• Grazing and pasture

Grazing systems and pasture condition

This paper seeks to provide national and international policy-makers interested in the development of arid and semi-arid areas with background information and policy options, on whether and how to invest in mobility of pastoral systems in Africa.

It first describes the trends leading to declining mobility, followed by a description of the key underlying causes for these trends and their impacts on mobile pastoralists. It then provides the rationale for investments and concludes with policy options which policy-makers face when deciding on priorities to be allocated to overall pastoral development, and to specific actions within pastoral development.

Major policy options and their trade-offs fall under the following headings:

• Overall vision and development thrusts. These include the grounding of land-use decisions on human carrying capacity factors, arable farming versus pastoral grazing options, awareness raising through broad consultation, and strengthening pastoral organisations
• Defining the incentive policies. Possibilities include payment for services, such as charging for water use, the provision of subsidised livestock feed, and compensation for environmental services, such as sustainable range management
• Defining resource access policies- mainly ensuring access and user rights
• Defining investments. These includes investments in infrastructure, social and technical services, and funding for research
• Partnerships and knowledge sharing. The coordination and knowledge sharing among programmes on national and (sub) regional level would be an important asset.

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