Exploring the Information Base Needed for Sustainable Management of Rangeland Resources for Improved Livelihoods

Pastoralism is one of the most sustainable production systems worldwide and plays a major role in safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity in rangelands. The unique biological and cultural diversity of rangelands contributes to goods, services and knowledge that benefit humans also beyond the herding communities. Yet data currently available on grassland, forestry, agriculture and livestock are inadequate for informing policymaking on rangeland-based livestock systems. A review of global environmental assessments, online databases, peer-reviewed literature and international project documents showed that available information seldom disaggregates rangelands from other ecosystems or pastoralists from other rural dwellers. Few peer-reviewed publications address pastoral and rangeland issues combined. While some international projects present contextualised information on cases of pastoralism and rangelands, most do not share the data on their websites. A challenge encountered when seeking information is the inconsistency in defining pastoralists and rangelands. Estimates of the total number of pastoralists vary from 22 million to over half a billion; estimates of area covered by rangelands vary from 18% to 80% of the world’s land surface. The variation in definitions and lack of disaggregation of data lead to significant knowledge gaps on the condition and trends of pastoralism and rangelands. These therefore tend to be devalued. Underrating benefits of livestock mobility and inaccurate data on rangeland degradation could cause governments to blame and dismantle traditionally sustainable pastoral systems – in other words, ‘fix’ something that’s not broken. Without good data on pastoralists and rangelands, the impacts of current policies on these livelihoods and ecosystems cannot be assessed, and sustainable use and management of rangelands for improved livelihoods may be hindered. Improving the information base is high on the agenda of the initiative for an International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists to increase global awareness of the importance of rangelands and pastoralists for livelihoods and healthy ecosystems

Rangelands and Pastoralism of the Middle-East and North Africa, from Reality to Dream

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a vast area covering 20 countries from western Asia to North Africa, with nearly 9,000,000 Km2 and 303 million hectares of total rangelands. Rangelands play an essential role in supporting people\u27s livelihoods and food security. Mobile pastoralism is the most viable and resilient form of production and land use in the fragile drylands of MENA. The region\u27s governments have considered mobile pastoralism as backwards mainly because it was difficult to deliver mobile services to them. They designed various policies that were not in harmony with pastoralists\u27 customary rules and norms and severely weakened their mutual aid associations and governance systems for natural resources management. Nowadays, pastoralists\u27 rangelands and customary territories are shrinking, fragmenting, and degrading due to various reasons, but mainly the expansion of agricultural or industrial needs. Based on pastoralists and rangelands\u27 socio-ecological values, the world needs to apply the evidence-based experiences and Indigenous knowledge of pastoralists in preventing rangeland degradation. It is urgent to start a new era for a paradigm-shift for an inclusive interaction, establishing pro-poor livestock policies. These polices would address the barriers and bottlenecks faced by pastoral and agro-pastoral communities, and secure land tenure at community and landscape levels through multi-stakeholder dialogue, including during the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP). It is time to call for respect of customary governance systems of pastoralists, recognition of their territories as Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCA1s—territories of life) under various and norms in the region like Qoroq, Hima, Agdal, and any other form of local conservation to prevent fragmentation of pastoralists territories and rangelands degradation leading to desertification

Grasslands, Rangelands, Pastoralists – What Do We Mean?

The terms grasslands and rangelands are often confused, but the terms used to describe the people who live and manage these areas are even more confusing. The myriad of words used about these people includes: pastoralists, farmers, ranchers, herders, transhumants, indigenous peoples, nomads, graziers, gauchos. The terms used vary across the world, and meanings vary across time and space. One definition of pastoralists is “livestock-keepers who specialise in taking advantage of variability, managing grazing itineraries at a variety of scales so that livestock feed better than without a herder” (Krätli 2019). The United Nations Decade of Family Farming defines farmers as “people who own or operate an agricultural enterprise, either commercially or to sustain their families”. “Family farmers” include peasants, indigenous peoples, traditional communities, fisherfolk, mountain farmers, forest users and pastoralists (FAO & IFAD 2019). Excellent glossaries on rangelands and grasslands have been developed by the Society for Range Management (SRM), the International Grassland Congress (IGC) and the International Rangeland Congress (IRC). More recently, another group of scientists developed a complementary glossary of socio-institutional and political terms, the “people” terms. This glossary includes terms for the people who live and manage rangelands, including pastoralists, farmers, ranchers and many others. Also included are terms about the mobility of animals and people, e.g. transhumance, as well as land tenure, property and ownership, land rights, changes in rights to land, and land management and governance. This glossary has a Western focus, even though definitions take terms from various parts of the world into consideration. At this stage, terms are defined only in English, but it is hoped that they will be translated into other languages, and also that more terms will be added that are specific to certain regions of the world

