Sustainable development of pastoral and agro-pastoral systems, dominated by collective and/or tribal ownership of rangelands, is a key issue for the West Asia and North Africa region. These two systems are located in arid and semi-arid areas and are increasingly threatened by desertification process. The policy responses to tackle this complexity have been a sectorial and fragmented, “top-down” approach, putting forward technical solutions and neglecting the social context.

Somalia, one of the world's poorest countries, has livestock as the mainstay of the economy, with an estimated 65% of the population engaged in the livestock sector. This paper presents a gendered study on the traditional livestock breeding practices of Somali pastoralists for camels, cattle, sheep and goats, with a focus on documenting livestock traits of importance, the criteria used to select male breeding animals and the criteria used to cull female breeding animals.

Improved understandings of the agricultural and range ecologies of semi-arid Africa require better information on the spatiotemporal distribution of domestic livestock across agropastoral landscapes. An empirical GIS-based approach was developed for estimating distributions of herded livestock across three agropastoral territories (around 100 km2 each) over a two-year period.

Climate-induced livelihood transitions in the agricultural systems of Africa are increasingly likely. There is limited evidence on what such transitions might look like. We carried out fieldwork in 12 sites in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to understand changes in farming systems in the recent past, and to test the hypothesis that sedentary farmers in zones that may become warmer and drier in the future may be forced to increase their reliance on livestock vis-à-vis cropping in the future. We estimated the contribution of crop and livestock activities to incomes, food security and poverty.

Historically, pastoral people were able to more freely use the services their semi-arid and arid ecosystems provide, and they adapted to changes in ways that improved their well-being. More recently, their ability to adapt has been constrained due to changes from within and from outside their communities. To compare possible responses by pastoral communities, we modeled ecosystem services and tied those services to decisions that people make at the household level.

This paper examines the effects of wildlife tourism-based payments for ecosystem services (PES) on poverty, wealth inequality and the livelihoods of herders in the Maasai Mara Ecosystem in south-western Kenya. It uses the case of Olare Orok Conservancy PES programme in which pastoral landowners have agreed to voluntary resettlement and exclusion of livestock grazing from their sub-divided lands. These lands are set aside for wildlife tourism, in return for direct monetary payments by a coalition of five commercial tourism operators.