As climate changes and borders shift, nomadic animal herders are going strong. Here’s what we can learn from them.
A young member of the nomadic pastoralist settlement Ingechel Kraal at the Kenya-South Sudan border, Kenya, tends to the animals during outreach activities by the Kimormor One Health initiative led by the Turkana County Government and partners. Abyssinia Lati
For centuries, groups of people have ranged through Africa and the Middle East, raising and trading animals, pooling resources when times are tough, following food, water, and weather across the land.
Called pastoralism, it’s a practice of interdependence and flexibility, of rich and complex cultures, a living piece of history, and a strategy for food security and environmental health into the future, according to the United Nations, which has declared 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists.
Pastoralism proves resilient in difficult conditions, according to Elizabeth Stites, research director in conflict and livelihoods at the Feinstein International Center at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School for Nutrition Science and Policy, and a research associate professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Elizabeth Stites in the rangelands where she does research. Photo: Courtesy of Elizabeth Stites
It plays a pivotal role in public health, says Evan Griffith, D.V.M., V21, MG21 (MPH), VG17, at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.
It deserves investment and protection, according to the UN–but also recognition for the many lessons it has to teach us about delivering humanitarian aid and living in an uncertain world, Stites and Griffith agree. Here are eight of them.
Pay attention to nature.
Stites: I remember when I first started working in Karamoja, Uganda, seeing a little boy who had never been to school and couldn’t count higher than three. But he could come home and say, Dad, we’re missing a goat. And out of their hundred goats, he would know it was the brown one with the white stripe and the T on one ear. Pastoralists have a closer interaction with the natural world and pay much more attention to animal behavior, vegetation, weather patterns, stars, and wind, which makes for a high-level knowledge base and complex decision-making.
Use what resources your environment offers.
Griffith: I work in East Africa and Kenya, but there's pastoralists in Mongolia, South America, and all over the world. Generally, they live in areas where there's not enough rainfall to grow crops. And if you can’t grow grains, how do you survive? Raise livestock. That’s why pastoralists consider their animals their wealth. They convert the existing vegetation into energy, milk, meat, and income.
But don’t take too much.
Griffith: Where I was working in Kenya, I noticed there were all these big beautiful acacia trees. There was a chief who decided they shouldn't cut those trees down, because during the dry season, they’re an important source of food for goats. Someone will shake a branch, the seed pods will fall down, and the goats will eat. And everyone understood and abided by that. That’s example of an ecosystem service.
And, of course, the most sustainable thing about pastoralism is that once the grass is gone, you move on to another area and let the grass recover. Regenerative farming has gotten very big in the U.S. in recent years, but people don’t realize it’s basically functional pastoralism in a smaller area.
Evan Griffith interviews a village administrator in Ingechel Kraal in Turkana County, Kenya, near the South Sudan border. Photo: Courtesy of Evan Griffith
Rely on each other.
Stites: In areas where pastoralism is functioning well, people are dependent on each other. They have a strong, informal social safety net, without which life is impossible. For example, during the rainy season in northern Kenya, people give extra milk to those who don’t own animals—for children to drink, but also to sell and use the cash to provide for their families. In Darfur, Sudan, people come together for communal evening meals where each contributes what they are able. There are all sorts of social institutions that guide exchanges like this, and some of them go back generations.
Diversify your assets.
Griffith: Pastoralists always have multiple livestock species in their herds. Cattle and sheep eat primarily grass, but goats and camels will also eat different parts of trees and leaves. Camels produce a lot of milk, but their gestation period is long, so if you lose them to disease, it takes a while to regrow your herd. Smaller ruminants like sheep or goats reproduce more quickly.
Embrace the unknown.
Stites: Many of us want to be able to predict things with certainty, and generally consider uncertainty to be bad. In contrast, pastoralism is built on accepting uncertainty not as a threat, but as a constant. It’s not just a part of life—it’s what determines where you're going, who's going with you, and how you're splitting the herd. This mindset is what makes pastoralists so highly adaptable and flexible.
A shepherd with shoats in Marsabit, Kenya, where Elizabeth Stites has worked. Photo: Centre for Research and Development in the Drylands
Look at the whole picture.
Griffith: Where the animals move, the people move. That means if you can find the livestock to vaccinate them, you can find the children to immunize them. That's the framework for One Health service delivery–looking not just at human vaccination, but at all public services in the area, and how together they can serve human, animal, and environmental health. Especially in more remote areas, pooling resources and working together means reaching more people.
Change with your environment.
Stites: These days, climate change and border regulations make pastoralism harder to sustain—and it has adapted in response. There are dropout pastoralists, who lose their animals and end up in peri-urban areas doing casual labor. There are diversified pastoralists, who may be engaged in trade or sale of livestock or livestock-related items. There are pastoralists who have adapted to an urban market, whereby people keep some animals close to town, sell their milk and meat, and use that money to buy fodder and hay. There are pastoralists who have sent some children to school so that they can support their parents and siblings through salaried jobs in the future.
Traditionally pastoral people have adapted what they're doing to meet the demands of a new moment—but often their cultural and ethnic identity remains grounded in pastoralism.
