This
year
is
the United
Nations
International
Year
of
Rangelands
and
Pastoralists.
This
is
an
important
moment
to
celebrate
the
role
of
pastoralists
across
the
world,
recognising
their
unique
contributions
to
sustainable
livelihoods
and
environmental
integrity.
It
is
also
a
moment
to
banish
the
myths
that
have
plagued
pastoral
development
for
decades.
Zimbabwe
includes
many
pastoral
and
agropastoral
systems,
sharing
many
of
the
characteristics
of
seen
in
the
more
classic
pastoral
settings
of
East
and
West
Africa.
It
is
the
principles
of
responding
to
variability,
having
flexibility
through
movement,
tracking
through
droughts
and
responding
effectively
to
disasters
through
generating
reliability
and
offering
a
system
that
supports
rather
destroys
nature
that
we
see
in
all
pastoral
systems.
The
international
year
will
be
highlighting
different
themes
each
month
and
it
is
worth
following the
IYRP
website and
social
media
for
updates.
To
start
off
the
year,
I
thought
I
would
republish
an
article
that
drew
from
the PASTRES
project,
which
was
published
in The
Conversation a
few
years
back.
The
article
highlights
how
we
can
all
learn
from
pastoralists.
This
is
not
just
a
year
for
rangelands
and
pastoralists,
but
for
us
all.
Pastoralists are
livestock
keepers
who
are
frequently
on
the
move,
sometimes
across
huge
distances.
Following
mobile
lifestyles
and
living
far
from
centres
of
power,
they
are
often
inaccurately dismissed
as
backward
and
in
need
of
modernisation.
Many
policies
are
directed
at transforming
mobile
pastoralists into
settled
agriculturalists
or
urban
dwellers.
This
aims
at
recasting
them
into
the
dominant
image
of
“civilised”
living.
And,
despite
their
positive
contributions
to
livelihoods,
economies
and
the
environment,
the
world’s
many millions
of
pastoralists have
been
vilified
as
contributors
to climate
change and
destroyers
of the
environment.
I
am
a
social
scientist
with
a
background
in
ecology.
Over
more
than 30
years I
have
been
researching
land,
livelihoods
and
agrarian
change,
mostly
in
sub-Saharan
Africa.
Contrary
to
the
dominant,
negative
views
on
pastoralists, research in
six
countries
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.
1.
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.
2.
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.
3.
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
cross-border
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
trust-building
as
the
basis
for
managing
economic
uncertainty,
and
so
averting
financial
crises,
is
required.
4.
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.
5.
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.
Ian
Scoones,
Professorial
Fellow, Institute
of
Development
Studies.
This
article
is
republished
from The
Conversation under
a
Creative
Commons
license.
Read
the original
article.
And
why
not
have
a
look
at
another The
Conversation article
(this
time
a
‘long
read’
in
their
Insights
series),
which
asks: In
this
age
of
global
uncertainty,
where
in
the
world
can
we
look
for guidance? The
answer,
not
surprisingly,
is
‘pastoralists’.
Published
at
the
end
of
last
year,
the
link
is
here: In
this
age
of
global
uncertainty,
where
in
the
world
can
we
look
for
guidance?
Post
published
in:
Agriculture