to ‘sustainably protect pastoralists from vulnerability to disaster and adapt to climate change’;
2. examining ‘experiences of other pastoral places in the country and outside which were implemented and effective’, and adopt them ‘in line with the objective reality of the regional states’;
3. ‘in relation to carbon trading, the youth shall be organized in associations and shall be assisted to develop mountainous areas. They shall be encouraged to develop commercial fruit trees in flat land areas so that they would become beneficiaries. Settlement areas shall be made green, clean, and convenient to live [in]’;
4. ‘climate change in pastoral areas shall be given due consideration’;
5. mobilizing people to undertake activities for forest development, natural resource protection and conservation, and protection from degradation and environmental pollution – taking the livelihood and ecology of the area into consideration.

COMMENTARY

Strengthening natural resources conservation. This sectoral strategy is based on the premise that pastoral areas ‘have become vulnerable to climate change’ and that therefore there is a need to ‘sustainably protect pastoralists from vulnerability to disaster and adapt to climate change’. Other passages in the policy add detail to these statements, linking the resilience of pastoral systems to mobility (a sustainable production strategy, as well as a customary natural-resource management strategy) and the customary/communal management systems that enable it. In particular, the policy acknowledges that pastoral ‘mobility … developed through years of experience … kept [pastoralists] resilient in the face of [a] natural and man-made harsh and hostile environment’ (p.15), and that ‘undermining and failure to recognize customary and communal management systems by government has resulted in degradation of natural resources and decrease in productivity that [has] exposed pastoralists to conflict and other problems’ (p.16). Thus, strengthening the sustainable management of natural resources in pastoral areas while ‘sustainably protect[ing] pastoralists from vulnerability to disaster and adapt[ing] to climate change’ would need to start from supporting and strengthening pastoral mobility. This is ‘the elephant in the room’ with regard to both natural resource conservation and pastoralists’ resilience to climate change; but it is also significant with regard to increasing ecologically sustainable productivity in pastoral systems.[1] As the activities under this strategy appear to overlook mobility altogether, this would seem yet another important task that is left to the regional states.

[1] This position is shared by global organisations for the conservation of nature: International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Supporting Sustainable Pastoral Livelihoods: A Global Perspective on Minimum Standards and Good Practice, 2nd edn (Nairobi: IUCN ESARO office, 2012), published for review and consultation through global learning fora; IUCN and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Pastoralism and the Green Economy – A Natural Nexus? Status, Challenges and Policy Implications (Nairobi: IUCN and UNEP, 2014).

a. Ensure pastoralists are involved and beneficiaries in environmental protection activities (p.81) »