The future of pastoralism: an introduction

Zinsstag, Jakob; Schelling, Esther; Bonfoh, Bassirou; Crump, Lisa; Krätli, Saverio

doi:10.20506/rst.35.2.2520

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The following discussion presents the main strengths and weaknesses, threats, and opportunities of the FF project from the farmers' perspectives, taking to the ground-level challenges that have been analyzed at global scales [31,32]. First of all, it is interesting to note that what has emerged as the core spirit of FF is the relationship between landscape, product, and consumer, thereby consolidating the initial aim of the project to enhance relations and encourage collaboration between different sectors and actors related to extensive livestock farming as an essential strategy for landscape and wildfire risk management.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fire Flocks: Participating Farmers’ Perceptions after Five Years of Development

Nuss-Girona

Soy

Canaleta

et al. 2022

Land

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Nowadays, extensive livestock farming faces substantial threats in the Mediterranean region, provoking a setback dynamic in the sector. In 2016, the Fire Flocks (FF) project was conceived and implemented as a regional strategy to revert this situation and revalue the sector in Catalonia, in the NE of the Iberian Peninsula. FF promotes forest management through extensive livestock farming, and more specifically silvopastoralism, to reduce vegetation load and wildfire risk. The initiative also works on fire risk awareness with the aim of promoting extensive livestock products through FF label and valorization strategies. Five years after its initial implementation, the project managers detected several weaknesses and potential improvements directly affecting the economic and environmental performance of the participating farms. It was therefore considered necessary to conduct targeted qualitative interviews with the farmers participating in the project in order to gather their opinions on the project’s functioning and further steps. To this end, 17 farmers were interviewed with the aid of a qualitative questionnaire. The farmers stated that although FF is not providing them with any direct financial benefits, it does present an opportunity to belong to a group of farmers working on wildfire prevention, thereby lending them a voice as a group, and reaching more social visibility. The qualitative analyses elucidate key elements to be promoted in FF, such as redesign of the operational structure, expansion to a regional scale and action lines to facilitate grazing activity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fire Flocks: Participating Farmers’ Perceptions after Five Years of Development

Nuss-Girona

Soy

Canaleta

et al. 2022

Land

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“…As mentioned above, large areas of the world, for instance, semi-arid high and lowlands, could not sustain human life without use of livestock (Zinsstag et al. 2016 ). Climate change with increased droughts requires a high flexibility of mobile pastoralists and may lead to increased social conflicts when they must move into areas used by others (Herrero et al.…”

Section: Extensive Livestock Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change and One Health

Zinsstag

Crump

Schelling

et al. 2018

FEMS Microbiology Letters

136

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The journal The Lancet recently published a countdown on health and climate change. Attention was focused solely on humans. However, animals, including wildlife, livestock and pets, may also be impacted by climate change. Complementary to the high relevance of awareness rising for protecting humans against climate change, here we present a One Health approach, which aims at the simultaneous protection of humans, animals and the environment from climate change impacts (climate change adaptation). We postulate that integrated approaches save human and animal lives and reduce costs when compared to public and animal health sectors working separately. A One Health approach to climate change adaptation may significantly contribute to food security with emphasis on animal source foods, extensive livestock systems, particularly ruminant livestock, environmental sanitation, and steps towards regional and global integrated syndromic surveillance and response systems. The cost of outbreaks of emerging vector-borne zoonotic pathogens may be much lower if they are detected early in the vector or in livestock rather than later in humans. Therefore, integrated community-based surveillance of zoonoses is a promising avenue to reduce health effects of climate change.

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“…Land use is a complex process and operates at the interface of multiple socio-economic and environmental systems [1,2]. Land use in the context of nomadic pastoralism makes this interface more complex and non-linear due to the inherent dynamic equilibrium of pastoral systems [3]. Byambaa and de Vries [4,5] argue that current environmental impact assessments (EIAs) do not address this dynamic character in nomadic pastoralism and therefore, impacts associated with nomadic-pastoral (dynamic) land use are not sufficiently and appropriately predicted in EIA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Production of Pastoral Space: Modeling Spatial Occupation of Grazing Land for Environmental Impact Assessment Using Structural Equation Modeling

Byambaa

Vries

2021

Land

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Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a key tool for both environmental and land management. It identifies potential adverse and unintended consequences of the projects on land use and the environment and derives possible mitigation measures to address these impacts. Calculating the volume and severity of impacts is complex and often relies on selections and simplifications. Moreover, calculating impacts associated with nomadic-pastoral (dynamic) land use is still an unresolved methodological problem. A full understanding of the patterns of dynamic land use in nomadic pastoralism is still lacking. Consequently, EIAs are currently able to predict the negative impacts associated with dynamic land use insufficiently. This article addresses this lacuna by modeling the spatial occupation of grazing land using a statistical modeling technique of structural equation modeling (SEM) and the R package lavaan for SEM, in order to explain the behavior of dynamic land use for EIA. Based on the concepts of the production of space and pastoral spatiality, we specified and tested a model of spatial occupation of grazing areas hypothesizing interrelationships between factors influencing the pastoral space using empirical data from two different ecological zones in Mongolia. The findings suggest that grazing areas, herd mobility, and herd size and composition have direct positive effects on each other. Compared to broad-scale pastoral movements, the herd size and composition significantly affect the size of grazing areas and the extent of fine-scale herding mobility. Herders occupy more pastoral space and increase their daily herding movements at their campsites when the population of livestock increases. By contrast, the herd size and composition do not considerably affect the herders’ decision to migrate for extensive grazing between their seasonal campsites. Likewise, the scale of grazing areas and fine-scale pastoral mobility do not affect significantly the broad-scale herding mobility between campsites. The broad-scale herding mobility is relatively independent of the fine-scale mobility; however, they covary. This is the first study to analyze and quantify the effects of grazing areas, herding mobility, and herd size and composition in the same study. EIA impact prediction should consider grazing areas as a dynamic space that is influenced by grazing orbits, fine and broad-scale herding movements including otor, livestock species, the number of animals as well as households at campsites.

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The future of pastoralism: an introduction

Cited by 9 publications

References 24 publications

Fire Flocks: Participating Farmers’ Perceptions after Five Years of Development

Fire Flocks: Participating Farmers’ Perceptions after Five Years of Development

Climate change and One Health

The Production of Pastoral Space: Modeling Spatial Occupation of Grazing Land for Environmental Impact Assessment Using Structural Equation Modeling

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