{"title":"Pastoralist Societies in the Sahel","authors":"Wendy Wilson-Fall","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198816959.013.38","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on ways that pastoralists respond to ecological and climate variability through strategies of pastoral mobility and exploitation of micro-ecologies throughout the Sahel. The chapter reflects recent scholarly work that argues for recognition of the viability of mobile pastoral systems and their long-term value to national economies and rural community nutrition. West African pasturelands are as biodiverse as woodlands further south, and herders exercise strategic decision-making not accounted for among most government decision-makers before the mid-1990s. In addition to policy challenges, twenty-first-century Sahelian pastoralists are faced with constraints on pasture access, criminal activity, climate instability, and religious radicalism. This chapter argues that intra-regional issues of land use policy and tension between extensive pastoral production systems and projects of nation-building are at the center of current political instability in pastoral communities.","PeriodicalId":209487,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the African Sahel","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Oxford Handbook of the African Sahel","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198816959.013.38","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This chapter focuses on ways that pastoralists respond to ecological and climate variability through strategies of pastoral mobility and exploitation of micro-ecologies throughout the Sahel. The chapter reflects recent scholarly work that argues for recognition of the viability of mobile pastoral systems and their long-term value to national economies and rural community nutrition. West African pasturelands are as biodiverse as woodlands further south, and herders exercise strategic decision-making not accounted for among most government decision-makers before the mid-1990s. In addition to policy challenges, twenty-first-century Sahelian pastoralists are faced with constraints on pasture access, criminal activity, climate instability, and religious radicalism. This chapter argues that intra-regional issues of land use policy and tension between extensive pastoral production systems and projects of nation-building are at the center of current political instability in pastoral communities.