Governing Commons Through Uncertainty: Towards a Link Between Commons and Pastoralist Territories of Life

1. Introduction

Pastoralism is one of humanity’s most enduring and adaptive ways of living with ecological uncertainty. From the Sahel to the Andes, from the Mongolian steppe to the Mediterranean uplands, mobile and transhumant herding communities have governed vast landscapes through institutions that sustain life under variability rather than stability. Yet policy and scholarship have often misread mobility as disorder and collective use as open access, justifying sedentarisation, enclosure, and centralized control. This article revisits pastoralism as a form of commons governance and asks what lessons pastoral institutions, rooted in cooperation, reciprocity, and mobility, offer for governing complex socio-ecological systems (Scoones, 1995, 2021; Blench, 2001; Nori & Scoones, 2019).

The article places pastoral territories within the framework of ICCAs-territories of life and explores their relevance for contemporary conservation and commons theory. It argues that pastoral systems should not be treated as residual or transitional land uses, but as living governance regimes that link ecological stewardship, social organization, and cultural continuity. By analysing their socio-ecological foundations, institutional dynamics, and contemporary transformations, the article examines how pastoral commons function as resilient and adaptive responses to uncertainty (Kothari et al., 2012; Zanjani et al., 2023; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

In this article, ICCAs-territories of life refer to territories, areas and biocultural spaces conserved by Indigenous Peoples and local communities through their own relationships, values, knowledge systems and governance institutions. The expression “territories of life” is important because it deliberately moves beyond conservation understood as nature separated from people. It foregrounds territories as living relationships among communities, lands, waters, animals, plants, ancestors, spiritual meanings, livelihoods and responsibilities. For pastoralists, this language is particularly relevant because their governance systems are often mobile, seasonal and relational rather than fixed, fenced or exclusively territorial (Kothari et al., 2012; ICCA Consortium, 2021; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

Methodologically, the article draws on an interdisciplinary literature review and a comparative reading of illustrative cases from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. It combines debates on common-pool resource governance, non-equilibrium ecology, biocultural diversity, and community conservation in order to reinterpret mobility and negotiated access as central features of effective governance in variable environments. Rather than treating pastoral territories as bounded units, it approaches them as relational and layered landscapes maintained through institutions, memory, and practice (Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2001; Gavin et al., 2015; Borrini-Feyerabend & Hill, 2015).

The paper proceeds in six steps. Section 2 reviews the socio-ecological foundations of mobile pastoralism and its relevance for commons governance. Section 3 examines pastoral territories of life as common property regimes, focusing on internal institutions, layered rights and cultural landscape governance. Section 4 analyses how dominant conservation paradigms misrepresent pastoral commons through naturalist assumptions, enclosure and green grabbing. Section 5 discusses contemporary pressures and institutional transitions. Section 6 examines adaptive strategies, resistance and policy engagement. Section 7 synthesizes the theoretical and political contribution of bringing commons thinking and territories of life together for the broader recognition of pastoral rights.

2. Socio-Ecological Foundations of Mobile Pastoralism

Across the African Sahel, the Mongolian and Central Asian steppes, West Asia pastures, the Andean highlands, and the Mediterranean rangelands, mobile pastoralists manage vast rangeland ecosystems through collective norms that balance flexibility and reciprocity. Their strategies are mostly grounded in non-equilibrium ecology, where rainfall and vegetation fluctuate unpredictably, demanding mobility, negotiated access, and mutual aid rather than fixed tenure and centralised control, thus necessitating collective governance (Behnke & Scoones, 1993; Scoones, 1995, 2004; Reid et al., 2014).

Comparative scholarship cautions against treating all pastoral systems as if they were organised around the same degree of uncertainty. Evidence from Tajikistan, for example, shows that variability is not always equivalent to uncertainty, and mobility is not always the same as unrestricted flexibility. While some pastoral systems operate through highly opportunistic responses to fluctuating rainfall and forage, others rely on more regular seasonal movement patterns and more predictable tenure arrangements. This distinction strengthens, rather than weakens, the argument for pastoral commons: pastoral systems are adaptive, but they are not institutionally uniform (Krätli & Schareika, 2010; Dong et al., 2021).

Mobility enables pastoralists to track ephemeral pastures and water, redistributing grazing pressure across heterogeneous landscapes. Reciprocity among households and clans, through herd loans, grazing exchanges, and labour cooperation, creates a distributed safety net that spreads risk and maintains genetic diversity of livestock. Such arrangements sustain ecological heterogeneity, enhance nutrient cycling, and prevent rangeland degradation by allowing periodic rest and recovery of vegetation patches (Krätli & Schareika, 2010; Turner et al., 2014; Butt, 2016).

Beyond its ecological function, pastoralism contributes significantly to food systems, rural livelihoods, and dryland economies across many regions of the world. By converting vegetation from landscapes that are often unsuitable for cropping into meat, milk, fibre, and other products, pastoral systems sustain both local communities and broader markets. At the same time, they help maintain biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and the ecological heterogeneity of rangelands. Because statistical data on pastoral production are frequently incomplete, politically shaped, or methodologically inconsistent, it is more accurate to emphasize these substantial contributions qualitatively unless precise country-level figures are directly sourced (Alary et al., 2011; McGahey et al., 2014; FAO, 2019).

Underlying this resilience are institutions for collective action that embody many of Ostrom’s design principles for governing common-pool resources (see Box 1). Boundaries are often socially and ecologically defined rather than fenced: the nutag in Mongolia, the cañada real in Spain, transhumance corridors in the Sahel, clan-based grazing zones in northern Kenya, or Tash in Iran demarcate access, responsibility and identity in relation to ecological rhythms rather than fenced property. Rules are adjusted to rainfall, forage conditions, herd composition, and seasonal timing. Collective-choice arrangements allow pastoralists to modify rules through assemblies, councils, and negotiated agreements, while monitoring and sanctioning are enacted through social visibility and reputation rather than external policing. Conflict resolution occurs through elders’ mediation or inter-clan councils. Where legal recognition exists, it can reinforce local authority; where imposed rigidly, it can also simplify, fragment, or distort pastoral tenure systems (Ostrom, 1990; Fernández-Giménez, 2002; Galaty, 2016; Azhdari et al., 2021).

