New FAO guide offer pointers to protect a sustainable mobile lifestyle with special land-use skills

Figure: Camel herders near Fada in Chad.

FAO 25 November 2016, ROME--Assuring adequate tenure rights to land is an important step in improving food security for millions of people in developing countries, but safeguarding tenure isn't so straightforward when it comes to the way land is used by mobile pastoralist communities.

More than 500 million people on the planet rely on livestock herding, often steering their animals around various landscapes to reach water and pasture sources and avoid drought, animal disease and civil conflict. To address the inherently more complex needs of pastoralists, many of whom rely on covering vast territories in opportunistic ways, FAO, with the support of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Commission on Environmental Law and the Commission on Environment, Economic and Social Policy, has produced a technical yet accessible guide on how to establish viable tenure arrangements for the often-marginalized people who use around a third of the earth's surface.

Improving governance of pastoral lands is part of a series of publications offering insight on how to implement the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, a landmark initiative whose global endorsement in 2012 was begun and brokered by FAO.

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See more: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/454844/icode/