Pastoralism in Africa provides crucial services to humanity, can support green economy transition

AllAfrica.com via UNEP: Pastoralism-extensive livestock production in the rangelands-provides enormous benefits to humanity and should be supported as a key element of the global transition to a green economy, according to a new report released today by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Released at the 3rd Scientific Conference of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Cancun, Pastoralism and the Green Economy - a Natural Nexus?, highlights pastoralism's role in safeguarding natural capital across a quarter of the world's land area.

The report findsthat sustainable pastoralism on rangeland ecosystems-such as desert grasslands, woodlands and steppes-maintains soil fertility and soil carbon and contributes to water regulation and biodiversity conservation. It also provides other goods such as high-value food products.

Pastoralism is practiced by up to half a billion people across the globe. Despite its clear benefits, decades of underinvestment have eroded the lifestyle in many developing countries. Reversing this decline and realizing pastoralism's full green economy potential will require leadership and the establishment of a global development framework for sustainable pastoralism, the report says.

"As our world becomes increasingly mechanized and industrialized in the pursuit of progress, it is easy to forget that there is much to be learned from traditional ways of life such as pastoralism," said UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. "Yet half a billion pastoralists across the world are struggling to maintain a way of life that is far more consistent with green economy goals than many of our modern methods of rearing livestock."...

Livestock in Kenya, shot by USAID

Mobile data helps Tanzanian herders get ahead of markets, weather

Kizito Makoye in the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Tanzania has devised a new system to help pastoralists and cattle traders track real-time market information on livestock, while keeping them abreast of weather conditions likely to affect their animals’ wellbeing.

The system allows livestock dealers to monitor prices and volumes in markets across the country, while being alerted to the onset of drought and diseases that could affect herds. The Livestock Information Knowledge System (LINKS) is an online platform that uses global positioning system (GPS) technology, text messaging and web-based computer analysis, providing information to pastoralists via mobile phones or the internet.

 “We decided to establish this system because we value the contribution of pastoralists to our economy. However, more education is needed to enable them to make better use of (it),” said
Saning’o Ole Telele, Tanzania’s deputy minister for livestock development and fisheries.

The project was launched in 2013, and so far 53 out of 369 cattle markets have been connected to the system, with a target of covering them all. Changes in trade patterns and market trends allow LINKS to identify and provide early warning of critical food shortages for animals, deteriorating grazing conditions and disease outbreaks.

The system - which is funded and run by the Tanzanian government in partnership with the United States Development Agency, USAID - monitors major domestic livestock, including cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys and horses....

A Tanzanian pastoralist leading livestock into the Ngorongoro Caldera for grazing, shot by Harvey Barrison, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Pastoralist aspirations versus policy in the Horn of Africa

IRIN: Since the Horn of Africa drought of 2011 aid agencies have been working to understand the changes taking place in the drylands, hoping to better anticipate people’s needs. Recent research shows these changes go beyond climate and environment to encompass social and economic factors. The findings have important policy implications.

“The predominant narrative of what these people want to do with their lives is a traditional, pastoral one, where their lives focus on raising animals and continuing in a tradition of pastoral transhumance little changed over centuries,” notes Changes in the arid lands: the expanding rangeland, a joint report by the Red Cross, Oxfam and Save the Children.

External factors, such as drought, have been used to explain pastoralists’ movement from nomadic livestock keeping to living in settlements and peri-urban areas. But this explanation ignores the rapidly changing socio-economic circumstances in these communities, the report says.

“The predominant narrative did not take into consideration vast increases in population (approximately six times greater than 50 years ago), growing materialism and commercialization, and increasing connectedness to the world outside their community… The narrative needed to be updated.”

Researchers asked communities in Shinile and Jijiga in Ethiopia, Togdheer in the self-declared republic of Somaliland, and Turkana, Kenya, what they want for the future. “Across the board, education was listed as the number one method to reach one’s aspirations; either for the interviewees themselves or for their children and grandchildren. Parents - no matter where they live - hope for their children to be educated and to get jobs,” stated the report....

Cattle being watered in Ethiopia's Ghibe Valley, shot by  ILRI/Stevie Mann, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

What does the future hold for pastoralists in the Sahel?

IRIN: Harsher droughts and rising numbers of conflicts with farmers are threatening the future of pastoralism in the Sahel, but experts say that integrating crop and livestock systems can help sustain the livelihoods of herders and farmers.