These principles illustrate how pastoral commons embody self-organization under uncertainty, contradicting assumptions of open-access degradation. Their success depends less on fixed territoriality than on negotiated mobility and trust, qualities often ignored by conventional land-use policy (Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2001; Moritz et al., 2018).

Pastoral governance cannot be separated from the biocultural diversity that shapes and sustains it. Languages, oral traditions, animal breeds, ecological knowledge, and ritual calendars co-evolve with rangeland ecosystems, forming a living interface between culture and nature. Biocultural diversity is mutually constitutive of pastoral social and ecological life. In pastoral contexts, songs, proverbs, and place names encode information about forage species and migration routes; ceremonial closures allow pastures to regenerate; and spiritual attachments to landscape underpin stewardship norms (Maffi, 2005; Maffi & Woodley, 2010; Gavin et al., 2015; Reyes-García et al., 2020).

While extensive pastoralism remains a sophisticated adaptation, it is not immune to contradiction or crisis. Market integration, demographic growth, and climate change have altered herd composition and mobility patterns. In some areas, reduced access corridors, sedentarisation policies, and fencing have concentrated livestock and caused localised degradation. Yet, where enabling institutions persist, herders continue to adapt, through negotiated access, reciprocal grazing, community conservancies, and hybrid governance models that blend customary law with modern frameworks (Homewood, 2008; Galvin, 2009; Bollig, 2016).

3. Pastoral Territories of Life as Common Property Regimes

The governance of pastoral territories mainly rests on a long lineage of self-organised institutions that balance mobility, reciprocity, and collective responsibility. Pastoral communities have developed intricate rule systems for accessing and managing rangelands, water points, migration routes, and seasonal pastures, operating outside the conventional binaries of private or state ownership. These institutions embody polycentric governance: multiple centres of decision-making nested across scales and grounded in shared norms rather than imposed hierarchies (Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2001; Haller et al., 2019).

Decision-making is rarely confined to a single authority. Rules governing access and timing are negotiated through seasonal meetings, lineage or elders’ gatherings and assemblies, often revisited each year to adjust to changing ecological conditions. Collective deliberation allows flexibility and accountability; the legitimacy of decisions rests on trust and mutual recognition (Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2001; Cleaver, 2017).

These social institutions have historically operated through customary law, ritual sanction, and oral agreements that carry moral as well as practical authority. Monitoring and enforcement are largely social, relying on visibility and reputation rather than coercion. Access is embedded in kinship, reciprocity, and respect for other groups’ rights of passage. Even under modern pressures, many pastoral communities continue to rely on these moral economies of cooperation, sometimes reinventing them through hybrid forms of community-based management and ICCAs (Cleaver, 2001; Bassi, 2017; Haller, 2020).

ICCAs-territories of life provide a bridge between customary pastoral governance systems and broader debates on conservation, rights, commons and territorial recognition. They are generally understood through three interrelated features: a deep relationship between a community and its territory; collective governance institutions that regulate access, responsibilities and decision-making; and tangible contributions to the conservation of nature, livelihoods and cultural continuity. For pastoralists, this framework is especially relevant because territories are not always fixed or enclosed. They include rangelands, seasonal pastures, migration routes, water points, dry-season refuges, ritual sites and networks of reciprocal access. The notion of territories of life therefore offers a language of recognition for governance systems that long pre-date modern conservation and that cannot be reduced to either protected areas or conventional land-tenure categories (Kothari et al., 2012; ICCA Consortium, 2021; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

Pastoral commons are better understood as layered tenure mosaics than as neatly bounded territories. Across many rangeland regions, access is structured through overlapping rights to movement, passage, dry-season grazing, water, and temporary refuge, rather than through exclusive territorial control. Such arrangements are not signs of institutional weakness; they are often the mechanisms through which pastoralists govern ecological variability and coexistence (Fernández-Giménez, 2002; Moritz, 2016; Galaty, 2016).

Across these diverse settings, pastoral territories of life share several institutional features. First, they are grounded in deep community-territory relationships in which land, water, herds, memory and identity are mutually constituted. Second, they rely on collective governance institutions, including elders’ councils, seasonal assemblies, customary law, negotiated agreements and social sanctions. Third, they operate through layered and mobile rights, including rights of passage, temporary access, dry-season grazing, water use, refuge in times of scarcity and reciprocal use across neighbouring groups. Fourth, they are sustained by biocultural and moral-ecological foundations, including oral traditions, ritual obligations, spiritual relations, animal breeds, ecological knowledge and norms of restraint. Fifth, they are nested across scales, from household and camp decisions to clan territories, inter-community agreements, federations and national or international advocacy networks. These shared features show that pastoral territories of life are not simply “areas” to be conserved, but common property regimes and cultural landscape ecosystems governed through mobility, responsibility and collective action (Ostrom, 1990; Haller et al., 2019; Zanjani et al., 2023).

Mongolia. Pastoral groups continue to organize access to nutag-based territories through customary norms, seasonal movement, and collective coordination. At the same time, post-socialist reforms and conservation interventions have produced legal ambiguity over authority, access, and recognition in some areas. Mongolia therefore illustrates both the resilience of pastoral self-organization and the vulnerability of pastoral commons to competing legal and administrative claims (Fernández-Giménez, 2002; Fernández-Giménez et al., 2015).

Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. Across East Africa, pastoral territories often function through complex and overlapping tenure mosaics rather than fixed, singular ownership regimes. Community land legislation, conservancies, grazing associations, and communal certification have created new opportunities for recognition, but they have also introduced risks of fragmentation, individualization, and unequal representation. These cases show that formalization can protect commons in some respects while simultaneously reconfiguring them (Galaty, 2016; Haller et al., 2016; Ameso et al., 2018).

Turkana, Kenya, offers a particularly clear example of how layered pastoral tenure can be simplified by external planning processes. Around new infrastructure and settlement initiatives, communal rangelands have been treated as if they were administratively legible and easily divisible, even though they are governed through overlapping and contested claims. Such cases show how participation and formal planning can unintentionally privilege more powerful actors while weakening pastoral commons. In southern Kenya, Ilkisongo Maasai territories further illustrate hybrid governance regimes in which private parcels coexist with collective grazing and conservation arrangements, producing new asymmetries of power and selective uses of pastoralism discourse (Galaty, 2016; Haller et al., 2016; Ameso et al., 2018).

Spain and Italy. Transhumance routes such as the cañadas reales and tratturi represent long-standing collective infrastructures linking seasonal grazing territories, biodiversity, and cultural memory. Evidence from northeastern Andalusia shows that diverse communal governance forms, including long-distance transhumance, can enhance pasture ecology, even where subsidy systems privilege administrative simplification over the complexity of pastoral commons. In parts of Italy, pastoral and agropastoral livelihoods increasingly operate through multilocal strategies and social networks that extend beyond single local territories, while mobility and relational access remain central to governance (Oteros-Rozas et al., 2013; Domínguez & Rodríguez-Estévez, 2018; Godoy-Sepúlveda et al., 2024).

Peru and Bolivia. Andean comunidades campesinas and related Indigenous institutions govern high-altitude pastures and wetlands through assemblies, rotational use, and culturally embedded seasonal practices. These arrangements align strongly with the principles of territories of life by linking collective governance, livelihood continuity, and ecological stewardship, even where they are not always formally recognized through ICCA language (Postigo, 2013, 2021).

Morocco. Agdal systems exemplify collective regulation through seasonal closure, negotiated access, and customary ecological knowledge. They illustrate how pastoral governance can conserve fragile environments through socially enforced restraint and cyclical use (Domínguez et al., 2010; Domínguez & Rodríguez-Estévez, 2018).

Niger and the wider Sahel. Pastoral mobility is increasingly shaped by attempts to recognize aires pastorales, transhumance corridors, and negotiated access routes within formal law. Yet these legal innovations coexist with corridor loss, land fragmentation, and the rescaling of pastoral territoriality under pressure from sedentarisation, agriculture, and state planning (Niamir-Fuller, 1999; Hesse & Thebaud, 2006; FAO, 2022).

These examples show that pastoral territories of life are not static or uniform institutions. They are evolving governance systems that combine mobility, layered rights, ecological knowledge, and collective responsibility in ways highly relevant to contemporary commons theory and conservation practice (Bollig, 2016; Haller et al., 2019; Zanjani et al., 2023).

This hybridity often produces nested governance: household decisions within clan territories, aggregated into inter-tribal alliances or regional associations, linked to national or international policy platforms. In Africa, transboundary pastoral agreements coordinate migration routes across countries; in Europe, federations of transhumant herders advocate for policy incentives and cultural recognition. These networks demonstrate that pastoral governance operates through polycentric, multi-scalar systems, consistent with Ostrom’s later insights on nested enterprises (Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2001; Borrini-Feyerabend & Hill, 2015).

Pastoral governance also carries a moral ecology, a sense of responsibility toward herds, land, and community that transcends utilitarian management. Collective rituals, taboos, and storytelling encode ethical relations with the environment. Breaking a grazing rule is not merely a regulatory offence but a moral transgression that disrupts social harmony. Such moral-ecological linkages are vital for compliance and long-term stewardship. Within ICCA frameworks, they exemplify the biocultural foundations of conservation: the recognition that cultural identity and ecosystem integrity are mutually sustaining (Maffi & Woodley, 2010; Gavin et al., 2015).

This moral ecology also points to a deeper ontological difference between pastoral commons and dominant conservation models. In many pastoral societies, territory is not understood as an external domain of “nature” separated from human culture, but as a co-produced and inhabited world of people, livestock, wildlife, pastures, waters, ancestors, spiritual beings and reciprocal obligations. Such relational or non-naturalist ontologies challenge conservation paradigms that treat landscapes as empty natural spaces to be protected from human presence. They also help explain why pastoral commons cannot be reduced to resource-management arrangements alone: they are cultural landscape ecosystems governed through social, ecological and spiritual relations (Descola, 2013; Haller et al., 2019; Foggin et al., 2021).

Pastoralist ICCAs illuminate three theoretical lessons for commons scholarship. First, they affirm Ostrom’s premise that sustainable governance emerges from locally crafted rules and social trust, but they extend it by emphasising mobility and negotiation over fixed boundaries. Second, they highlight the need to integrate biocultural diversity into institutional design: knowledge transmission, ritual, and identity are not add-ons but integral governance mechanisms. Third, they demonstrate that recognition and autonomy can coexist; communities can engage global frameworks without losing customary integrity, provided the terms of recognition remain respectful of their own institutions (Ostrom, 1990; Gavin et al., 2015; Zanjani et al., 2023).

4. Dominant Conservation Paradigms and Misrepresentation

The persistence of pastoral commons challenges one of the most entrenched myths in modern environmental thought: that collective use inevitably leads to degradation. Since Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons,” policy thinking has often relied on an open-access image of shared land use to justify state control, privatization, and the sedentarisation of mobile peoples. Yet Hardin’s argument was not an empirical account of governed commons. In pastoral contexts, the real issue has repeatedly been the erosion or denial of institutions that regulate access, reciprocity, timing, and responsibility (Hardin, 1968; Agrawal, 2001; Haller, 2020).

Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons transformed that narrative by grounding theory in evidence. Across forests, fisheries, and rangelands, her work showed that communities often develop durable institutions to regulate access, monitor use, and sanction infractions. The “tragedy” was not of the commons but of the absence of governance. Her design principles, clearly defined boundaries, collective decision-making, graduated sanctions, conflict-resolution mechanisms, and nested enterprises, find direct resonance in pastoralist communities. Pastoralists demonstrate that mobility and cooperation, rather than central control, sustain the commons (Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2001).

Subsequent scholarship has expanded Ostrom’s framework to include social-ecological systems and polycentric governance, recognising that resilience depends on diversity, feedback, and adaptability. These insights are particularly relevant to pastoralism, where environmental uncertainty is the norm. The ecological intelligence of mobility, rotating herds, negotiating access, sharing risk, is a rational adaptation to variability, not a failure of management (Agrawal, 2001; Reid et al., 2014; Nori & Scoones, 2019).

Despite decades of research, however, policies in many regions still reproduce Hardin’s assumptions. Colonial administrations and post-colonial reforms sought to “modernise” rangelands by individualising tenure, imposing stocking limits, or promoting sedentarisation. These interventions often undermined the very institutions that maintained ecological balance. Fencing and privatisation fragmented migration corridors; top-down grazing quotas ignored climatic variability; and wildlife conservation projects expelled herders from ancestral territories in the name of preservation. The result has frequently been ecological degradation and social dispossession; the real tragedy of the commons lies in the erosion of collective governance. Across diverse pastoral regions, from Mongolia to East Africa and the Indian Himalaya, state and conservation interventions have frequently produced legal ambiguity and dispossession while invoking development, modernization, or ecological protection (Scoones, 1995, 2004; Scott, 1998; Brockington, 2002).

Formalization adds a further layer of complexity. In several pastoral regions, communal titling, certification, and land-law reforms have been promoted as solutions to insecurity. Yet evidence suggests that formalization can be double-edged: it may strengthen recognition while also simplifying layered rights, accelerating individualization, or privileging some actors over others. This paradox is especially visible in East Africa, where pastoral tenure often operates through shared, seasonal, and overlapping claims that do not map easily onto rigid legal categories (Haller et al., 2016; Galaty, 2016; Haller, 2020).

Conservation discourse contributed to this distortion by depicting pastoral landscapes as “empty” or “under-utilised.” Protected-area models borrowed from forestry privileged fixed boundaries and exclusion, incompatible with mobile livelihoods. Even community-based natural resource management, while a step forward, often treated herders as instruments for externally defined conservation goals rather than rights-holders with their own territorial logics (Brockington, 2002; Adams & Hutton, 2007; Borrini-Feyerabend & Hill, 2015).

Behind this distortion lies a broader naturalist assumption: that nature and culture are separate domains, and that conservation requires the removal or strict control of human presence. This assumption is particularly damaging in pastoral landscapes, where ecological integrity is often produced through long-term cohabitation among people, livestock, wildlife and rangeland systems. When pastoral territories are interpreted through a nature-culture divide, their mobility, spirituality, reciprocal access rules and everyday governance practices become invisible or are misread as threats. This is one reason why fortress conservation, carbon-offset schemes and other forms of green grabbing can present themselves as ecological solutions while undermining the social institutions that have sustained those landscapes (Brockington, 2002; Fairhead et al., 2012; Descola, 2013; Foggin et al., 2021).

However, studies demonstrate that pastoral mobility is not antithetical to conservation but one of its most effective forms. In Spain and Italy, transhumant herding maintains open grasslands that host high plant and pollinator diversity. In the Andes, rotational grazing in comunidades campesinas protects wetlands that buffer water supplies. In Kenya and Tanzania, some community conservancies and grazing associations have supported forms of coexistence between pastoral livelihoods and wildlife conservation by maintaining mobility corridors and shared resource governance, although outcomes vary and such arrangements can also generate tensions over representation, tourism, and land control (Domínguez & Rodríguez-Estévez, 2018; Oteros-Rozas et al., 2013; Ameso et al., 2018; Postigo, 2021; Godoy-Sepúlveda et al., 2024).

This conservation in motion stands in stark contrast to static preservation models. Mobility allows rangeland ecosystems to regenerate and species to adapt to climate variability. It also sustains genetic diversity in livestock breeds, providing resilience against disease and drought. Recognising such dynamics requires shifting from the notion of bounded habitats to one of relational landscapes: spaces maintained by interactions among people, animals, and ecosystems over time (Krätli & Schareika, 2010; Turner et al., 2014; Reid et al., 2014).

The emergence of ICCAs and the broader “territories of life” movement signals a paradigm shift in global conservation. It acknowledges that the majority of the world’s remaining biodiversity lies within territories governed or managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities. For pastoralists, ICCAs provide a legitimate platform to articulate governance models based on mobility, negotiation, and stewardship (Kothari et al., 2012; ICCA Consortium, 2021; Zanjani et al., 2023).

Pastoralist ICCAs also question the utilitarian and technocratic tendencies of mainstream conservation. Their governance is rooted in moral and cultural relations: respect for ancestral spirits, social obligations to share, and ethical norms of restraint. Such values cannot be reduced to economic incentives or biodiversity metrics. They align with a biocultural ethics that views ecosystems as living relations rather than resources. By embedding conservation in culture, pastoral ICCAs bridge ecological stewardship and social identity, a crucial dimension for long-term legitimacy and inter-generational transmission. This perspective challenges conservation paradigms to move beyond management-centric approaches towards those built on relationships (Maffi & Woodley, 2010; Gavin et al., 2015; Reyes-García et al., 2020).

