what about sustainable development in pastoral regions ?

Michele Nori mnori69@ominiverdi.com

Contents
This presentation aims at answering these questions:

Who are the pastoralists ? Why is pastoralism relevant ? Why are pastoralists so vulnerable ?

a provocative intro:
Afghanistan, Somalia, Middle East, Yemen, Karamoja, Kurdistan, Darfur, SSudan, Ogaden,etc and lately Sahara fringes, Sinai Peninsula What have these regions in common ?

1) WHO are the PASTORALISTS ?

communities living on arid lands through mobile livestock keeping

1) LIVESTOCK as the vital technology translating range resources into food products 2) MOBILITY as the strategy to make the best use of marginal resources 3) FLEXIBILITY as the arrangement regulating access to land

PASTORALISM covers 25 percent of the worlds land area directly supports some 150 million people often in poorest world regions

Regional zonation of pastoral systems

Zone Sub-Saharan Africa Mediterranean Region India Central Asia Circumpolar North America Andes Main animal species Cattle, camel, sheep & goats Small ruminants (sheep & goats) Camel, cattle, sheep, goats Yak, camel, horse, sheep, goats Reindeer Sheep, cattle Llama, alpaca

Sub-Saharan Africa (Sahelian belt)

Mediterranean (Morocco to Jordan)

Central Asia (Tibet, Mongolia)

Kuchi Andes

AGRO-ECOLOGICAL MARGINALITY

harsh environments
Arid & fragile territories (drylands or highlands)
3 main characterizing features: - Limitations of water availability low average biomass productivity - Variability of resource distribution through space and time - Unpredictability of resource endowment and high degree of risk of extreme climatic events

Rainfall index variation in the Sahelian region.

source: Yann lHte et Al.(2001)

SOCIO-POLITICAL MARGINALITY

frontier lands
geo-political borders (i.e. mountains or deserts) remote from mainstream central state and/or markets huge extensions, low pop density - High TCs impact of cross-bordering traffics and refugee influxes closer to conflict

2) WHY are they so RELEVANT ?

a) provide valuable products b) environmental services c) control strategic territories

a)

Provide valuable products

Contribution to Agric. GDP in SSAfrica

Mtania Senegal Mali % Agric GDP 70 Chad % Agric. GDP 25 37,3 Sudan 80 41,6 B. Faso Niger 25 29.8 Somalia 80

Ethiopia Kenya 35 50

IIED, 2006. Pastoralism: drylands invisible asset?

http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/12534IIED.pdf

b) Environmental services
Management of fragile ecosystems: biodiversity, land & water, carbon sequestration Most natural parks & reserves African & Asian grasslands have vast CO2 sequestration potential (FAO, 2009) EU Common Agriculture Policy
World Initiative for Sustainable Pastoralism www.iucn.org/WISP

c) Control strategic territories

AFD Agence Franaise de Dveloppement, 2012 Il apparat en particulier fondamental de replacer llevage pastoral, aux yeux des Etats africains concerns et de la Communaut internationale, parmi les solutions durables au problme dinscurit du Sahel

CURRENT TRENDS A number of development syndromes:

From better off to the poorest and most destitute agriculture peoples in the world (World Bank, 2009) Most excluded / hardest to reach from primary social services (UNICEF/WHO, 2005) Regions with deepest endemic poverty, and with the most vulnerable people (CGIAR, 2010) Long history of development failures

Currently HDI and MDGs are at their lowest in such regions (ex. Kenya)

3) Why are pastoralists so vulnerable ?