Feedbacks and social tipping: A dynamic systems approach to rapid decarbonization

Social tipping points are promising levers for accelerating progress towards net-zero greenhouse gas emission targets. They describe how social, political, economic or technological systems can move rapidly into a new state if cascading positive feedback mechanisms are triggered. Analysing the potential for social tipping requires considering the inherent complexity of social systems and their feedbacks. Here, drawing on insights from an expert elicitation workshop, we outline a dynamic systems approach that entails i) a systems outlook involving interconnected feedback mechanisms alongside cross-system and cross-scale interactions, ii) directed data collection efforts to provide empirical evidence and monitoring of social tipping dynamics, and iii) global, integrated, descriptive modelling to project future dynamics and provide ex-ante evidence for interventions aiming to trigger positive feedback mechanisms. We argue how and why this approach will strengthen the climate policy relevance of research on social tipping

A dynamic systems approach to harness the potential of social tipping

Social tipping points are promising levers to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emission targets. They describe how social, political, economic or technological systems can move rapidly into a new state if cascading positive feedback mechanisms are triggered. Analysing the potential of social tipping for rapid decarbonization requires considering the inherent complexity of social systems. Here, we identify that existing scientific literature is inclined to a narrative-based account of social tipping, lacks a broad empirical framework and a multi-systems view. We subsequently outline a dynamic systems approach that entails (i) a systems outlook involving interconnected feedback mechanisms alongside cross-system and cross-scale interactions, and including a socioeconomic and environmental injustice perspective (ii) directed data collection efforts to provide empirical evidence for and monitor social tipping dynamics, (iii) global, integrated, descriptive modelling to project future dynamics and provide ex-ante evidence for interventions. Research on social tipping must be accordingly solidified for climate policy relevance

Holocene wildfire regimes in western Siberia: interaction between peatland moisture conditions and the composition of plant functional types

Wildfire is the most common disturbance type in boreal forests and can trigger significant changes in forest composition. Waterlogging in peatlands determines the degree of tree cover and the depth of the burnt horizon associated with wildfires. However, interactions between peatland moisture, vegetation composition and flammability, and fire regime in forest and forested peatland in Eurasia remain largely unexplored, despite their huge extent in boreal regions. To address this knowledge gap, we reconstructed the Holocene fire regime, vegetation composition, and peatland hydrology at two sites located in predominantly light taiga (Pinus sylvestris Betula) with interspersed dark taiga communities (Pinus sibirica, Picea obovata, Abies sibirica) in western Siberia in the Tomsk Oblast, Russia. We found marked shifts in past water levels over the Holocene. The probability of fire occurrence and the intensification of fire frequency and severity increased at times of low water table (drier conditions), enhanced fuel dryness, and an intermediate dark-to-light taiga ratio. High water level, and thus wet peat surface conditions, prevented fires from spreading on peatland and surrounding forests. Deciduous trees (i.e. Betula) and Sphagnum were more abundant under wetter peatland conditions, and conifers and denser forests were more prevalent under drier peatland conditions. On a Holocene scale, severe fires were recorded between 7.5 and 4.5 ka with an increased proportion of dark taiga and fire avoiders (Pinus sibirica at Rybnaya and Abies sibirica at Ulukh–Chayakh) in a predominantly light taiga and fire-resister community characterised by Pinus sylvestris and lower local water level. Severe fires also occurred over the last 1.5 kyr and were associated with a declining abundance of dark taiga and fire avoiders, an expansion of fire invaders (Betula), and fluctuating water tables. These findings suggest that frequent, high-severity fires can lead to compositional and structural changes in forests when trees fail to reach reproductive maturity between fire events or where extensive forest gaps limit seed dispersal. This study also shows prolonged periods of synchronous fire activity across the sites, particularly during the early to mid-Holocene, suggesting a regional imprint of centennial- to millennial-scale Holocene climate variability on wildfire activity. Humans may have affected vegetation and fire from the Neolithic; however, increasing human presence in the region, particularly at the Ulukh–Chayakh Mire over the last 4 centuries, drastically enhanced ignitions compared to natural background levels. Frequent warm and dry spells predicted by climate change scenarios for Siberia in the future will enhance peatland drying and may convey a competitive advantage to conifer taxa. However, dry conditions will probably exacerbate the frequency and severity of wildfire, disrupt conifers' successional pathway, and accelerate shifts towards deciduous broadleaf tree cover. Furthermore, climate–disturbance–fire feedbacks will accelerate changes in the carbon balance of boreal peatlands and affect their overall future resilience to climate change