The Pastoralist Knowledge Hub (PKH) serves as an important mechanism that brings together key stakeholders to join efforts towards sustainable pastoralism. Therefore, as the Hub prepares its own activities, it called upon its partners to present their work and actions towards the achievement of common goals. Partners from more than 20 organizations met at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy, from the 18-19 November 2019.

The PKH Partners’ Meeting provided a platform to share key results of partners’ activities on pastoralism, to discuss potential collaborations in upcoming activities, and to contribute to defining future joint activities. The partners presented their organization(s) and current activities on several pastoralism-related themes, including sustainable rangeland management, need for reliable data on pastoralists and rangelands, legal frameworks that support pastoralism, and links between mobile pastoralism and biodiversity. These sessions were in line with the current momentum building up for supporting and recognizing pastoralists and rangelands globally.

Part of the Hub’s goal is ensuring that pastoralists’ voices are represented in the global stage at international and national policy forums. Grassroots organization members from Central Asia and Europe attended this meeting, presenting their current activities to interact and share knowledge in an effort to build alliances and synergies among pastoralists and stakeholders. These organizations gave an overview of the pastoralism situation in their regions and the efforts being made to ensure pastoralist representation within national and regional institutions.

The participants of the partners’ meeting took part in joint working exercises, to join planning efforts and create collaborations for the future. “We are all working towards the same goal of sustainable pastoralism and we have a lot of upcoming activities that we need to collaborate and coordinate together,” said Gregorio Velasco Gil, coordinator of the PKH. The joint working sessions aimed to define new action proposals and to lay out the landscape of activities on pastoralism that the partners are engaged in, and to show the possible avenues for partnership.

The partners recognized the crucial role of the Hub in working with pastoralist civil society networks, especially for capacity building and advocacy. They emphasized the need to work on collating reliable and quality data on pastoralism, securing livestock mobility and land tenure, and the need to engage more closely with policy processes and frameworks. The policy forums and frameworks identified during the meeting include – but are not limited to – the Committee on Agriculture (COAG) at FAO, the United Nations Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, United Nations Decade of Family Farming, the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists initiative, One Health approach and regional policy processes.

Partnership development and joint efforts are crucial to achieving effective outcomes. The Hub wishes to continue collaborating with several partners on knowledge generation, capacity building and advocacy initiatives.