Key stakeholders working towards sustainable pastoralism met during the Partners’ Meeting of the Pastoralist Knowledge Hub to reinforce their partnership and help redefine the role of the Hub for the future of pastoralism. Representatives from 20 different organizations participated in the meeting which took place at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy, from the 20-21 November, 2018.

Thanks partly to its partnerships, the Pastoralist Knowledge Hub has made great progress in fulfilling the knowledge gap about pastoral systems and promoting effective participation of pastoralists in global and regional policy forums. For example, the Hub has made great strides in the Pastoralist Driven Data Management project through which it has enabled civil society partners in Argentina, Chad and Mongolia to collect and manage their own data. Furthermore, this year the Hub helped to improve the governance of the global pastoralist network, the World Alliance for Mobile and Indigenous People (WAMIP), and supported the institutional development of regional pastoral networks such as the Eastern and Southern African Pastoralist Network (ESAPN), the European Shepherds Network (ESN), and the World Yak Herders' Association (WHYA), among other activities.

As this year comes to a close, the Hub is redesigning its future activities to build on and complement these successes. Established through the expressed demand of the partners, the meeting provided the ideal opportunity to receive the partners’ invaluable inputs for the future direction of the Hub. During the meeting, the partners participated in a vision and mission  planning exercise beginning with strategic thinking about ideal outcomes for pastoralism. The responses emphasized the crucial role of the Hub in working with pastoralist civil society networks, especially for capacity building and advocacy. They reiterated the need to work on securing livestock mobility and land tenure, and the need to engage more closely with policy processes such as the Committee on Agriculture (COAG) at FAO, the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) and regional policy processes.

The Partners’ Meeting provided an overview of the priorities of the partners and the landscape of ongoing and upcoming activities with pastoralists, to find points of collaboration, and to align discrete efforts towards a united goal. Partnership development and joint efforts are crucial to achieving effective outcomes. The Hub collaborates with several partners on knowledge

generation and advocacy initiatives and will continue in its efforts, as recommended by the partners.