Rangelands in arid and semi-arid regions serve as grazing land for domesticated animals and therefore offer livelihood opportunities for most pastoral communities. Thus, the exposure of most rangelands in arid and semi-arid regions to threats that are associated with natural, social, economic, and political processes affects their capacity to provide socioeconomic and environmental support to the immediate and global communities.

The vast rangelands of Tunisia and Senegal are critical for the livelihoods of pastoral communities, providing grazing land for their herds and other essential resources and ecosystem services. However, these fragile ecosystems face numerous threats, including climate change, land degradation, and encroachment from urban and economic activities.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a vast area covering 20 countries from western Asia to North Africa, with nearly 9,000,000 Km2 and 303 million hectares of total rangelands. Rangelands play an essential role in supporting people’s livelihoods and food security. Mobile pastoralism is the most viable and resilient form of production and land use in the fragile drylands of MENA. However, the region’s governments have considered nomadic pastoralism backwards mainly because it was challenging to deliver mobile services.

A learning toolkit for Participatory rangeland management (PRM) used to facilitate a community-owned and participatory process for planning and implementation of sustainable resource management for rangelands. The toolkit was developed by ILRI

Rangelands contribute significantly toward improving livelihoods, offering food security, trade, and tourism for pastoral communities. Numerous challenges include poor government policies, loss of indigenous knowledge, and top-down approaches toward sustainable rangeland rehabilitation that often fail to consider local development adoption and sustainability. In such situations, effective management is needed for sustainable rangeland ecosystem goods and services in a context characterized by rainfall unreliability, poor soil nutrient status, and high uncontrolled grazing.

Piloting participatory rangeland management (PRM) in Tanzania and Kenya was a 48-month EU-funded project. The project ran from December 2017 to December 2021. Its overarching goal was to improve the livelihood and nutrition status of pastoralist communities in East Africa by improving rangeland management to secure and better use rangelands and expand the role of women in selected pastoral communities in Kenya and Tanzania.

Presented by Domenech Carlos and Fiona Flintan at the Identification Mission Meeting for the Lowlands Livelihood Resilience Project, Phase Two, for the World Bank and Government of Ethiopia 6 March 2023, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

This paper aligns current thinking on transboundary climate risk pathways with research on climate risk for pastoralists in African rangelands. Four pathways for transboundary transmission of climate risk were used as a framework for a narrative review of research literature on pastoralism and climate change. Selected cases were presented to highlight conclusions and recommendations. Pastoralism research reflects many aspects of risk management, particularly its relationship to mobility and the development of appropriate non-equilibrium models of pastoralist decision-making.

Rangelands in Tunisia, play a vital role in providing essential services such as clean water, air, forage, and habitat for diverse ecosystems. However, decades of degradation due to socioeconomic changes, abandonment of traditional grazing practices, and recurrent droughts have led to soil degradation and loss of plant species. Overgrazing, exacerbated by climatic aridity, has significantly reduced rangeland productivity. In response, the traditional rest technique (G'del) has been applied, but its sustainability remains a challenge.