Climate change and livelihood Climate change and livelihoods Managing and mitigating climate change through pastoralism

Abstract

Mobile pastoralists are amongst those most at risk to climate change, yet they are amongst those with the greatest potential to adapt to climate change, and they may also offer one of the greatest hopes for mitigating climate change. The vulnerability that is associated with climate change in some pastoral environments has its roots in the restriction of tried and tested pastoral coping strategies. Pastoral adaptation faces a myriad of challenges, of which climatic change is but one, and indeed, the challenge of climate change seems insignificant to many pastoralists who are faced with extreme political, social and economic marginalisation: relax these constraints and pastoral adaptive strategies might enable pastoralists to manage climate change better than many other rural inhabitants. The capacity to adapt is something intrinsically pastoral, and sustainable pastoral development must be founded on the understanding that adaptive capacity is what makes pastoralism work: restoring and enhancing adaptive capacities must therefore be central to development plans. The flexibility, mobility and low-intensity use of natural resources afforded by pastoralism may increasingly provide livelihood security in environments where sedentary production fails. Along with the moral imperative to enable pastoralists to take control over their own development comes a new imperative to recognise and promote the environmental services of mobile pastoralism. Soil organic carbon is one of the largest terrestrial carbon reservoirs, and much of this soil is in open grazing lands that cover over 45 per cent of the earth’s surface— 1.5 times more of the globe than forest. Whilst forests may add only about 10 per cent to their total weight each year, savannas can reproduce 150 per cent of their weight annually, and tropical savannas have a greater potential to store carbon below ground than any other ecosystem. Enabling sustainable rangelands management by pastoralists is therefore now of global significance as well as of local importance.