Placing rangelands at the heart of international agendas
Rangelands cover more than half the planet's land surface, hold a third of its key biodiversity areas and generate benefits worth an estimated 21–47 trillion US dollars a year (up to 5,000 USD per hectare). Yet these landscapes remain almost invisible to the people who finance and govern the natural world. A new global report launched at the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) makes the economic case for investing in rangelands, and recognises the labour and stewardship of the 500 million pastoralists who manage them.
Overturning a century-old assumption
Rangelands Rising: Investing in Sustainable Management and Restoration is jointly published by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative, UNCCD and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The report overturns a century-old assumption. Mobile livestock herding has long been blamed for driving land degradation. Research increasingly demonstrates that many rangelands have evolved with grazing and that well-managed pastoral systems have created and maintained some of the world's most biodiverse landscapes. Yet that stewardship is under growing strain, as drought intensifies and grazing land is lost to crop expansion, urban encroachment and fragmentation.
Full worth stays invisible to markets
Far from being the wasteland they are often taken for, rangelands are a mainstay of the food supply, producing high-value animal protein — meat, milk and more — from land that could not support crops without heavy and costly inputs. In sub-Saharan Africa, pastoralism contributes an estimated 5 to 10 per cent of national GDP and accounts for 15 to 40 per cent of the value added in agriculture. But their full worth — in water, carbon, biodiversity and protection against drought — stays invisible to markets. The cost of that neglect is steep. Land degradation drains trillions of dollars a year in lost services, while restoring rangelands typically returns 4 to 6 USD for every dollar invested, and, where public benefits such as water supply are counted, as much as 36 to one.
Immense benefits for society
The report's most striking economic finding is a mismatch between who does the work and who captures the value. In Jordan, for example, reviving a traditional practice of resting grazing land returned just 0.80 USD for every dollar the herders themselves spent. But the return to Jordanian society as a whole was 18 to one, driven mainly by groundwater recharge.
A gap in national finance policies
One of the main obstacles is the insufficient level of investment in rangelands, particularly climate finance and funding for land restoration. The report highlights a significant gap in national climate policies. While forests are widely recognised in climate strategies, the term “rangelands”, referring to grazing lands, appears in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of only 24 countries, compared with 181 countries for forests. For the report’s authors, this situation reflects a genuine blind spot in public policies and climate action financing mechanisms. Rangelands Rising therefore seeks to help place rangelands at the heart of international agendas on climate, land restoration, biodiversity and sustainable development.
Shift in perception needed
The report also calls for a paradigm shift in the way pastoral communities are perceived. Nomadic and transhumant herders should no longer be viewed solely as vulnerable populations or victims of climate and land-related crises. They should be recognised as key actors in the sustainable management of rangelands, and even as co-investors and stewards of these territories. This approach is particularly important in the Sahel, a region facing growing conflicts over land use, agricultural expansion, natural resource degradation and the impacts of climate change. The report therefore calls for securing the land tenure and use rights of pastoral communities, while also protecting transhumance corridors, which are essential for livestock mobility and coexistence among the different uses of these territories.
(ILRI/sri)
Link to report:
Rangelands Rising: Investing in Sustainable Management and Restoration
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