Pastoralists are livestock keepers who are frequently on the move, sometimes across huge distances. Following mobile lifestyles and living far from centres of power, they are often inaccurately dismissed as backward and in need of modernisation.
Many policies are directed at transforming mobile pastoralists into settled agriculturalists or urban dwellers. This aims at recasting them into the dominant image of “civilised” living. And, despite their positive contributions to livelihoods, economies and the environment, the world’s many millions of pastoralists have been vilified as contributors to climate change and destroyers of the environment.
