Digital edition: Africa 2021

Land is soil, land is food, land is life. Women’s, youths’ and pastoralists’ livelihoods and income often depend on it, but limited availability of communal land and challenges to formal ownership are increasingly creating tension between herders, farmers and investors. While formal land security in Africa is increasing, the number of land disputes is also on the rise, with women and youth often on the losing end. This plenary represents an intergenerational conversation among farmers, pastoralists, youth and elders, who will share their challenges and collectively explore solutions

Join us for an informal facilitated networking session. Guided by conversational menus, you will have the opportunity to connect with fellow conference participants in short breakout sessions. These sessions (in English and in French) are limited to 300 participants, on a first come, first served basis. Be sure to join the subsession in your preferred language.

Les sessions de réseautage vous mettront en relation avec des personnes du monde entier. Rencontrez une nouvelle personne toutes les cinq minutes ! Le modérateur vous fournira les informations que vous pourrez utiliser pour préparer vos questions afin de tirer le meilleur parti de votre temps de réseautage. Ces sessions (en anglais et en français) sont limitées à 300 participants, selon le principe du premier arrivé, premier servi. Vous auriez la possiblite de rejoindre la session dans langue de votre préférance. 

The Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival seeks to deepen understanding of how diverse peoples gain their livelihoods from extensive livestock production.
The relationships of pastoralist people and animals and their food production systems reflect an intimate intertwining of culture, economy and ecology in harsh environments such as Africa’s drylands. In such environments, mobility of animals plays a key role.
Films of multiple genres – spanning documentary, narrative and experimental – made by pastoralists and/or about pastoralists offer different insights into issues important to pastoralists.
The final session focuses on global recognition of pastoralism and its future with films from Uganda, India and Ireland. A short, animated film introducing pastoralism (CELEP, 2021), is followed by The Turkana (2019) shared by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA). This video is about Turkana pastoralists of northern Uganda facing climate change.
Stories from the landscape: cattle drove (Paul Murphy, 2018) shows the living cultural heritage of transhumance in Europe: moving livestock to different grazing grounds in a seasonal cycle that goes back as long as people have been farming in the region. In Clare County of Ireland, the filmmaker follows the Burren Beo group through their Winterage Festival celebrating this ancient tradition that allows the region’s unique plant and animal life to flourish. Here, the highlands are grazed in the winter and the lowlands in summer. This is contrasted with the movement of sheep in the Alps of northern Italy, where flocks are moved to the mountain pastures for the summer.
Offering a South Asian perspective on pastoralism, Preserving Rajasthan’s camel herds (Cornelia Borrmann (reporter), Deutsche Welle, 2018) shows how the Raika people in India have been herding camels in Rajasthan for centuries. However, their traditional way of life is now under threat. A German NGO, the League for Pastoral Peoples, is trying to create better prospects for the camel herders through the sale of camel milk and other products, in order to help the Raika sustain their livelihoods.
The final film, Bayandalai: Lord of the Taiga (Aner Etxebarria Moral and Pablo Vidal Santos, 2018), leaves us with a question about the future. From inside his yurt in northern Mongolia, the reindeer herder Bayandalai ‒ an elder of the Dukhas tribe ‒ muses about the significance of life and death in the largest forest on Earth, the Taiga. Through his connection with the reindeer and with the Taiga, Bayandalai has access to spiritual and practical knowledge that he may not be able to pass on to his family members before the lures of city life — jobs, money, houses, things — entice them away.
Dr. Ann Waters-Bayer of the Agrecol Association, Dr. Margareta Lelea of the German Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture, and Loupa Pius from DADO – the Dynamic Agro-pastoralist Development Organization (DADO) Kaabong– will offer closing remarks and answer final questions.
A second edition of the Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival will be launched in 2022. And you can be part of it! New films may now be submitted using the link below:
https://filmfreeway.com/PerspectivesonPastoralismFilmFestival
http://www.pastoralistfilmfestival.com/
http://www.celep.info/

This session will focus on innovative ways to capture restoration evidence and ensure it is integrated in the planning process, to inform practice and, in turn, inform policy – that is, the creation of the enabling environment.

Read more: White Paper 

Technology and innovation for restoration monitoring is rapidly advancing supported by developments in geospatial technology and imagery. If deployed effectively across critical landscapes, these technical solutions for restoration planning and monitoring can drive restoration actions on the ground and contribute significantly to meeting the ambitious targets of the restoration, biodiversity and climate agendas. This session will spotlight key solutions and highlight ongoing challenges in ecosystem restoration monitoring with a focus on drylands. The session will feature a soft launch of the Framework For Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM) with a special focus on the integration and implementation of the Drylands Restoration Monitoring Platform (DRIP) developed by FAO in support of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

Read more: White Paper 

We are at a critical crossroads in human history. We can continue on the path that has led to degradation of ecosystems, climate change, poverty, and inequality or we can reverse those trends and create new, regenerative, inclusive, and efficient systems of living and doing business. We propose that the urgent need for housing be met by modern, engineered wood buildings and that the demand for wood be leveraged to drive restorative management of degraded dry tropical forests. Restorative forest management becomes possible through a new and integrated tropical timber industry based on local control and entrepreneurship.

Read more: White Paper 

It’s hard to see where people are restoring Africa’s drylands. Where trees are growing outside of tropical forests, it’s hard for satellites to pick them up and harder to measure their economic and social benefits. It’s even harder to show progress when restoration doesn’t involve trees. In this session, you will learn directly about these challenges and opportunities from people actively restoring drylands. Together, we will unpack the what, the why, and the how of monitoring restoration in drylands — and show how tracking progress can lead to more investment and healthier communities. Join World Resources Institute for this exciting and interactive conversation.

The Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival seeks to deepen understanding of how diverse peoples gain their livelihoods from extensive livestock production.

The relationships of pastoralist people and animals and their food production systems reflect an intimate intertwining of culture, economy and ecology in harsh environments such as Africa’s drylands. In such environments, mobility of animals plays a key role.

Films of multiple genres – spanning documentary, narrative and experimental – made by pastoralists and/or about pastoralists offer different insights into issues important to pastoralists.

This third session confronts political and economic injustices with the theme, ‘Speaking truth to power: pastoralists’ advocacy’. Nick Lunch, from Insight Share in the UK will share a few words about participatory video and the making of Olosho. After a short animation film introducing pastoralism (CELEP, 2021), there is a short film featuring Shoba Liban, Program Manager of the Pastoralist Women Health and Education non-profit organization based in Isiolo, Kenya (CELEP, 2019).

Land grabbing in pastoralist areas is unmasked through two films in this session. Olosho (2015) is a participatory video (PV) made by 6 community members in Loliondo from 5 Maasai clans in northern Tanzania, created with facilitation from InsightShare. In 1992, a hunting company from the United Arab Emirates occupied 1500 km2 of village land in Loliondo to set up a private game reserve beside the Serengeti National Park. Since then, Maasai have been denied access to vital pasture and waterpoints for their herds. The people suffered mass eviction from their villages within the disputed land. The PV training strengthened the Maasai’s self-advocacy to resist land-grabbing by foreign investors.

The last film in this session is an advocacy film, Lower Omo: local tribes under threat (2012). The filmmaker chooses to remain anonymous out of safety concerns. The think-tank, Oakland Institute, shares this film to reveal the situation of agropastoralists in the Lower Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is home to about 200,000 people from several ethnic groups, e.g. the Bode, Dassenach, Hamer, Karo, Kwegu, Mursi, Nyangatom and Suri. Most of them raise livestock where the annual flooding of the Omo River replenishes grazing areas and practise flood-retreat cropping on the riverbanks. Their cattle are a source of food, wealth and pride, and are intimately tied to their cultural identity. The lives and culture of these peoples are threatened by the construction of the Gibe III dam.

The themes presented will be elaborated further by Dr. Christina (Echi) Gabbert from the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at Göttingen University, Germany, who can also answer questions from the audience. She has collaborated in southern Ethiopia with pastoralists over the last twenty years. Among her many publications, she is one of the editors of the book, Lands of the Future: Anthropological Perspectives on Pastoralism, Land Deals and Tropes of Modernity.

A second edition of the Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival will be launched in 2022. And you can be part of it! New films may now be submitted using the link below:
https://filmfreeway.com/PerspectivesonPastoralismFilmFestival
http://www.pastoralistfilmfestival.com/
http://www.celep.info/

Get an inside look at the results of the African capacity needs assessment undertaken by the UN FAO-led taskforce on best practices. This session will raise awareness of the existing systemic capacities for restoration as well as the current gaps and barriers, and of the opportunities to meet these needs in the context of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

The session will highlight pathways towards enhancing practitioners’ capacities through the development or up-scaling of key knowledge products and various capacity development initiatives, such as the Landscape Academy, the FAO-ELTI youth contest, and the Restoration Factory.

The Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival seeks to deepen understanding of how diverse peoples sustain their livelihoods from extensive livestock production.

The relationships between pastoralist people, animals and their food production systems reflect an intimate intertwining of culture, economy and ecology in harsh environments, such as Africa’s drylands, where the mobility of animals plays a key role.

Films of multiple genres – spanning documentary, narrative and experimental – made by pastoralists and/or about pastoralists offer different insights into issues important to pastoralists.

This second session begins with an introductory animation film (CELEP 2021) and then focuses on pastoralist livelihoods in Africa through two films made in Niger. The first is a documentary, Waynaabe: Life scenes of the Wodaabe breeders (Francesco Sincich 2012), which shows the life of nomadic Wodaabe livestock keepers through the eyes of the young mother Mooro. Her unmarried niece, Mariama, explains the worso, a ceremonial gathering of their clan in Akadaney. The film highlights how the Wodaabe value their cattle and deal with the challenges of securing a livelihood in the drylands of Niger. It was commissioned by Vétérinaires Sans Frontières (VSF) Belgium to show the setting of their work on animal health.

The next film is a short, Ngaynaaka: Herding chaos (Saverio Krätli 2017), which focuses on how pastoralists thrive on nature’s variability. As the environment becomes more unpredictable, people all over the world face higher costs in an effort to sustain the usual strategies aimed at controlling it. The Wodaabe pastoralists show that there is another way.

Dr. Saverio Krätli, an honorary editor of the journal Nomadic Peoples, is an anthropologist specializing in pastoral systems. Saverio has worked extensively across sub-Saharan Africa. Among his many publications, he wrote the Pastoral Development Orientation Framework in 2019. Saverio will share insights from his experience working on Ngaynaaka: Herding chaos, and will offer an audience Q&A.
A second edition of the Perspectives on Pastoralism Film Festival will be launched in 2022. And you can be part of it! New films may now be submitted using the link(s) below:
https://filmfreeway.com/PerspectivesonPastoralismFilmFestival
http://www.pastoralistfilmfestival.com/
http://www.celep.info/