NEWS
across three continents over the past five years has shown how pastoralism is an innovative , flexible and productive system that can handle uncertainty and adapt to change , while contributing to climate change mitigation and improving biodiversity .
Our research is explored in a new open access book , published with my co-researchers from across the world . It highlights how effective pastoralists are at living with variability and responding to uncertainties . Of course , there are limits to such flexible and adaptive responses . Pastoralists are vulnerable to exclusions due to land grabbing , energy projects and urbanisation . Political decision-making can also marginalise them .
But lessons from the pastoral margins can question assumptions about the best ways to meet today ’ s challenges . Here I offer five .
Embracing uncertainty and change
We live in a complex and uncertain world . Whether it ’ s due to climate change , market volatility or pandemic outbreaks , we don ’ t know what the future will hold . Old certainties have disappeared , and expectations of stability , order and control are no longer tenable . This requires a very different approach centred on flexibility , improvisation and adaptability .
It means shifting from “ seeing like a state ” ( or a corporation , bank or development agency ) to “ seeing like a pastoralist ”. This involves embracing uncertainty , complexity and dynamic change .
Mobile lives
Mobility is central to pastoralists ’ production strategies . With highly variable resources over space and time , moving between grazing patches is essential . This requires skilled herding , the training of animals and intelligence on where fodder and water can be found . Traditional practices are combined with modern technologies for scouting and gaining information , based on deep knowledge of animals and the environment . Overall , the ability to respond flexibly to changing circumstances is essential .
The result is that pastoralists make use of otherwise unproductive rangelands across more than half the world ’ s land surface and they are immensely skilled at living with diverse environmental , market and political uncertainties .
Our work shows that flexible mobility is crucial for everyone , everywhere in today ’ s uncertain , turbulent world . We argue that learning from mobile pastoralists – from the savanna plains of Africa to the semi-deserts of the Middle East and North Africa , the steppes and high mountains of Asia and the hills and mountain areas of Europe – enhances our ability to be mobile .
Global markets and trade
Pastoral systems are always embedded in markets and trade . Many of the great historical trade routes – across the Asian steppes , through the Sahara desert and from eastern Africa to the Arabian peninsula , for example – have been facilitated by pastoralists .
Pastoralists are no strangers to crossborder trade and globalisation , contrary to negative narratives that suggest that they reject markets and commercialisation . However , the markets that are so central to pastoralists ’ livelihoods are not the simple ones described in economics textbooks .
Our work in Sardinia in Italy shows how pastoralists engage with informal “ real markets ” to confront market volatility and uncertainty . Such markets are forged through networks of social relationships , allowing for flexibility when the formal markets for sheep ’ s milk face price crashes .
Important lessons emerge more generally . In surprising ways , pastoralists ’ responses to market volatility echo those of bankers and financiers facing financial crises . Instead of technical risk protocols and regulations , a more social , networked basis for trustbuilding as the basis for managing economic uncertainty , and so averting financial crises , is required .
Disaster and emergency management
Pastoral areas face constant shocks and stresses ranging from drought , floods , heavy snowfalls , diseases , conflicts and more . In northern Kenya networks of highly skilled pastoralists mobilise knowledge , technology and finance during times of crisis , helping to prevent disasters .
Such people may include local forecasters who give a sense of what weather might be in store . They could be scouts on motorbikes scoping out new grazing areas , checking for conflict and other dangers .
Further work in northern Kenya demonstrates how pastoralists survive , thrive and respond to uncertainties through asset redistribution , comradeship , diversification and collective responses to protect the livelihoods from external threats . All this suggests new ways of going about disaster planning and humanitarian response .
Rethinking land access
The urge to demarcate , register and control land is strong , as this is the model frequently used in settled agricultural contexts . But this can be disastrous in pastoral areas , restricting movement and so undermining the very basis of pastoral production .
The obsession with private property , individualisation and a market-based approach to land management is anathema to pastoralists , where hybridity , collective arrangements and continuous negotiation of resource use are central .
As our work in Amdo Tibet in China finds , taking such an approach to land governance seriously disrupts the standard models that dominate policy-making .
A lifeline to the future
A world without pastoralists would be a poorer place materially , environmentally and culturally . And we would lose a lifeline to the future , where we can learn how to live with and from uncertainty , just like pastoralists have always done .
More information on the mentioned open-access book can be found in the ‘ New Book ’ section .
29 Grassroots Vol 23 No 2 July 2023