Pastoralists critically dependent on the natural resource base: - Fast growing population (> 3% yearly in Sahel) - Ecosystems changes - Socio-political marginalisation - Conflict Centrality of access to LAND
Rangelands Observatory: rangelands@landcoalition.info

Limited own opportunities to decrease vulnerability

Livelihoods: Intensification Expansion Diversification Value adding Alternative

Room for discussion; Thank you for your attention

mnori69@ominiverdi.com

ADDITIONAL SLIDES

Challenges & opportunities

Environmental changes Livestock revolution Political decentralization Regional dimension Effective civil society Role of women Migration / diversification Developing ICTs Evolving educational systems Remunerate environmental services: PES, CDM and carbon finance mechanisms

Pastoral modernization
conceived as the END of pastoralism as we know it

Modernisation through Sedentarisation Disaster and Emergency Getting hold of rangelands Pastoralism as intermediate development stage between mobile hunting/gathering and settled agriculture, but rather a sophisticated agricultural practice specialised to harsh ecosystems, where it provides the most effective means of coping with an unpredictable climate; Pastoral systems have much higher economic returns per hectare than conventional agriculture and sedentary livestock rearing under similar conditions; these returns would be even higher if social and environmental externalities were to be accounted for. Mobile livestock keeping is potentially more resilient to global climate change than any other land use systems, including sedentarised forms of dryland agriculture

PRINCIPLES
A number of key principles are though to be recalled for activities that address the needs and the problems of pastoral groups, in order to enhance the consistency of the investment strategy as well as the effectiveness of its implementation. Ensure an appropriate understanding, long term commitment and flexible funding to the development dynamics of a specific region; Pursue active involvement of pastoral communities since inception, to help empowering local stakeholders as well as to decrease transaction costs to implement and monitor activities; Carefully consider how to interface formal and informal institutional systems to get the local governance right including access to range resources and political representation; Strategically link relief, rehabilitation and development and ensure these reinforce each other towards medium to long term objectives with the aim to strengthen communities resilience ; Do not undermine but rather support local risk management strategies and mechanisms (ie. livestock mobility and community-based land rights); Ensure adequate investment is done in the basic foundations of pastoral development (ie. a functioning infrastructure, accessible markets and the services to support human capital and livestock productivity), and exploring innovative opportunities accordingly (ICTs, energy, ..); Apply a framework that integrates investments in different complementary domains, addressing a number of aspects of pastoral livelihoods (ie. production intensification must look into market dynamics on one hand as well as the environmental situation on the other); Adopt a regional perspective, needed to match the cross-border nature of pastoral livelihoods and to overcome the neglect these groups often suffer from within the national dimension;[CS1] Maintain good degree of flexibility and contingency planning to enable responding to possible variations in programming and implementation; Strategize pastoral development within the wider picture of territorial development, ensuring that resources generated through exploitation of pastoral lands (ie. mining, tourism, agribusiness) are reinvested to develop local communities.

FURTHER REFERENCES
The LEGS initiative (Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (www.livestockemergency.net/index.html), The Regional Learning and Advocacy Programme (REGLAP) and aims to reduce the vulnerability of pastoral communities through policy and practice change in the Horn and East Africa. REGLAP also seeks to promote the integration of humanitarian assistance with development interventions through disaster risk reduction (DRR) among governments, donors and national and international CSOs (civil society organisations). It is funded by ECHO (European Commission Humanitarian Office) http://policypractice.oxfam.org.uk/our-work/food-livelihoods/reglap GRAIN, 2010. Pastoralism, an untold tale of adaptation and survival; www.grain.org/seedling_files/seed-10-04-3.pdf Refer to the recent 'Milk Matters: A Literature Review of Pastoralist Nutrition and Programming Responses'; https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/FIC/Milk+Matters+-+A+Literature+Review+of+Pastoralist+Nutrition+and+Programming+Responses WISP, 2008. Learning from the delivery of social services to pastoralists.. http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/social_services_to_pastoralists__english__2.pdf USAID, 2011. Pastoral Land Rights and Resource Governance. Property Rights and Resource Governance Briefing Paper #10 usaidlandtenure.net/usaidltprproducts/issuebriefs/issue-brief-pastoral-land-rights-and-resource-governance Nori M., Taylor M., Sensi A., 2008. Browsing on fences: pastoral land rights, livelihoods and adaptation to climate change. IIED Drylands Series #148 , London http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=12543IIED