In Africa, pastoralism is serious business.
There are an estimated 200-300 million pastoralists – livestock herders – who provide the continent with 75% of its milk and half of its meat. In some countries, the trade can make up more than one-third of GDP.
It might seem surprising then that this vital sector doesn’t have a stronger political voice and that its concerns are not a major priority for many governments. Yet it has long been the case that nomadic groups of herders are likely to be marginalised more than other food producers – or even ignored.
The centuries-old practice of pastoralism now faces a constellation of threats that are pushing some communities permanently out of business. In some places, the long-term viability of pastoralism is at risk, buffeted by multiple, overlapping factors – both related to climate change, and unconnected to it.
Conflict concerns
Pastoralists make a living by raising animals – including goats, cattle and sheep – and move with their herds across vast distances between seasons. Historically, they have enjoyed a resilient and adaptive lifestyle, allowing them to travel where the weather and grazing conditions are most favourable and avoiding disease and potential disasters.
The practice also has environmental benefits – periodic grazing improves soil health and prevents the land and vegetation from becoming degraded while improving biodiversity.
The problem facing pastoralists today is that their livelihood has come into direct competition with a range of public and private interests. More and more land traditionally used by herders is being given over to other uses: large-scale commercial farming, mining or energy operations, urbanisation and even conservation areas.
These are often the economic priorities of national governments, which see them as more productive, and so hand farmers and companies stronger rights to manage the land. This puts them in conflict with pastoralists who are forced to graze their livestock on someone else’s land – in some cases leading to violence.
Thousands of deaths have been reported in West and Central Africa over the past decade as a result of this kind of conflict. Clashes are particularly prominent in Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso, where tensions cross ethnic, religious and social lines.
In Nigeria – home to some of the worst fighting – state governments have enacted controversial anti-grazing laws which they claim are designed to prevent further fatalities. Pastoralist groups have pushed back, arguing that the legal restrictions reflect a longstanding bias against nomadic herders and will make it even harder for them to earn a living.
Despite agreements to allow the free movement of herders, some countries in West Africa have closed their borders, citing the prevalence of livestock disease. With smaller areas of land to graze on and migratory routes closed off, pastoralists are being boxed into a corner.
Climate risk
Climate change serves to pile on the pressure. Persistent drought, more intense rainfall and extreme temperatures are creating difficult conditions for pastoralists. Many animals die on long treks with little water and less productive lands to graze on.
This creates the conditions for conflict with settled farmers – but on the ground, the situation is more complicated, experts say. Camille Laville, a research fellow at ODI Global, a London-based think tank, told Climate Home: “There is an oversimplification in our understanding between herder-farmer conflicts and the role of climate change.”
“We can start this discussion with the climate, but we can also start it with years of political changes, ethnic differences, religious differences. There are many ways to frame this subject and the climate is just one of them,” she added.
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Climate change creates harsher conditions and increased vulnerabilities, but existing social and political factors weigh heavily on herders’ livelihoods.
Fiona Flintan, a senior scientist at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), said “climate change may not be the biggest problem that pastoralists face”.
Among the many different users of land, pastoralists “as ‘masters’ (and ‘mistresses’) of adaptation can be the most resilient and skilled at adapting to climate change”, she added. But trouble can start to mount up when they aren’t given the right kind of support.
Flintan sees land security as the main gap for pastoralists. “If they have guaranteed security to their land and resources, they will be better positioned to deal with shocks and stresses,” she explained. “And more than that, pastoralists will then be willing to invest in their land to support biodiversity, soil health, and emissions reduction. It will resolve a lot of challenges.”
Yet, in many parts of Africa, obtaining secure access to the land is a complex process, and some national governments are more willing to recognise land rights than others.
Kenya’s Community Land Act, for example, offers pastoralists a route to seeing their land claims recognised and their rights protected. But the challenge in places like Kenya or Ethiopia – which has also adopted a Pastoral Development Policy – is defining in a legal context the unwritten customs and traditions of many different pastoral communities.
As Flintan notes, governments often lack resources and sometimes the technical expertise to prioritise land use strategies. “It’s about having proper planning and governance, supported by a skilled team and adequate funds in place to ensure it happens,” she said.
Greener pastures
Getting to the root cause of the challenges facing pastoralists could mean missing the urgency of more immediate problems, while difficulty in trying to untangle all of the interwoven factors could slow progress.
This complexity leads some researchers, such as Laville, to call for more practical responses, while accepting that there isn’t a perfect answer. “If we wait to fully understand this issue, we will never have sufficient time for action,” she said.
Some experts point to the need to raise the profile of pastoralists both within countries and on the international stage. The latest COP summit of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification is taking place in Saudi Arabia this month – reportedly the largest UN land-focused conference to date.
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Marginalised groups often lack a voice at UN talks – and while pastoralist civil society organisations will be in Riyadh, they need a stronger presence at the negotiating table in order to be able to influence what is decided there, experts say.
“We are getting better at listening to herders, but we need to be cautious not to bring our own preconceptions to the discussion,” said Laville, commenting on the UN COP process. “There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this problem.”
Scientists have argued for some time now that UN member states could benefit from pastoralists’ expertise in tackling emerging threats including biodiversity loss and global warming. Being open to learning from those who know the land intimately and how it is changing could pay practical dividends, they say.
Pastoralism is a livelihood that has lasted for generations and weathered many storms. The first step for any government is recognising the significant economic and environmental contributions it makes, researchers told Climate Home.
“It’s not a job; it’s a cultural identity. This doesn’t get eradicated by droughts or government policy,” added Flintan.
Sponsored by SPARC (Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises), a six-year research programme that informs policies, practices and investments to better support the resilience of dryland communities in Africa and the Middle East.
Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.
The post The world is getting smaller for pastoralists facing multiple threats appeared first on Climate Home News.
The world is getting smaller for pastoralists facing multiple threats
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
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Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
