Pastoralism and its social aspects

Pastoralism is a livelihood strategy based on extensive livestock herding, which plays a paramount role in addressing the current global poly-crisis, contributing to sustainable food systems, preserving cultural diversity, and enhancing territorial ecological resilience. However, neoliberal policies, land commodification, and conservation-driven displacement threaten pastoralist communities. Employing a political ecology framework and contrasting industrial agribusiness and conservation models with alternative frameworks like agroecology and food sovereignty, the chapter explores how capitalist power relations marginalize pastoralists and affect land governance. As a result, pastoralists emerge as actors of resistance, through grassroots mobilization, legal battles, and innovative urban practices. The chapter additionally points out the role of pastoralism in biodiversity conservation, food security, and climate, identifying pastoralism as a socio-cultural-ecological system. Lastly, calling decolonial approaches that recognize pastoralist knowledge systems and commons-based governance as alternatives to capitalist land management, and examining global examples from Africa to the Arctic, the chapter advocates for policies and frameworks that empower pastoralists as key actors in shaping equitable socio-ecological futures for sustainability and justice.