Rangelands and Pastoralism of the Middle-East and North Africa, from Reality to Dream (original) (raw)

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a vast area covering 20 countries from western Asia to North Africa, with nearly 9,000,000 Km2 and 303 million hectares of total rangelands. Rangelands play an essential role in supporting people\u27s livelihoods and food security. Mobile pastoralism is the most viable and resilient form of production and land use in the fragile drylands of MENA. The region\u27s governments have considered mobile pastoralism as backwards mainly because it was difficult to deliver mobile services to them. They designed various policies that were not in harmony with pastoralists\u27 customary rules and norms and severely weakened their mutual aid associations and governance systems for natural resources management. Nowadays, pastoralists\u27 rangelands and customary territories are shrinking, fragmenting, and degrading due to various reasons, but mainly the expansion of agricultural or industrial needs. Based on pastoralists and rangelands\u27 socio-ecologica...