UNESCO: Pastoralists are custodians of knowledge that sustains livelihoods, protects biodiversity and helps communities adapt to a changing climate

UNESCO

@UNESCO

 

Pastoralists are custodians of knowledge that sustains livelihoods, protects biodiversity and helps communities adapt to a changing climate. 

 

As #COP17 takes place in Mongolia, discover how  @UNESCO works with pastoralist communities to safeguard living knowledge and strengthen resilience. Read more: https://unes.co/rj83a5 

 

#ForThePeople

 

https://x.com/UNESCO/status/2089351549499887754 

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/unescos-work-pastoralists-highlights-lessons-cop17 

Across the world — in the Andes, the Sahara, the Alps, and the Arctic tundra — communities have spent centuries mastering how to live with the land, not against it. This is pastoralism — raising livestock across environments too extreme for farming, guided by knowledge refined over generations. As COP17 on desertification opens in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (17–28 August 2026), UNESCO shows how pastoralist knowledge, as well as integrated solutions, can address soil degradation, drought, and climate change. 

Working with communities, not just for them

Continuously moving their herds across vast territories is a practice known as transhumance. Several UN agencies work with pastoralist communities on climate and land issues. UNESCO's mandate is distinctive as it encompasses protecting indigenous knowledge systems, safeguarding cultural heritage, and conserving biodiversity through its natural sciences work. Combined with a network of over 2,000 designated sites, this means UNESCO works directly with pastoralists in World Heritage properties, Biosphere Reserves, and Geoparks, where they have a role in land management not just recording their knowledge. 

Roughly 200 of those sites actively partner with pastoralist communities today. Safeguarding knowledge and putting it to use are two different steps, and UNESCO's role is to hold both. 

Knowledge at risk

Pastoralist knowledge survives in songs, recitation, and objects passed between generations, which means it depends entirely on that chain continuing. Among the Tuareg of the central Sahara, ecological and geographic knowledge is carried through poetry and encoded into jewellery, such as silver crosses marking desert locations, pendants mapping the night sky for navigation. If that chain of transmission breaks for even one generation, this precise, functional knowledge can be lost outright — unlike a written record. 

Documenting knowledge before it's lost

For six years, UNESCO supported a research programme with indigenous pastoralists across West Africa, the Horn of Africa, and East Africa, documenting what they know about the changing climate and how. Where conventional climate assessments rely on a handful of measurements that include sea surface temperature and wind speed, pastoralists offered thousands of distinct indicators for reading their environment. The case study of the Mbororo Fulani of Chad shows how transhumance sustains both livelihoods and biodiversity.

Safeguarding makes the practice durable

Protection under the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention works on the same logic as site partnerships: knowledge only stays usable if it survives. In 2023, UNESCO inscribed transhumance and the seasonal droving of livestock across the Mediterranean and the Alps on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, recognizing it as a living practice, not a relic.  

UNESCO connects what pastoralist communities know with what policymakers need: safeguarding knowledge so it survives, and giving communities a role in applying it. As COP17 turns to desertification, pastoralism shows both steps working. 

 https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/unescos-work-pastoralists-highlights-lessons-cop17

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]