Drawing on 15 cases from nine countries this books offers some solutions to the huge challenges pastoralists encounter in trying to sell what they produce. With liberal use of tables, diagrams and illustrations, it documents impacts, good practices and lessons in the marketing of pastoralist livestock and livestock products. It depicts the problems faced by pastoralists, and shows in practical terms how governments, development projects, the private sector and pastoralists themselves can deal with these issues.

Assesses the effect (balance or imbalance) of the present relationships between the natural resource base and human activities; examines the role of some potentially destabilising forces, i.e, international markets, government programmes and socio-economic stratification; and reviews government's role in terms of its contributions to prudent natural resource management and options for the promotion of sustainable rural development.

The pastoral and agro-pastoral areas of Ethiopia cover around 65% of the country’s surface area. Rangeland resources are managed under collective common property arrangements, which are increasingly coming under pressure from both internal and external forces of change including alternative, but not necessarily ‘appropriate’, land uses.

Nickson Parmisa, a resident of Kitengela just outside Nairobi in Kenya, talks about the challenges of livestock herding in the face of climate change.

Drought is one of the major climatic hazards impacting on the various sectors including crop and livestock in the West African Sahel. Pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in the region are regularly affected by drought, with vulnerability differing with gender, age, wealth status (access to cropland and livestock endowment), geographic location, social networks, and previous exposure to drought. Effective interventions require regular monitoring of vulnerability to drought, for which various quantitative and qualitative approaches exist.