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.

The health of nomadic pastoralists is influenced by factors specific to their way of life.
Nomadic pastoralists depend on their livestock for subsistence, especially on the livestock’s
milk. Veterinary services provide vaccination against feared livestock diseases such as
anthrax. Agents transmissible between livestock and humans (zoonotic agents) may have an
important impact on the health status of pastoralists because they live in close contact to their
animals. However, morbidity of nomadic pastoralists in Chad had not been documented and

It is important for land managers and technical assistance specialists to be able to assess the health of rangelands in order to know where to focus management efforts. The complexity of ecological processes, and the inherent expense of directly measuring site integrity, suggests a need for an evaluation process that focuses instead on biological and physical attributes. In a collaborative effort, the USGS, ARS, BLM, and NRCS have jointly developed a system in which 17 indicators are used to gauge three attributes of rangeland health.

Paper written in response to 5 questions asked by the Forum organisers. Under what circumstances can land tenure reform contribute to rural poverty reduction and sustainable natural resources management? How can land tenure reform be carried out in a manner that is pro-poor? What types of actions should donors support in order to promote pro-poor land tenure reform? What actions should be taken to address the particular problems faced by women, indigenous groups and pastoralists in gaining secure access to land?

KLA’s submission to the Constitutional Review Commission based on a National Civil Society Conference on Land Reform and the Land Question at Mbagathi 21-23 May 2002. Covers the Commission’s mandate, situation analysis and conclusions. Topics include land relations, land tenure, public land, expropriation, land rights of women, pastoralists, farm dwellers and the urban poor, redress of historical grievances, land administration and management, land market, environmental management, and the land policy process.

This Act is enacted for the purposes of regulating expropriation of land, ensuring reasonable land use, safeguarding private properties and promoting public interest.

Since the early 1970s, the position of pastoralists in West Africa's Sahel zone has become ever more precarious. Their plight is evidenced by rural-urban migration movements as well as the results of field surveys. The last major drought of 1983-1985 delivered a major blow to communities which derive most of their food and revenues from herding. In many rangeland areas there is civil unrest - even building to armed conflict in places - owing to mounting tensions between various pastoral groups.

For over a hundred years the zone of Kisha Beiga, in Burkina Faso, was plagued by ethnic conflicts, revolution and political anarchy. Local rivalries and administrative chaos put paid to any efforts to manage natural resources efficiently. Then, in 1991, the Burkinabe Sahel Programme (PSB) set out to quell factional rivalry and establish sustainable resource-management in the area. A fragile consensus has been achieved, but it has not been easy. Leadership conflicts, land tenure issues and administrative anomalies have threatened to derail the project.

Arid shrub-lands in Syria and elsewhere in West Asia and North Africa are widely thought degraded. Characteristic of these areas is a preponderance of unpalatable shrubs or a lack of overall ground cover with a rise in the associated risks of soil erosion. Migrating pastoralists have been the scapegoats for this condition of the range. State steppe interventions of the last forty years have reflected this with programs to supplant customary systems with structures and institutions promoting western grazing systems and technologies.

Este nmero de Unasylva se ocupa de las tcnicas, pero tambin de los aspectos polticos y sociales, de la rehabilitacin forestal de determinados espacios degradados.