A case of benign neglect

Box 1: Definitions of rangelands and pastoralists

This report uses the terms “rangelands” and “pastoralists” as defined in the document “Calling for your support to designate an InternationalYear of Rangelands & Pastoralists” (available at: https:// bit.ly/2A3fOgI) created by the International Support Group for the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists Initiative (IYRP): According to the ecological definition, rangelands are lands on which the indigenous vegetation consists predominantly of grasses, grass-like plants, forbs, shrubs, or trees that are grazed or have the potential to be grazed or browsed, and which are used as a natural ecosystem for raising grazing livestock and wildlife. Rangelands may include native grasslands, savannas, shrublands, deserts, woodlands and forests in drylands, taiga, steppes, pampas, llanos, cerrado, campos, veld, tundras, alpine communities and marshes (adapted from Allen et al. 2011). Pasturelands and grasslands are synonymous when referring to modified or improved ecosystems that are managed for grazing. They can include meadows managed for hay and silage, cultivated and permanent pasturelands, and naturalized and semi-natural grasslands (adopted from Allen et al. 2011). Natural grasslands are a type of rangeland. According toMcGahey et al. (2014), pastoralists are people who raise or care for livestock, wild or semi-domesticated animals on rangelands, including nomads, transhumant herders and ranchers. In some societies, pastoralist is an ethnic label, denoting an indigenous person. This gap analysis focuses on people who are

directly engaged in pastoralism, such as animal husbandry on rangelands.

Sometimes the term “extensive grazing” is used as a synonym for rangeland grazing (and “intensive system” for confined grazing). On the other hand, in some countries, the terms extensive and intensive refer only to the density of livestock irrespective of the type of land use. Due to this contradiction, these two terms are not used in this study. The types of livestock that pastoralists keep depend on climate, environment, access to water and other natural resources, as well as geographical area, and may include alpacas, camels, cattle, goats, horses, llamas, reindeer, sheep, vicunas and yaks (Rota and Sperandini 2009). This analysis includes all types of rangelands and covers pastoralists who use land-extensive systems (rotational grazing, mobile nomadism, etc.). Agropastoralist societies whose livestock production is land-extensive and dependent on the use of rangelands are also included in the scope of the study. In this report, the terms pastoralists and pastoralism are used to refer to both pastoralists/pastoralism and agropastoralists/agropastoralism. Defining local and indigenous knowledge and technologies (LIKT) is challenging because there are cultural and national differences in how the term indigenous is recognized, as well as linguistic differences in describing the concepts of indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, local knowledge, etc. The study will therefore adopt a broad understanding of LIKT.

Ingeneral, there is a lackof consensus on thedefinition of pastoralism, especially on categorizing the ranges between subsistence and commercial, land-intensive and land-extensive, and pastoral and agropastoral, among others. This study considers a pastoralist as someone who raises animals through some form of open-space grazing involving rotational movement (mobility) of animals. They can be distinguished from others who raise animals in confined spaces (for example, feedlots) or through continuous grazing (where the animals are not rotated around different pastures or paddocks). This study also adopts the following categorization of pastoralists depending on how mobile they are: nomadic is used when mobility is high and opportunistic, and where the family often moves with the animals; transhumant refers to pastoralism with regular back-and-forth movements between relatively fixed locations, and where usually only some family members or one herder moves with the animals; and ranching is used for sedentary pastoralists where grazing is more place-bound with some form of rotational land use. This study understands that these terms may not fully coincide with how they are used in different countries, but it reflects an attempt to create a common language. The study also hopes that negative perceptions associated with some of these words (for example, nomad) can be set aside in favour of a better understanding of pastoralism. There are different types of rangeland tenure and occupancy; some examples are sedentary leasehold, common land grazing and traditional agreements on long-range mobility.

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