Droughts have wrought severe consequences in recent years, including in 2011-2012, when a major drought left some 18 million people in the region at risk of hunger.  Practices such as rotational grazing, land and tree regeneration, intercropping, and agroforestry can help ensure herders continue to feed their animals while avoiding conflict with farmers over shrinking productive lands, experts say.

Nomadic pastoralism remains an essential part of life in the Sahel, where more than 60 percent of the population is involved in livestock farming.  “In the Sahel, pastoralists are first and foremost mobile,” said Jonathan Davies, the Global Drylands Initiative coordinator for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). “So it goes without saying that the thing that defines most pastoralists throughout all of Africa is the herd movements.

“But there’s this huge misunderstanding and prejudice. Many governments and development agencies still see mobility as a problem they need to stop rather than… the most rational management strategy in a highly variable climate,” said Davies.

He explained that moving between areas of good rainfall and vegetation allows pastoralists to manage such variability, particularly in very dry countries like Niger, where land productivity is low.  “For all pastoralists, some sort of crop-agriculture or fodder production is possible, but that is not to say it is desirable,” said Davies. “The scarcer the water, the less you want to waste it on cultivating a tiny oasis.”...

Livestock grazing on an island in the River Niger, seen from a bridge in Niamey, shot by ILRI/Stevie Mann, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Adaptation decision-making shifts to locals in Kenya

Thomson Reuters Foundation: A new series of pilot projects in Northern Kenya will place greater decision-making powers about climate change adaptation into the hands of community members – a move backers hope will create sustainable solutions for area farmers and pastoralists.

In the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya, crop farmers and mobile pastoralists live within the same areas but have very distinct lifestyles. Until now, climate change planning systems implemented by a centralized government have mainly ignored those differences.

But with Kenya’s new constitution published in 2010, local governments now have more autonomy. The new pilot projects, implemented by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Christian Aid and CARE, aim to translate this power shift to an even more local level.

A Climate Adaptation Fund (CAF) will be set up this year in Garissa, Isiolo and Kitui Counties, with additional counties joining over the next three years. Regional decision makers will then determine the best way to disperse CAF money for climate adaptation projects, based on what their communities say they need.

In Isiolo County, for instance, pastoralists rely on the Boran dedha system of rotating grazing lands, in which some areas are grazed while others are reserved for times of drought. The system relies on community consensus and enforcement by local institutions, both of which have degraded over time, said James Pattison, a consultant for IIED who has worked on the project since 2009...

Maasai pastorlists in Kenya, shot by ILRI, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Irrigation scheme locks horns with Kenya’s pastoralists

IRIN: The Kenyan government is planning to introduce large-scale irrigation in the country’s dry lands to improve food security and unlock agricultural potential – but critics have blasted the US$170 million scheme as unviable, and a threat to the pastoralist economy.

The government has set aside one million acres of land for irrigated agriculture over the next five years in the historically underdeveloped northeast. Half a million acres of this land will be used to grow cereals and 300,000 acres to grow sugarcane. The remainder will be used for horticultural crops.

“The government… [aims] to exploit the agricultural potential in ASAL [arid and semi-arid lands],” Daniel Barasa, head of the National Irrigation Board, told IRIN.  According to Vision 2030, Kenya’s economic blueprint for the next 17 years, the country’s chronically food insecure arid and semi-arid regions need special attention to help them develop.

Vision 2030 calls for the provision of water, infrastructure, pasture, fodder and veterinary services; establishing strategically located disease-free zones to increase livestock productivity and quality; unifying the efforts of different ministries and other stakeholders to coordinate development of the region; and putting more land under cultivation.

But experts are calling for caution in rolling out large-scale irrigation schemes in the ecologically fragile pastoralist areas.  “Such schemes usually incur high costs, are technically complex, and dependent on heavy machinery. This means that the sustainability of the schemes is ultimately dependent on external commitment and expertise to succeed,” Jeremy Lind, research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and member of the Future Agricultures Consortium, told IRIN...

Livestock in Kenya, USAID photo

Mali conflict ups pressure on climate-stressed herders

Soumaila T. Diarra in AlertNet: The recent conflict in northern Mali, where the situation remains volatile, has left many livestock herders in fear of losing millions of cattle, sheep and goats at a time when they were already struggling to find enough pasture for their animals due to drought.

