COS 172-4 - Following the Science: Challenges of changing peoples’ actions when the evidence shows that changes in herding can increase environmental and social good

Background/Question/Methods

Experiments comparing ‘business as usual’ grazing in which herders choose an area and let cattle graze as they wish with ‘planned grazing’ where cattle are bunched and heavily graze small area for a short period before being moved to another small area, show that vegetation quantity and quality improve, that the abundance of meso- and mega-herbivores increase and that livestock growth rate and milk yield also increase. Despite pastoralist knowledge of these strategies and outcomes from participating in the experiments and learning the results, adoption of modified grazing practices that improve rangelands remains limited

How can pastoralist herders be encouraged to improve the quality of their grazing commons while increasing biodiversity and their economic gain?

To see if financial incentives will induce changes in pastoralist grazing practice, and if such changes can improve rangelands, we gathered data on pastoralists’ livestock and contracting preferences via a questionnaire and developed a model of pastoral herd management. Our approach generated an indifference curve for cattle and shoats (sheep and goats), which was used to simulate different financial incentives and study the projected effects on pastoralists’ livestock herd compositions. We then mapped these herd compositions to grazing pressure on the pastoralists’ rangelands.

Results/Conclusions

We find that a cattle-focused leased grazing program results in relieved cattle grazing pressure on pastoralist commons. However, the leasing process is less attractive to pastoralists preferring shoats over cattle. These shoat-rearing pastoralists instead fill some of the vacated space with shoats instead of purchasing permits. This leakage offsets some of the conservation benefits and results in a greater share of shoats on the communal commons. Overall, approximately 0.59 cows’ worth of free space persists on the commons per permit sold, indicating reduced grazing pressure. Although this represents a small proportion (3.8%) of the total livestock in the system, novel markets such as leased-grazing can benefit both commercial ranchers and pastoral herders without worsening the quality of pastoralist grazing commons.



Following the science can improve pastoralist rangelands, which in turn can increase wildlife abundance. But it requires more than ‘learning by participating’ in novel grazing schemes. The introduction of a permit market produces outcomes that lead to environmental and social good. But lack of strong management institutions will likely limit the effectiveness of other regenerative grazing practices. Thus, additional interventions will be needed to strengthen pastoral management institutions and scale-up the permit program to make it a successful conservation tool.