The encounter between customary pastoral institutions and state or NGO-driven conservation therefore introduces both opportunities and tensions. Where recognition frameworks are flexible, pastoralists can use ICCA language to secure resource rights, document customary governance and attract support for community-led rangeland restoration. Where recognition is rigid, however, legal systems that require fixed boundaries, permanent residency or externally designed management plans can simplify, fragment or distort pastoral tenure systems. The challenge is not simply to “formalise” customary commons, but to align legal pluralism with ecological realities, mobility and community-defined authority (Kothari et al., 2012; Borrini-Feyerabend & Hill, 2015; Jonas et al., 2017).

Yet recognition alone is insufficient if it does not redistribute power. Many pastoralist territories face legal ambiguity: states hesitate to grant collective tenure over “public” rangelands, and conservation organisations often retain decision-making authority. ICCA recognition must therefore be accompanied by secure tenure, political voice, and legal pluralism that respects customary institutions. Where these conditions exist, pastoral communities have used ICCA processes to contest exclusionary policies and to re-enter decision spaces once closed to them. Recognition becomes not a form of co-optation but a means of re-asserting autonomy (Jonas et al., 2017; Borrini-Feyerabend & Hill, 2015; Tauli-Corpuz et al., 2020).

This resonates with current policy debates under the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), particularly Targets 2 and 3, which call for equitable governance of conservation areas and recognition of Indigenous and community territories. Integrating pastoral ICCAs into national biodiversity strategies would expand protected-area coverage while ensuring that human rights and mobility are upheld (Jonas et al., 2017; Tauli-Corpuz et al., 2020; CBD, 2022).

5. Contemporary Challenges and Institutional Transitions

Pastoralist territories of life today stand at the intersection of multiple pressures: expanding land frontiers, climate volatility, market integration, and changing social aspirations. While these forces threaten the continuity of customary governance, they have also stimulated innovation and reorganisation. Pastoralism is neither a vanishing tradition nor a relic of the past; it is a dynamic mode of life continuously negotiating modernity (Galvin, 2009; Nori & Scoones, 2019; Scoones, 2021).

Over the last century, rangelands, once treated as marginal or “waste” lands, have become contested spaces for state-building, conservation, and development projects. Privatization and land titling programs have fragmented communal pastures, replacing collective rights with individual or corporate ownership. In many African and Asian countries, large-scale agricultural investments and infrastructure corridors have reduced mobility routes and grazing reserves. Similar trends occur in the Andes and Mediterranean, where urbanisation and land speculation encroach upon transhumance pathways (Scott, 1998; Edelman et al., 2013; Peluso & Lund, 2011).

In western Burkina Faso, for example, sedentarisation and ranching interventions have progressively shifted pastoral territoriality from broad regional circuits to more localized and fragmented spaces. Such changes undermine the reticular character of pastoral mobility by shrinking corridors and disrupting wider systems of negotiated access. Similar pressures are visible elsewhere where agriculture, infrastructure, tourism, mining, or conservation produce new forms of re-territorialization over rangelands once governed through flexible collective arrangements (Haller et al., 2013; Turner et al., 2014).

These land transformations are often justified in the name of productivity and national modernisation. Yet the economic returns of enclosure are frequently short-lived, while the social and ecological costs are enduring: reduced herd mobility, rangeland degradation, and loss of local livelihoods (Peluso & Lund, 2011; Haller, 2020; Scoones, 2021).

Pastoralists’ mobility, on the other hand, has long conflicted with administrative boundaries and sedentary policy frameworks. Bureaucratic definitions of “land use” rarely accommodate multi-seasonal occupation or transboundary movement. As a result, pastoralists often remain legally invisible: unable to hold collective titles, access credit, or influence resource policy. In some regions, anti-grazing laws or conservation zoning criminalise traditional practices. The exclusion of mobile peoples from decision-making perpetuates stereotypes of backwardness, ignoring their proven record of environmental stewardship (Scott, 1998; Hesse & Thebaud, 2006; FAO, 2022).

Recent policy reforms offer glimpses of change. Niger’s Code Rural recognises aires pastorales (pastoral areas) and transhumance corridors; Kenya’s Community Land Act (2016) provides a legal pathway for communal title; Mongolia’s rangeland law revisions promote co-management contracts; and Spain’s heritage policies safeguard cañadas reales (ancient drove roads) as ecological corridors. These frameworks remain uneven in implementation, but they signal growing recognition of pastoralists as legitimate governance actors. ICCA processes often catalyse such recognition by documenting customary laws, mapping territories, and linking local institutions with policy dialogues (Fernández-Giménez et al., 2015; Domínguez & Rodríguez-Estévez, 2018; FAO, 2022).

In Borana, Ethiopia, communal land certification has been promoted as a means of protecting pastoral tenure, yet it also accompanies wider livelihood diversification, including cropping and off-farm activities. The case is important because it shows that recognition may stabilize certain rights while simultaneously reshaping the pastoral commons itself, rather than simply preserving it unchanged (Haller et al., 2016; Ameso et al., 2018).

The story, however, is not only about policy; climate change and ecological uncertainty amplify the variability with which pastoral systems have long had to work. Increased drought frequency, shifting rainfall patterns, and vegetation change alter traditional grazing calendars. For herders in the Sahel, the Himalayas, or Patagonia, unpredictability has intensified, forcing new mobility strategies and cross-border negotiations. Some communities diversify livestock species to cope with heat and disease; others establish reciprocal grazing agreements across ethnic lines. Traditional weather indicators, animal behaviour, plant phenology, or wind patterns, are being combined with modern forecasting tools, creating hybrid knowledge systems (Scoones, 1995, 2004; Reid et al., 2014; Nori & Scoones, 2019).

