Niger is a pastoral country. However, despite its crucial economic, social and cultural impact, pastoralism remains a very uncertain activity, and Niger’s successive governments didn’t invest much in it (1% of the national budget in 2009, versus 35% for farming activities). Though from 1993 the Rural Code has produced a number of rules and regulations in order to protect and revitalize pastoralism, it was also often accused of favoring crop farmers over livestock producers. Is that true ?

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.

Kyrgyz pastureland make up the majority of land mass in the country and are an important resource for most rural people, providing good opportunities for economic growth and poverty reduction. Kyrgyz pastureland reforms devolved management of pastures to local level pasture committees. This case study looks at promising practices and lessons learned from an intervention related to those reforms, that seeking to both promote community management of pasturelands and also promote the interests of women within those communities.

The pastoral areas of Ethiopia are witnessing radical change in terms of both increasingly restricted mobility and access to vital resources. A cause and consequence of such constraints has been a move toward sedentarised forms of livestock and agricultural production. This is occurring in a political and socioeconomic vacuum, in which the customary institutions responsible for resource allocation and access to land are becoming weaker, and where the Ethiopian government has yet to develop a clear policy or strategy for resource distribution and tenure security in pastoral areas.

Based on new evidence from Darfur, this report presents a scientifc account of the environmental principles of pastoralist livestock mobility, combined with a review of other key infuences on livestock movements throughout the year. Our goal is to provide policy makers and other stakeholders with an objective account of what mobile pastoralists in Darfur can achieve, how they do it, and what they might need to do it better.

In August 2013, the Government of Uganda gazetted the National Land Policy (NLP) after having initiated the policy process over three decades ago. The NLP is to provide an over-arching policy framework for land governance and management, consolidating the many other policies and laws that have governed land and natural resources since colonial times.

Basic survival is very difficult for the 1.2 million people who live in Karamoja, a remote region in northeastern Uganda bordering Kenya marked by chronic poverty and the poorest human development indicators in the country. Traditional dependence on semi-nomadiccattle-raising has been increasingly jeopardized. Extreme climate variability, amongst other factors, has made the region’s pastoralist and agro-pastoralist people highly vulnerable to food insecurity.

Understanding the perception of environmental resources by the users is an important element in planning its sustainable use and management. Pastoralist communities manage their vast grazing territories and exploit resource variability through strategic mobility. However, the knowledge on which pastoralists’ resource management is based and their perception of the grazing areas has received limited attention.

This paper investigates how Borana pastoralists of southern Ethiopia have adapted resource use and livestock mobility practices amid multiple constraints including rising population, loss of rangeland to other pastoral communities and changing access rights, among others. This study uses an innovative multi-scalar methodology to understand how herders' grazing management decisions are made within a context of communal regulations governing access to resources.

Date: juin 2017

Source: Foncier & Développement

Par: Serge Aubague, Nasser Sani Baaré 

Le Niger est probablement le pays sahélien disposant du corpus juridique et du dispositif institutionnel le plus élaboré pour prémunir les pasteurs contre l’accaparement des terres pastorales. Ceci ne suffit hélas pas à endiguer le phénomène.

This study examines the effects of different grazing systems in two neighboring regions with similar biotic and abiotic factors, Nalan Soum in Mongolia and Naren Soum in Inner Mongolia, China. We employed the quadrat sampling method and remote sensing to set three perpendicular lines that dissect the boundary between the two countries, and seven lines parallel to the boundary to form a rectangular shape as a means to compare plant community response to different grazing systems under natural conditions. NDVI data is included in discussing the causes of Mongolian grassland degradation.

The rising conflicts between farmers and pastoralists threaten Nigeria’s food security, economic stability and ecological balance. Instead of ‘silently’ resolving the issues, the Nigerian government should intensify all means to end these crimes against livelihoods and address the root causes, like climate change, displacement and appropriation of grazing reserves.