In the drylands and mountains where pastoralists live, uncertainty is everywhere. In these settings, negotiating access to resources, navigating volatile markets, making use of varying social relations in times of stress, and responding to conflict and complex political dynamics is essential if livelihoods are to be generated. Pastoralism – the extensive, often mobile use of rangelands – is a vitally important livelihood practice globally. Rangelands cover more than half the world’s land surface, supporting many millions of people and livestock, often in harsh and hostile environments. The book’s chapters – with case studies from Africa, Asia, and Europe – explore how pastoral mobility is sustained, how resources are managed, how markets are combined, how social protections are provided, and how patterns of accumulation and investment are sustained in a more globalized, interconnected world. Focusing on the attributes of flexibility, adaptation, innovation, and learning for generating reliability, the book offers wider lessons for development in pastoral areas the world over that go beyond the rigid modes of planning, management, and control.

‘A critically important and timely book. It explains why pastoralists are experts in managing uncertainty, and why far more participatory, context-specific analysis is needed if the dismal performance of decades of 'pastoral development' is to be reversed.’
Andy Catley, Tufts University, Boston

‘This book is a timely and much needed window into the resilience of pastoralists worldwide, offering important insights into how to increase adaptive capacity in the face of climate change. It offers further proof that pastoralism is not an historical anachronism, but a sustainable solution for both people and the Earth.’
Maryam Niamir-Fuller, co-chair of International Support Group for the United Nations International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, 2026

'Mobile pastoralism is a crucial livelihood for millions worldwide, supporting people and livestock across over half the world's land surface - the rangelands. This important book recognizes and supports this vital practice, which sustains communities in often harsh and hostile environments.'
Jarso Mokku, CEO, Drylands Learning and Capacity Building Initiative, Nairobi, Kenya

Shibaji Bose

Shibaji Bose is a creative consultant and a visual-methods researcher. His work draws on long-term visual ethnography and participatory visual action research in remote and climatically fragile zones in South Asia.

Roopa Gogineni

Roopa Gogineni is a director and photographer focused on historical memory and modes of resistance. She has an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford, where she researched the construction of media narratives around Somalia. 

Natasha Maru

Natasha Maru is a multidisciplinary social scientist and policy consultant working on pastoral development. She has recently finished a PhD with the PASTRES programme at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, where she studied the temporal experiences of mobility among the Rabari pastoralists of western India. 

Tahira Mohamed

Tahira Mohamed is an anthropologist from Marsabit County in northern Kenya. She recently completed her doctoral research under the PASTRES programme at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

Michele Nori

Michele Nori is a tropical agronomist with a further specialization in rural sociology and specific expertise in the resource management and livelihood systems of agro-pastoral communities.

Linda Pappagallo

Linda Pappagallo has a background in research on the political economy of managing resources, which has focused on understanding the political economy of pastoral production, migration and collective management, particularly in the Mediterranean region.

Giulia Simula

Giulia Simula is an agrarian and food movement researcher and activist originally from Sardinia, Italy.

Masresha Taye

Masresha Taye is a development practitioner focusing on African dryland systems. He is interested in research, development, and policy work on drought and conflict-prone areas, disaster risk financing, anticipatory technologies/innovations for pastoral populations, and climate change and uncertainty.

Palden Tsering

Palden Tsering (Chinese Pinyin: Huadancairang) possesses an MSc from the Durrell Institute of Conservation Ecology University of Kent, UK and a PhD from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, as part of the PASTRES programme.

Ian Scoones Ian Scoones is co-director of the ESRC STEPS Centre at Sussex and joint convenor of the IDS-hosted Future Agricultures Consortium. He is an agricultural ecologist whose interdisciplinary research links the natural and social sciences.