Pastoral transitions are also shaped by new economic and political interests beyond agriculture alone. In places such as Amdo Tibet, rising land values linked to tourism, conservation, and infrastructure intensify struggles over access and authority. In northern Norway, reindeer pastoralism faces converging pressures from climate change, predator governance, and land fragmentation imposed through centralized policy systems that do not adequately reflect pastoral knowledge. These cases broaden the comparative picture by showing that the tension between mobility and centralized territorial control is not confined to dryland regions of the Global South. A related pattern is visible in southern Tunisia, where environmental stress, governance uncertainty, and market change are jointly reshaping pastoral strategies and territorial relations, illustrating that Mediterranean pastoralism remains dynamic rather than residual. More broadly, tourism, conservation, energy development, mining, and infrastructure increasingly re-territorialize pastoral rangelands across regions, intensifying competition over access and reshaping governance beyond the older state-versus-community binary (Dong et al., 2021; Manzano et al., 2021).

At the same time, external climate policies often overlook pastoral realities. Carbon-offset projects and afforestation schemes may restrict access to rangelands in the name of mitigation, repeating older conservation injustices. Yet evidence from East Africa and Central Asia shows that well-managed pastoral systems sequester significant soil carbon and maintain vegetation cover (Fairhead et al., 2012; McGahey et al., 2014; Houzer & Scoones, 2021).

The incorporation of pastoral economies into national and global markets has also brought both opportunities and new inequalities. Demand for meat, milk, and fibre has created new value chains, but often under conditions that marginalise producers. Traders and middlemen capture most profits, while herders face volatile prices and rising costs for fodder, veterinary care, and transport. In some regions, the shift from subsistence to market-oriented production has increased herd sizes beyond sustainable thresholds, straining communal regulation. Elsewhere, cash income enables investment in education, health, and modern equipment, supporting livelihood diversification (Alary et al., 2011; McGahey et al., 2014; Scoones, 2022).

Innovations are emerging to rebalance these dynamics. Cooperative marketing in Mongolia and Ethiopia enhances bargaining power; fair-trade milk networks in Iran, Kenya (particularly in arid regions such as Isiolo and Garissa), and Mauritania create niche markets for pastoral women’s groups; and certification of grass-fed or organic livestock in the Mediterranean links traditional grazing to consumer values of sustainability. These initiatives illustrate how market participation can strengthen, rather than erode, commons governance when embedded in local decision structures (Alary et al., 2011; McGahey et al., 2014; Manzano-Baena & Salguero-Herrera, 2018).

Demographic shifts and education are reshaping pastoral communities. Youth increasingly seek wage employment or urban education, leading to labour shortages and knowledge gaps in herding. At the same time, young pastoralists are returning with new skills, digital tools, and aspirations for reform. Mobile phone networks now support herd tracking, weather alerts, and market information. Participatory mapping and drone imagery are used to document routes and resource use for ICCA recognition. Women, traditionally excluded from formal decision-making, have become leaders in grazing committees and product cooperatives. These processes represent not a rupture but a generational transition, a rearticulation of collective governance for new times (Johnsen et al., 2019; Sharifian et al., 2022; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

Across regions, pastoral governance is evolving into hybrid systems that blend customary authority with statutory frameworks. In Mongolia, pasture user groups negotiate management plans with local governments. In Kenya and Tanzania, community conservancies integrate conservation funding into communal grazing regimes. In Bolivia and Peru, Indigenous ayllus interface with municipal governments through joint planning committees. These arrangements embody adaptive governance by enabling flexible, context-specific responses to environmental and social change while also revealing the tensions and asymmetries that accompany hybrid institutional forms (Fernández-Giménez et al., 2015; Ameso et al., 2018; Postigo, 2021).

A parallel transformation is occurring in the domain of knowledge. Pastoralists’ environmental expertise is increasingly recognised in science and policy. Collaborative research and participatory mapping initiatives have documented thousands of rangeland practices and institutions. Networks such as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP), the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples (WAMIP), and the ICCA Consortium’s pastoralist groups are amplifying these voices in global fora (Johnsen et al., 2019; Sharifian et al., 2022; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

Nevertheless, asymmetries persist. Data on rangeland ecosystems remain sparse, and many national inventories ignore pastoral land uses. Integrating community monitoring into national databases could bridge this gap and strengthen evidence-based advocacy. Digital storytelling, community mapping, and open-access repositories are emerging tools for asserting visibility while maintaining control over local knowledge (Johnsen et al., 2019; ILRI et al., 2021).

Beneath these institutional changes lies the enduring cultural fabric that sustains cooperation. Pastoral moral economies continue to guide behaviour even amid economic change. Ritual gatherings, festivals, and oral poetry reaffirm collective identity and ecological ethics. Such cultural expressions serve as informal governance mechanisms, reinforcing norms of restraint and reciprocity (Maffi, 2005; Maffi & Woodley, 2010; Gavin et al., 2015).

6. Adaptive Strategies and Resistance

Pastoralist societies have never been passive victims of change. Across continents, they have mobilised collective intelligence and social networks to respond to the pressures described earlier. These responses range from local adaptation and self-organisation to national and international advocacy, revealing a remarkable capacity to reinterpret customary principles within contemporary governance frameworks. Adaptive strategies and resistance are not opposing forces but complementary expressions of agency (Bassi, 2017; Haller, 2020; Scoones, 2021).

At local scales, pastoral communities are reforming and revitalising their customary institutions. In Mongolia, pasture user groups have re-established seasonal rules and rangeland monitoring systems once disrupted by market reforms. Their collective management plans, supported by both government and NGOs, have reduced overgrazing and improved forage productivity. In Niger, commissions foncières and pastoral committees coordinate grazing calendars and negotiate corridors that cross administrative borders. These bodies combine traditional leadership with elected representation, embodying hybrid governance in action (Fernández-Giménez et al., 2015; Niamir-Fuller, 1999; FAO, 2022).

