Energy and Environment

The Global Pastoral Programme

"The Global Pastoral Programme is designed to lobby and advocate for the sustainable management of pastoral lands around the world."

Pastoralism is one of the key production systems in the world's drylands. Mobile pastoralists, consisting of nomads and transhumants, are a large and significant minority around the world. In many cases, they are poorly understood and subject to an unusually large number of myths and misunderstandings. These have led to inadequate, often hostile, development policies and major barriers to sustainable land management.

UNDP recognizes that dryland ecosystems, and in particular rangelands and pasturelands, require a new and different approach to their sustainable management. As a result, UNDP is initiating a three-year programme involving a world-wide partnership among civil society, governments and international agencies to lobby and advocate for the sustainable management and custodianship of pastoral lands in developing countries. The goal is to enable sustainable land management by helping to remove policy and capacity obstacles, and to identify innovative and practical ways in which sustainable drylands management through livestock mobility can be made both viable and attractive. It will also establish the necessary pre-conditions at national and local level to enable investment in pastoral sustainable land management. Funding for the programme is expected to come from a GEF medium-sized grant, UNDP, INGOs, bilateral and multi-lateral donors, and even the private sector .

History of the Global Pastoral Programme
The Global Pastoral Programme (GPP) has its inception at the Fifth Conference of Parties (COP 5 in Geneva) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), where UNDP-GEF and the UNDP Drylands Development Centre worked in tandem to produce a series of “challenge papers” in conjunction with an informal group of international organizations, donors, NGOs and individuals that were actively involved in drylands development. This partnership, called the “Global Drylands Imperative”, dedicated itself to addressing dryland issues by increasing the awareness of their importance among policy makers and within relevant international fora. A paper entitled “Pastoralism and Mobility in the Drylands” (part of a second series of challenge papers spearheaded by the UNDP) was produced in 2003. We have since initiated a series of informal consultations with key partners to prepare the programme.

Objectives of the Global Pastoral Programme
The GPP is an advocacy and capacity building programme that is designed to work in a consultative manner and through partnerships across the world where pastoralism is a key issue, to build a momentum for greater recognition of the need for sustainable pastoral development.

The GPP argues that mobile pastoralism is well-adapted to the challenges of maintaining sustainable and productive livelihoods in dryland ecosystems. It is widely understood that mobility is an ecological necessity, and that mobile pastoralism is often the best way to manage dry environments in a sustainable manner. Unfortunately, due to population increases, decreasing rangelands, and increasing droughts, possibilities for mobile pastoralism have reduced in many countries. For some pastoral groups, there is an urgent need to find alternative options (regulation of mobility/transhumance; mobile services; decentralisation and democracy adapted to mobile populations; alternative income generation opportunities) and to convince policy makers that mobility is the most viable form of production and land use in fragile drylands. The GPP will achieve the following objectives:

Advocacy, for greater recognition of mobile pastoralism as a sustainable form of land management, and greater awareness by national stakeholders of policy options to support pastoral livelihoods.

Capacities built, by cross-continental exchanges, disseminating best practices for support services to mobile populations, and building capacity of selected pilot pastoral communities for a second, investment phase of the program

Elements of the Global Pastoral Programme
The focus of the GPP will be on mobile pastoralism in areas of the world that coincide with drylands, but not necessarily everywhere. The programme will consist of:

Pilot Countries: Where we will conduct capacity strengthening and advocacy activities. In these countries the government policies are either already conducive to promoting sustainable pastoral development, or governments have expressed their strong interest.

Network Countries: To facilitate the dissemination of results, advocacy, invitations to conferences or exchanges. These include countries where there are sizable pastoral populations, with active pastoral associations and NGOs. They include both developing countries and developed countries such as France, Spain and Romania where there is currently a revival of transhumance. Some of these countries also have ongoing projects that are working on sustainable pastoral development. The list of network countries is open-ended.

State-of-the-Art Activities: This will include the development of analyses, manuals, reviews and policy papers that will be used as tools for advocacy and capacity building, as well as international and regional conferences, seminars and other forms of advocacy.