Since the spring of 2012, violence between Islamist groups who grabbed much of the north from Tuareg nomads, and the army, supported by foreign troops for the past two months, has disturbed the West African nation’s traditional grazing system, in which herders migrate according to the seasons.

Cattle-rearing is at risk from the ongoing France-backed operation to flush out the defeated Islamists, now hiding out in the northern mountains, and the aftermath of the insurgency, according to Rene Alfonse, leader of a federation of several herders’ associations.  Malian herders own around 9 million cows and 32 million small animals like sheep and goats, he noted. “About 50 percent of Malian cattle are under threat of being destroyed,” Alfonse said, explaining that the violence has made it harder to access grazing land and vaccinations to stop animals falling sick.

The livestock sector is important for Mali’s economy, providing the third-largest source of exports after gold and cotton, and accounting for 14 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Alfonse said the past 10 months have been tough for Mali’s herders. Some have moved into neighbouring countries, including Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso, to escape the fighting….

From 2006, a livestock market in Mali, shot by ILRI, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Maasai herders breed fewer, stronger cattle to tackle climate change

Lucas Liganga in AlertNet: The loss of more than half their livestock in the 2009 drought has led Maasai pastoralists in northern Tanzania’s Arusha region to breed fewer, stronger cattle and end their traditional focus on numbers alone as symbols of wealth and status.

The impact of that devastating drought, which dealt a blow to the whole nation’s economy, is still visible in the small number of cattle in many villages of Engarenaibor in Arusha’s Longido district.

The district’s cattle breeders and owners lost at least 120,000 cattle, more than half the total herd of 200,000, as a result of the drought, which plunged the region into poverty and threatened the pastoralists’ traditional livelihood.

The good news emerging from this blow to their way of life is that breeders have realized that in a time of climate change their wealth lies not in the size of their herd but in its quality. “The days of keeping many head of cattle for prestige are gone thanks to the 2009 drought. It has taught us a lesson. A lesson to adapt to climate change,” says cattle owner Ngaiyok Legilisho Kipainoi....

Maasai in the Ngorongoro crater, shot by Nicor, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Working for better pastoralists livelihood in Ethiopia

The Ethiopian Herald: Characterized by erratic rainfall and high mean temperatures, Ethiopia's dry land accounts for 60 per cent of the country's landmass. These areas have most effectively supported the pastoral livelihood system. Pastoralism converts periodic rainfall and patchy vegetation into nutritional and economic value through the sale and consumption of livestock and other related products.

This requires reliable access and efficient utilization of scarce natural resources across vast terrains to support livestock herds. As Ethiopia has showing a rapid progress by about 11 per cent annual growth rate since 2004, the pastoral regions have come under increasing pressure from a range of anthropogenic factors. Population expansion, resource base diminishing and climate change are the factors affecting per capital livestock holdings. Due to these elements, the productivity of those animals is decreasing and pastoralism has been compromised.

At the same time, these challenges are tied with opportunities that can have positive, significant and those transitioning out of pastoralism. As part of its Growth and Transformation Plan, the Government of Ethiopia has renewed strategies to maximize land and resource productivity and demonstrated commitment to natural resource management at the watershed level, even.

In this regard, the U.S government developed a new five year Pastoralist Resilience Improvement and Market Expansion (PRIME) programme to promote adaptation to climate change, food security and livestock market development in pastoralist areas of Ethiopia. PRIME will support improved Natural Resource Management (NRM) in the pastoral areas at a landscape level. The programme proposes a multistakeholder engagement approach to NRM.

PRIME will also bring together government, traditional institutions, and community representatives across districts and zones to devise an appropriate system for effective management of pasture areas and water points which are critical inputs in the livestock production system....

The Lower Valley of the Omo River, UNESCO World Heritage Site, and inhabitants of Southern Ethiopia. Shot by AnnaMaria Donnoli, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

How climate change is transforming Maasai pastoralists’ life

Lucas Liganga in the Citizen Chief (Tanzania): On meeting Ngaiyok Legilisho Kipainoi many of his long-time friends would assume he had been out of his native Mairowa pastoral village for some time and has just returned. He talks more about the doings of modern societies and every time he moves from one homestead to another everybody can tell his way from the trail of dust that follows his motorcycle. 

