Unforgivably, pastoralism continues to be listed as a main reason for desertification in UNCCD documents, although a large number of scientific studies refute this claim and emphasize the positive effects of this land-use strategy. The FAO also brought out a study last year on the effects of livestock on the environment in which it lumps together pastoralism with industrial livestock production. Drynet begs to differ and has collated some of the bright aspects of pastoralism in the paper below. Looking at the Bright Side of Life Stock: Mobile pastoralism and the environment Ilse Köhler-Rollefson and Silke Brehm, League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development and Drynet FAO’ s publication Livestock’s Long Shadow provides an alarming account of the destructive impact of livestock on all aspects of the environment, be it land degradation, climate change, water depletion, air and water pollution, even biodiversity. While an in-depth discussion of the issue is welcome, it is unforgivable that the study lumps together indiscriminately all types of livestock keeping, ranging from landless industrial systems to pastoralism. Yes, industrial livestock production is extremely damaging and leaves a monumental carbon footprint, but other forms of animal husbandry can be highly beneficial to the environment, conserve biodiversity and even counter climate change. Livestock plays an indispensable role in upholding soil fertility and are a crucial means of recycling nutrients, as is well recognized in organic farming. Here the focus is on pastoralism, a way of livestock keeping that bears no resemblance whatsoever to intensive production and is actually very much attuned to nature. Pastoralism is an ancient land-use strategy, almost as old as crop cultivation, that has shaped the landscapes and cultures of vast tracts of the world, including Northern and Central Asia, the Middle East, Western India, Northern Africa and the Sahelian zone, as well as the Andes in South America. It is defined differently in different parts of the world – for instance in Australia it comprises landed sheep producers - but in this context we understand it as the herding of animals on common property resources which either consist of natural vegetation or of fallow fields. Value Addition of Uncultivable Land One of the fundamental differences between industrial production and pastoralism is that the former depends on feed stuffs that have been produced elsewhere and frequently have been shipped around the globe. These feed stuffs currently include close to 50% of the world’s cereal outputs, i.e. compete to some extent with cereals for direct human consumption! By contrast, pastoralism exploits locally available resources that would otherwise not be utilized. In fact, mobile pastoralism is the only way of utilizing for food and fibre production the large parts of the globe’s terrestrial surface where crop cultivation is not feasible. This includes the approximately 20% of the earth’s tropical and subtropical drylands which extend over 31,2 million square km, but also mountainous and high-altitude zones, as well as some very cold areas. In these eco-zones grazing with livestock provides a means of converting the local vegetation into food and energy that can sustain people. Without using herd animals as a medium, huge stretches of the word would have remained uninhabitable! Livestock is thus a means of putting in value uncultivable land and generating extra food without competing for cereals.