A case of benign neglect

Within the sample, the number of publications using terms often associated with the non-equilibrium theory of drylands has generally increased since 2000 (see Figure 15). The terms ‘non-equilibrium’ or ‘disequilibrium’ were mentioned 41 times in publications since 2000. The terms ‘corridor’ (usually associated with livestock movement) and ‘buffer’ (usually associated with grazing territories between groups of pastoralists) showed a steady increase since 2000. The term ‘mobility’ also showed an increase albeit a smaller one, while the term ‘rotation’ showed no significant change over the years. Searching for the terms ‘traditional knowledge’ and ‘community-based’ within the sample returned 39 and 43 publications respectively and revealed an increasing trend in hits since 2000. However, the number of publications was limited to a maximum

of six or seven per year and it seemed that there was poor integration between these notions in academic literature on pastoralism and rangelands. For the terms ‘traditional use’ and ‘co-management’, only three and nine publications were identified since 2000. Keywords related to technical support did not occur often in the sample. Within this subject, ‘veterinary’, ‘credit/loan’ and ‘extension service’ were most frequent (28, 26 and 13 hits respectively). ‘Capacity-building’, ‘institutional development’, ‘rangeland improvement’ and ‘technical support’ occurred less than 10 times (nine, six, four and four hits respectively), while there were no hits for ‘access to development’, ‘aid effectiveness’ or ‘cost of inaction’. Except for ‘veterinary’ and ‘credit/loan’, most keywords related to provision of technical support

occurred in publications in the later 2000s. Given that the terms ‘rangeland productivity’, ‘rangeland degradation’ and ‘rangeland condition’ had far more hits under the ‘nature of rangelands’ category (299, 436 and 554 respectively), it can be assumed that earlier publications discussed technical support in some form, but did not label it as such. Furthermore, the topic of credit/loan received much attention in academic publications, though not in the context of technical support in GEF projects. Keyword searches were therefore not the best method for analysing gaps in the provision of technical support. Since technical support forms part of one of the main objectives of this gap analysis, consideration should be given for developing a more suitable analysing methodology in future assessments. Among the keywords used to examine the topic of direct drivers, the two used most often were ‘land-use change’ (201 hits) and ‘land degradation’ (136 hits). ‘Disaster’, ‘displacement’ and ‘pollution’ have 40, 31 and 21 hits, respectively. The least used keywords were ‘land grabbing’, ‘extreme weather’ and ‘large-scale land acquisition’ (six, four and one hits respectively). While the keyword searches in Scopus indicate researchers’level of interest in certain topics, they also indicate how little is known about pastoralism and rangelands. For example, there were 2,363 articles since 2000 on ‘land grabbing’, an issue that is both new and topical. However, only six of these were about pastoralism and rangelands. On the subject of indirect drivers, the most used keywords were ‘policy’ and ‘institution’ (468 and 124 hits respectively). ‘Carrying capacity’ (representing the ‘old’ paradigm of grazing management) had more than twice as many hits as ‘non-equilibrium/ disequilibrium’(74 and 41 hits). The terms‘agreement’ and‘convention’occurred 47 and 8 times respectively, while ‘SDG’ occurred twice and ‘CBD’ and ‘CCD’ only once each. There were no hits for ‘international obligation’ or ‘political representation’.

Number of publications

70

Buffer Corridor Mobility Rotation

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

2000

2005

2010

2015

‘18

Figure 15: Number of Scopus publications on pastoralism and rangelands with keywords related to non-equilibrium ecology, per publishing year

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