In Kenya and Tanzania, community conservancies illustrate another mode of adaptive re-organisation. Herders have converted exclusionary wildlife areas into multi-use landscapes that sustain both biodiversity and livelihoods. By reinvesting tourism revenue into education, water points, and women’s cooperatives, conservancies strengthen the social foundations of collective action. In Andean and Patagonian highlands, pastoral cooperatives and comunidades campesinas have revived rotational grazing and communal irrigation, often blending ancestral rituals with modern resource-mapping tools. These initiatives show that pastoralist governance can re-emerge as a deliberate project of renewal, not merely as cultural persistence (Ameso et al., 2018; Postigo, 2013, 2021; Brooks & Thomsen, 2017).

Adaptation is also reshaping the domain of knowledge. Pastoralists have combined traditional knowledge with modern science to monitor climate, manage herds, and negotiate policy. Participatory mapping and GIS documentation are now common tools for securing ICCA recognition and collective titles. In Ethiopia and Somalia, rangeland observatories integrate herders’ rainfall records with satellite imagery, producing data used in national drought-early-warning systems. Mongolian herders employ mobile-phone applications for real-time pasture conditions, while Andean pastoralists collaborate with universities to track glacier melt and water availability (Johnsen et al., 2019; Sharifian et al., 2022).

These forms of adaptation are increasingly matched by more explicit legal and political engagement. In East Africa, formalization processes have pushed pastoralists to negotiate the terms under which communal recognition occurs, often to prevent land registration from fragmenting shared grazing systems. In Inner Asia and China, including in Amdo Tibet, pastoral communities navigate layered relations with local states, conservation actors, and market interests in order to retain access to rangelands under changing legal and economic conditions. Adaptive resistance therefore includes not only local institutional renewal, but also strategic engagement with the law, public policy, and trans-scalar alliances (Galaty, 2016; Haller et al., 2016; Dong et al., 2021).

These initiatives redefine expertise. They challenge the hierarchy that positions scientists as data producers and communities as informants. By co-producing knowledge, pastoralists assert epistemic sovereignty. Networks such as the Pastoralist Knowledge Hub (FAO), LandMark, and the ICCA Registry facilitate global exchange of locally generated data, giving visibility to rangelands previously omitted from conservation maps (Johnsen et al., 2019; ICCA Consortium, 2021; Sharifian et al., 2022).

Economic resilience underpins institutional survival. Pastoralists are experimenting with cooperative enterprises that align market participation with commons governance. In West Africa, cross-border livestock markets run by federations of herder associations set transparent prices and manage taxation collectively. In Mauritania and Kenya, women’s camel-milk cooperatives have become key sources of income and nutrition, investing profits in community services. Spanish and Italian transhumant associations market grass-fed products under origin labels that link biodiversity conservation with cultural heritage. At the same time, solidarity mechanisms have expanded beyond economics. Mutual-aid networks provide emergency fodder and veterinary support during droughts, while regional associations coordinate disaster response. Such institutions exemplify collective risk-sharing, an ancient principle now mobilised to confront climate extremes and market volatility (Alary et al., 2011; McGahey et al., 2014; Manzano-Baena & Salguero-Herrera, 2018).

However, where dialogue fails, pastoralists have resorted to organised resistance to defend their territories. In Tanzania, the eviction of Maasai from conservation areas has triggered national and international campaigns linking human rights to environmental justice. In India’s Rajasthan and Gujarat, Maldhari herders have challenged restrictive forest regulations through public interest litigation and alliances with legal NGOs. In Chile and Argentina, Patagonian Mapuche pastoralists have resisted extractive projects threatening their rangelands, framing their claims through Indigenous rights and climate-justice narratives (Brockington, 2002; Brooks & Thomsen, 2017; Tauli-Corpuz et al., 2020).

These struggles are increasingly connected through transnational networks. The WAMIP, the Global Pastoralist movement, and the IYRP Global Alliance amplify local voices in international fora. Their advocacy reframes mobility from a perceived problem into a solution for sustainability. By asserting that “movement is governance,” they counter static notions of territory and conservation. The growing use of ICCA-territories of life frameworks in these campaigns provides both visibility and legitimacy within global biodiversity policy (Bassi, 2017; ICCA Consortium, 2021; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

ICCA recognition has become one of the most effective tools for pastoralists to secure rights and shape policy. Registration in national or global ICCA databases enables communities to document their governance systems, attract support, and engage with decision-makers. In Mongolia, a significant number of herding groups have pursued recognition through local agreements and collaborative arrangements, although such recognition remains uneven and shaped by broader legal ambiguity over pastoral territorial authority. In Kenya, some Samburu and Maasai conservancies and community-governed territories can be interpreted through ICCA principles and are increasingly invoked in debates on biodiversity governance, although their governance outcomes and degrees of local control vary considerably. In Peru and Bolivia, comunidades campesinas use ICCA mapping to defend high-Andean wetlands against mining concessions. In the Mediterranean, networks of transhumant associations are framing ancient corridors as living cultural landscapes within ICCA principles (ICCA Consortium, 2021; Jonas & Godio, 2020; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

Collaboration with states and civil society is another frontier of adaptation. Where trust exists, pastoralist organisations are participating in land-use planning, climate-adaptation programs, and biodiversity strategies. In Senegal and Chad, pastoral federations sit on national rangeland councils; in Mongolia, herders co-design environmental indicators with government agencies; in Spain, shepherd associations influence agri-environmental subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy. These engagements illustrate a pragmatic turn: pastoralists are not merely resisting state power but negotiating shared governance through institutional partnerships (Fernández-Giménez et al., 2015; Domínguez & Rodríguez-Estévez, 2018; FAO, 2022).

However, such collaboration remains delicate. Power asymmetries and donor-driven agendas can distort representation, privileging certain communities or leaders. Ensuring downward accountability and equitable benefit distribution is therefore central to sustaining legitimacy (Brooks & Thomsen, 2017; Tauli-Corpuz et al., 2020).

