Living with drought has taught pastoralists lessons the world needs
Grist · LC · trust 42/100
Cattle are a central part of the identity of Andrew Msami’s Maasai community in northeast Tanzania. Herd size determines social position, and many people keep all their wealth in livestock, not banks. But in recent years, Msami and others have been forced to sell the animals and buy goats, which can handle drought better but are less financially and culturally valuable. Msami says adapting to a shifting climate has been a part of Maasai life for generations, but recent conditions represent an existential threat.
“We have to adapt because it’s like desertification is attacking our identity,” Msami told Grist. “If you lose your identity, it means you have lost everything.”
The Maasai are pastoralists, a term that describes the roughly 500 million people around the world who tend herds of livestock like cattle, goats, and sheep. They often move with the animals as they seek grass and water. Because they live and work in places with arid conditions and extreme temperatures, they are particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Around the world, drought and land degradation threaten rangelands, which make up roughly half of the planet’s landmass, and the pastoralists from Tanzania and Sudan to Nepal and Mongolia that rely on them. Desertification is occurring at 30 to 35 times the historical average, threatening even the most resilient communities. That’s on top of an influx of invasive species, extractive industries, tourists, and other threats.
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To address these overlapping crises, Msami and hundreds of other pastoralists are in Mongolia this week for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification , or UNCCD. They are calling for stronger protections for Indigenous pastoral traditions, greater access to funding and resources to combat the crisis, and official recognition that the experience of generations living on increasingly marginal lands offers lessons for adapting to a hotter, drier world.
“We want to give the world a message that it’s not only the land that you will have to really look at,” said Msami, who is the program lead for the Pastoralists Indigenous Non-Governmental Organizations Forum, or PINGOs Forum , which is a network representing over 50 pastoralist organizations in Tanzania. “But you look at the people in that land, and maybe their lives should not be disturbed or sacrificed for the development of the world.”
That message must first overcome a global environmental movement that has not always prioritized rangelands and the peoples who steward them.
In 1992, world leaders gathered at the historic United Nations Earth Summit in Brazil, where they identified three great environmental challenges: climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification. Global conferences were established for each, creating a forum where the world would develop plans to tackle them. In the decades since, trillions of dollars have flowed toward the first two, while desertification has largely been relegated to a problem for the developing world to address.
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“But now the history is catching them because when you look at Spain, France, even Sweden, all those countries, they have a bigger drought ever since the last two years,” said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, who is Mbororo from Chad and the first chair of the Indigenous peoples caucus at UNCCD. “So it is becoming a developed countries issue, and now they start paying more attention, but still it does not get the same attention on the level of political will or finance.”
Although this is the 17th meeting of the convention, Ibrahim described this year’s event as “unique, historic, and particular.” That is because it is the first with a formal caucus specifically for Indigenous peoples, something not found at the climate and biodiversity conferences. Because of that, Ibrahim and others consider this gathering a unique opportunity for Indigenous pastoralists to advocate for their rights and advance their goals on the international stage.
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