As part of the Global Call to Action in Indigenous and Community Land Rights, this brief puts the spotlight on the need to secure land rights for the world's pastoralists, as pastoralism is practised by an estimated 200-500 million people. Pastoralists manage rangelands that cover a quarter of the world's land surface but have few advocates.

"Pastoralists have been widely accused of being economically inefficient and turning their ‘over-grazed’ pastures into deserts. But these presumptions are not based on evidence and are usually very wide of the mark."

Since 2009, Oxfam and others have been raising the alarm about a great global land rush. Millions of hectares of land have been acquired by investors to meet rising demand for food and biofuels, or for speculation. This often happens at the expense of those who need the land most and are best placed to protect it: farmers, pastoralists, forest-dependent people, fisherfolk, and indigenous peoples.

 

This issue paper No. 6 of the Rangelands Series consolidates a set of case studies which document how pastoralists plan landvand resource use in pastoral and agro-pastoral areas of Ethiopia. 

Formal land titles are rare in pastoral communities around the world. In the past, this presented hardly any problems, since pastoral land was seen as of little use by most outsiders. But with growing competition for areas legal uncertainty is becoming an increasing threat to the livelihoods of pastoralists.

Pastoralism – the predominant form of livestock keeping in the Horn of Africa – has always been a source of disputes and tensions in the region. So it is maybe no coincidence that precisely those countries with the largest cattle and camel herds should be the ones that have been suffering from prolonged armed conflict for years. This article takes a look at the closely interwoven aspects influencing conflicts in the Horn of Africa in general and South Sudan more specifically.

The former Soviet Central Asian republics have undergone de-intensification of their livestock sectors, resulting in an increased reliance on natural pastures. Property rights systems are key to the sustainable management of this resource. However, as the authors demonstrate, it is not easy to implement the respective reform processes.

The Horn of Africa is one of the most conflict-prone areas of the world. It is also home to about 20 million pastoralists, which keep moving with their livestock in search for grazing land and water points. Pastoral conflicts are becoming more and more serious. CEWARN - a regional mechanism for preventing conflicts - tries to close the gap between 'early warning' and 'early response'.

There is growing degradation in sylvo-pastoral lands that were originally under common property regimes, but over which the state now asserts ownership. User associations are being given the right to take charge of regulating how these areas are sustainably exploited by means of use agreements, and are proving an effective instrument in halting the degradation process.

Planning for climate resilience growth is increasingly important for the natural resource dependent economy of Tanzania. Central government does not have the knowledge, reach, skills or resources needed to plan for the range of livelihoods within Tanzania; but local governments, if granted the authority and resources, could plan with communities in the flexible, timely and appropriate manner that climate variability demands.

This study is focused on the effects of the eviction process of pastoralists from Mbarali to Lindi Rural and Kilwa Districts in Lindi Region. The study sampled six villages out 15 villages in Lindi Rural and Kilwa districts. The study employed semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with district, village authorities, host communities and migrating pastoralists in selected villages.

It is almost a decade now since the fights between Pastoralists and peasants broke out in Kilosa district Morogoro region in December 2000 claiming tens of people’s lives and causing irreparable losses and damages their properties. While the wounds of that dark record are still fresh in some of the minds of the communities in Kilosa, another very serious fight between the same or rather similar groups occurred this October prompting the media and human rights activists to find some ways to intervene in a bid to find lasting solutions for the problems.

Tanzania is endowed with numerous resources including livestock. It is number three country in Africa in terms of livestock population after Ethiopia and Sudan. Currently, the country (Tanzania) has more than 22 million livestock, of which at least 95% are indigenous animals kept under traditional livelihood model known as indigenous pastoralism. At least 70% of Tanzanians earn their living through agro-pastoralism whereby around 40% of them entirely practices indigenous pastoralism.