Topic 4

Social Issues for Pastoralism

What are the social dimensions of the access to social services, human health, education, youth, citizenship, security, and modernization?

Development in pastoral areas has too often lagged behind that of other areas, thus maintaining poverty and vulnerability that undermine the sustainability of the system. Inadequate development policies have often weakened traditional land tenure and natural resource governance systems; They have restricted the mobility of herds which conditions the functioning of the system, while continuing to deprive breeders of basic services needed for development, such as education, safety and health.

In this context, the propensity of pastoral societies to remain invisible is often analyzed with ambivalence: their marginality is emphasized in development actions, while conceding that their invisibility has preserved them from the effects of political interventions contradictory to their processes of social reproduction. However, the adaptive capacities of pastoral populations in sub-Saharan Africa, which have long been linked to their strategy of avoiding pressures, are today in contradiction with collective action likely to influence their becoming citizens, within the societies to which they belong.

In 2017, while pastoral peoples are regularly cited in the litterature on development aid as emblematic of resilience, this session will invite debate on several aspects of social change. While pastoral systems have proved their adaptive capacity on multiple occasions, this is not only about internal adaptations to production systems, but also about the various forms of social change experienced by the fractions of pastoralist populations, whether it is suffered, negotiated or imposed, and about the relationship that these societies have with change.

Communications and feedback will address these themes, in particular:

The Changes in access to productive resources and basic services:  What changes can be observed in the pastoral management of productive resources (water, food, breeds, animal species ...), in protection systems against uncertainties, in security strategies? ; - What are the new forms of coexistence with other systems

(agricultural, agro-industrial), what are the stakes involved (opportunities for salaried employment and outlets for livestock production, land disputes, etc.) ?; - What changes are observed in family access and trade-offs in basic services (human and animal health, education, etc.): how is schooling changing in general and that of girls in particular? - Do these changes vary between generations, living standards, regions?

The new issues of ownership and use by breeders of new technologies, laptops and social networks: - What is the diffusion and use of mobile phones, whether in productive activities (information, prospecting resources etc.) or social? - Do the O.P. Pastoral organisations position themselves in the spheres of advocacy, aid, militancy, and on which themes?

The new realities of mobility: transhumance in its various modalities, long emphasized as the main characteristic of the way of life of the pastors: - How does it evolve? (APESS and call for semi-settlement, etc.) ? ; - Are labor migrations, migration networks taking on a special character?…