This land is our future: pastoralist youth around the world

When she was a child, Alice Rana used to begin her mornings the way her mother did, milking cows, fetching water. Today’s mornings look a bit different; she reads land policy documents, translates them into understandable language, and helps her community understand what they need to do to secure their land. Combining traditional pastoral knowledge and legal literacy is at the heart of what she does; relaying knowledge back to the people who need it most.

Growing up in a Maasai community in Kenya, Alice understood early that land is not simply a resource. "It's where we find our grazing spaces, our sacred places, our water points," she says. "It's a heritage and it is a responsibility for me, as a young person, to preserve it and ensure the cycle continues."

During the week, Alice works across the Maasai rangelands with communities and women's groups. Her days in the field are spent with women: training them in milk processing, helping them to form small dairy cooperatives to store milk in coolers so it doesn't spoil before it reaches the market. They make soaps from goat milk and aloe vera.

They weave beadwork, intricate jewellery that Alice wears with pride, through a women's training hub founded by a pioneering local woman. They are learning beekeeping. IMPACT, an ILC member, provides the hives, and if the bees come, the women harvest and sell the honey.

The effects of the climate crisis are more evident than ever. Nowadays, droughts have become so severe that many families no longer own a single goat. "You'll find a whole family, not even one goat," Alice says. By diversifying into beadwork, beekeeping, kitchen gardens, women aren’t just diversifying their income, it is a sheer act of survival. Alice bought her own cattle and sheep, from her own earnings, because in a society where inheritance passes only through male heirs, her ownership is quietly revolutionary, strengthening her independence while also helping sustain the pastoralist way of life.

Alice’s work also centers around helping the community reduce and resolve conflicts. One tool she is particularly excited about is the biocultural map, in which traditional territorial knowledge is translated into a tangible document. Elders know their boundaries through rivers and hills; they did not know a map could capture this. "We use their knowledge to identify boundaries," she explains. In at least one community, the approach has already helped reduce violent conflict over grazing land. For Alice, education did not mean leaving pastoralism behind. It meant returning with tools to defend it.

In the Dhangar sheep-rearing communities of Maharashtra, the day starts before sunrise: manure collected, animal pens cleaned, fires lit, water fetched. Women carry much of this work and, if the herds go out, often walk alongside the men too. This was the world Ashwini Labde grew up in. It is also the world she has dedicated herself to transforming.

Ashwini is the first person in her family to earn a university degree. Today, she sits on the Steering Committee of the South Asia Pastoral Alliance (SAPA), bringing the voice of young women into a space historically dominated by older men. Her work is about networking: connecting communities across India and Asia, bringing pastoral voices to the policy level.

I am passionate about advancing the rights and recognition of pastoral peoples. Building the pastoralist network, connecting communities with each other, that is the work.

The challenges are structural. Urbanisation is cutting through traditional mobility corridors and wool prices are so low that shearing twice a year barely covers costs. Ashwini's prescription is practical: wool processing, value-added products, and above all government policy that stops encroachment on grasslands. "If the government protects grasslands, the community will automatically benefit," she says. But protection requires recognition, and recognition requires people like Ashwini in the rooms where decisions are made.

Ali Fagouri grew up moving. In his community in Morocco's Upper Moulouya region, caught between mountains and desert, pastoral life is defined by transhumance: following the grass, following the water,and following patterns passed on through generations. He still goes out with the herds, checking on animals in the evening. But this landscape is under threat.

Foreign farmers are encroaching on collective pastoral areas and state support is almost absent. The climate crisis is hitting hard in a region at the edge of two fragile ecosystems. "Herds in Morocco have declined in a very, very difficult way," Ali says. His response was to help found APABY (the Pastoral Association Ait Ben Yacoub) to defend collective land and promote sustainable resource management.

"Among the global community of young pastoralists, we hope to be heard to share experiences, find solutions together, but it needs support from governments and societies."

He is also fighting a damaging narrative: the idea that pastoralism contributes to environmental degradation. Ali and his community are pushing back with evidence by collecting and sharing traditional livestock techniques that have proven, over centuries, to be ecologically sound and climate-resilient. We want to fight the idea that what we do has a negative impact on the environment, he says.

At 4,200 metres above sea level, Rodolfo Flores begins his mornings in the corral, checking each llama and alpaca, and looking for signs of illness. Then the herds go out to the bofedales, the high-altitude wetlands that are the ecological heart of Andean pastoralism. By five in the afternoon, they return. The rhythm is ancient, but the climate is not playing by ancient rules.

Frost that used to arrive in May or June now arrives by February. Rains arrive early or late or not at all. On the coldest nights, Rodolfo and his community go out before dawn to burn dried dung and wood, creating warmth around the most vulnerable plants., This form of pastoral knowledge has turned into climate adaptation, improvised under a sky that has changed without warning.

"We need to be given the value we deserve as herders. This is not a job that people recognise, sometimes it is even looked down at with discrimination."

What hurts Rodolfo most, alongside the climate crisis, is invisibility. In Bolivia, people like him are typically called "campesinos" a word that erases the specific identity and knowledge of pastoralists. Fewer NGOs work in his region. Government support rarely reaches his community. His requests are simple: recognition, technical support, and a seat at the table. "We would like to receive more support and recognition for our work," he says.