A case of benign neglect

Recommendations Conduct an intergovernmental, integrated global assessment

Provide sufficient funding and resources to address information gaps on pastoralists and rangelands through an intergovernmental, multi-year, integrated global assessment, which is participatory and addresses terminology for a common understanding on pastoralism and rangelands. • Provide sufficient funding and resources for an intergovernmental, science-based, multi- year, holistic, participatory, integrated global assessment of pastoralism and rangelands that covers socioeconomic and biophysical issues, how the pastoral systems interact with other parts of society, as well as past trends and future scenarios. Update the global assessment regularly. • Ensure that the integrated global assessment covers all the descriptive and thematic gaps identified in this study. In particular, descriptive information on the extent of land considered rangelands and on populations and communities considered pastoralist is a vital first step, as is the trend in these figures over time. • Ensure that the integrated global assessment can collect verifiable and high-quality new and existing data and information (including primary field data) on the gaps identified, such as gender issues, incorporating new paradigms, traditional knowledge and innovative thinking. It is recommended that the gaps in information be closed through a combination of remotely sensed data and local-level data collection. Furthermore, the data collected should respond to indicators used by pastoralists when assessing the land.

• Ensure that the integrated global assessment is consistent and comparable in terms of definitions, methodologies and mapping protocols, by being sensitive to the ambiguity and regional and geographical differences in terminology, and using a semantic oncology. In this way, the global assessment can lay the basis for harmonizing data-collection and monitoringonpastoralismandrangelandsworldwide. • Ensure that governments provide direct access to existing local and national statistics and primary data on pastoralists and rangelands to the integrated global assessment in order to help disaggregate existing data wherever possible. • Provide sufficient funding, time and resources for the integrated global assessment to address the methodological and preparatory challenges identified in thegapanalysis, suchas the inclusionof indigenous and local pastoralists in a participatory international process for developing a lexicon of related and comparable terms (semantic ontology), the participatory selection of the most appropriate system boundary, scope and methodology, and the establishment of bilateral partnerships for accessing data not freely available online. • Provide sufficient funding, time and resources for the integrated global assessment to directly access local and national government statistics (including translation), to access grey literature and local and traditional knowledge and technology (LIKT), to collect newprimary field data on areas and themes with gaps as identified in this report, and to analyse the impact of national government policies and subsidies on pastoralists and rangelands.

Herders drawing water for livestock in Niger. Wolfgang Bayer

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