In reality Kipainoi, 35, is already in a world away from the destitution and social tension that gripped the north-eastern Tanzania rangelands in 2009 in the wake of a devastating drought. The past three years or so have seen the worst socio-economic crisis in the Maasai pastoral communities in recent history.

The drought has immensely cost the nation in lost productivity, but traditional cattle breeders in this area compute its toll on the decimated herds of livestock. Available figures show that Longido District in Arusha Region, suffered a loss of at least 120,000 head of cattle, which was slightly over half of its total herd of 200,000.

The drought’s impact on the people’s lives and their livestock is still visible in many villages of Engarenaibor ward even after recent rains brought back a flush of green on the ground.

But the good news is that, together with the improved weather condition, there is a gradual turnaround of the pastoralists’ way of life. While they boast of owning thousands of cattle, only a few dozen have survived and breeders admit, they have now realised that real wealth is not in big herds. "The days of keeping many heads of cattle for prestige are gone—thanks to the 2009 drought. It has taught us a lesson. A lesson to adapt to climate change,” said Kipainoi....

A Maasai pastoralist in Tanzania, shot by Nicor, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Investments in pastoralism offer best hope for combating droughts in Africa's drylands

EurekAlert: As hunger spreads among more than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa, a study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) of the response to Kenya's last devastating drought, in 2008-2009, finds that investments aimed at increasing the mobility of livestock herders – a way of life often viewed as "backward" despite being the most economical and productive use of Kenya's drylands – could be the key to averting future food crises in arid lands.

The report, "An Assessment of the Response to the 2008-2009 Drought in Kenya," suggests that herding makes better economic sense than crop agriculture in many of the arid and semi-arid lands that constitute 80 percent of the Horn of Africa, and supporting mobile livestock herding communities in advance and with timely interventions can help people cope the next time drought threatens.

The authors say that encouraging livestock herders to switch to farming crops or to move to cities is simply unrealistic in this region's great drylands, which will not support row crops without extensive irrigation, which is scarce and often impractical. An estimated 70 million people live in these arid lands, and many of them are herders. In Kenya, the value of the pastoral livestock sector is estimated to be worth US$800 million. And the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa, which takes a regional approach to combating drought in six countries of the Horn, estimates that over 90 percent of the meat consumed in East Africa comes from pastoral herds.

"Drylands in the Horn of Africa are too large to ignore," said Jan de Leeuw, an ecologist at ILRI and a lead author of the drought report. "With only 20 percent of Kenya's land suitable for arable crop production, and with an expanding population, the country cannot continue ignoring these dry areas without facing significant challenges in ensuring sufficient food production. Some of the worst impacts of the drought can be avoided if the region's dryland livestock systems are well regulated."

The best way to prevent famine in arid lands is to ensure herder access to critical dry-season grazing and watering areas. All the herders interviewed for the report said that obstacles to the movement of their herds – caused by lack of roads, land conflicts and demographic pressures – constituted the largest problem they had in protecting their animals and livelihoods....

An N'Dama cattle herd in West Africa, shot by ILRI, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Food aid is needed desperately - but ultimately it is not the answer

Helen de Jode in the Guardian: The images of Africans affected by the drought in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya paint a grim picture – thousands of people are again in desperate need and are being provided with food aid to allow them to survive. But what the photographs fail to show is the reason why so many people have reached this state of destitution.

Underneath the high visibility famine lies an age-old and sustainable way of living that has been disrupted by a modern world system, and whose ability to adapt to the cycle of drought has been severely undermined.

An estimated 20 million people live in the dryland areas of the Horn of Africa; nomads, or pastoralists, who own livestock and feed themselves, their communities and the regional economy with milk, meat and other livestock products. Pastoralists have lived in the harsh and erratic dryland environments of the Horn for centuries, surviving its regular and repeated cycle of droughts through their unique production strategy that depends on mobility.

While a farmer waits for the rain to arrive, a pastoralist moves to where the rain has already been – feeding their camels, cows, sheep or goats on the new grazing opportunities and accessing the water sources. Complex social systems that cross national borders, and the reserving of key areas of land for drought periods, have traditionally ensured that pastoralists have adapted to the extreme climatic variability they face.

But in recent decades vast areas of the pastoralist land in the Horn of Africa have been taken over by agriculture and large-scale commercial farms – often in the key strategic riverine areas previously reserved for times of drought. This has undermined the whole system and reduced yields of milk and meat….

Maasai cattle in Kenya, shot by imaginextra, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license