Perhaps the most transformative development is the emergence of a shared global narrative about pastoralism. Through regional networks and digital communication, pastoralists from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe exchange experiences, co-author policy briefs, and craft collective messages for international conferences. The concept of a Global Pastoralist Gathering, such as those planned within the UNCCD process, symbolizes this convergence. It aims to articulate common principles for rangeland governance, echoing the ICCA Consortium’s emphasis on “territories of life.” Such encounters transform dispersed struggles into a movement for planetary solidarity, pastoralists speaking as co-custodians of the Earth’s open landscapes (Bassi, 2017; Zanjani et al., 2023; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

Parallel to activism, there is a renewal of public representation. Films, photo essays, and online campaigns portray pastoralists not as marginal wanderers but as innovators of coexistence. This narrative shift challenges the deep-seated imagery of degradation and dependence that has shaped policy for decades. By claiming visibility, pastoralists reclaim the power to define their own futures (ICCA Consortium, 2021; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

Taken together, these actions embody what might be called the logic of adaptive resistance. It is adaptive because it learns, experiments, and re-organises; resistant because it protects autonomy and moral integrity. This dual logic parallels Ostrom’s vision of polycentric resilience: multiple nodes of authority cooperating under uncertainty (Ostrom, 1990; Haller et al., 2019; Scoones, 2021).

7. Governing Commons through Uncertainty: Linking Commons and Territories of Life

Pastoralism endures because it is founded on principles that modern governance is only beginning to rediscover: cooperation, flexibility and trust under uncertainty. Across continents, pastoralist territories of life show that the capacity to live with variability is not a failure of governance, but one of its most sophisticated forms. Their institutions work because they match the ecological realities of rangelands: seasonal movement, negotiated access, reciprocal obligation, collective memory and adaptive decision-making. For this reason, pastoralism should not be read only as a livelihood system, but as a political and institutional contribution to the future of commons governance (Ostrom, 1990; Scoones, 1995; Nori & Scoones, 2019).

The central argument of this article is that the commons debate and the framework of ICCAs-territories of life are mutually reinforcing. Commons theory helps clarify the institutional architecture of pastoral governance: common property regimes, collective-choice rules, monitoring, graduated sanctions, conflict-resolution mechanisms, nested enterprises and polycentric authority. It provides a vocabulary for showing that pastoral rangelands are not open-access spaces, but governed commons with rules, responsibilities and legitimate authorities. This is essential for countering the persistent influence of Hardin’s “tragedy” narrative and for demonstrating that mobility can be an institutional strength rather than a sign of disorder (Hardin, 1968; Ostrom, 1990; Agrawal, 2001; Galaty, 2016).

At the same time, ICCAs-territories of life expand the commons debate beyond resource management and property arrangements. They foreground the biocultural, ethical, spiritual and political dimensions of collective governance. Pastoral commons are not only systems for allocating forage, water or routes; they are territories of identity, memory, care, ritual obligation and cultural continuity. This means that the value of pastoral governance cannot be measured only by productivity, biodiversity indicators or institutional efficiency. It must also be understood through the relationships that communities maintain with their herds, landscapes, ancestors, non-human beings and future generations (Maffi & Woodley, 2010; Gavin et al., 2015; Borrini-Feyerabend, 2024).

Bringing these two frameworks together produces a stronger analytical and political claim. Pastoral territories of life can be understood at once as common property regimes, cultural landscape ecosystems and rights-bearing systems of self-governance. Commons theory clarifies how these systems are governed; territories of life clarify why they matter as living relationships and as expressions of self-determined conservation. Together, they move the discussion beyond a narrow concern with land-use efficiency or conservation coverage and towards a broader question of recognition: whose institutions, knowledge systems, ontologies and rights are acknowledged as legitimate in governing landscapes?

This combined framework is particularly important because pastoral territories rarely fit neatly into the categories used by states, cadastral systems or protected-area law. Their governance is mobile, seasonal, overlapping and negotiated. Recognition therefore cannot be limited to drawing a polygon around a territory. It must include broader rights to mobility, passage, water, seasonal pastures, dry-season refuges, ritual sites, transboundary routes, reciprocal access and participation in decisions that affect rangelands. It must also include rights to maintain customary institutions and to adapt them without being forced into rigid legal models that fragment the commons. In this sense, the link between commons and territories of life strengthens the case for broader recognition rights than “territory” alone.

This is also where the critique of naturalist conservation becomes central. If conservation is based on the assumption that nature exists separately from people, pastoral mobility will continue to be seen as disturbance, pastoral landscapes as under-utilised spaces and pastoral communities as stakeholders to be consulted rather than rights-holders to be respected. By contrast, many pastoral territories of life are governed through relational or non-naturalist ontologies in which humans, animals, waters, pastures, spiritual beings and ecological processes are part of the same lived world. Recognising this does not mean romanticising pastoral societies or treating all communities as culturally uniform. It means acknowledging that conservation and commons governance are also shaped by different ways of understanding what land, life and responsibility are (Descola, 2013; Haller et al., 2019; Foggin et al., 2021).

The political relevance of this argument is clear in contemporary debates on conservation, restoration and climate policy. Initiatives that expand protected areas, carbon-offset projects or restoration zones without recognizing pastoral commons risk repeating older forms of enclosure under new ecological language. Green grabbing often works by presenting rangelands as empty, degraded or available for environmental intervention, while ignoring the social institutions that already govern them. A combined commons and territories-of-life approach offers an alternative: conservation through self-governance, legal pluralism, secure collective rights and full participation of pastoral communities in defining goals, rules and monitoring systems (Fairhead et al., 2012; Jonas et al., 2017; Tauli-Corpuz et al., 2020).

Four principles follow from this synthesis. First, mobility should be treated as a governance function, not as an obstacle to governance. Second, collective tenure should be interpreted broadly enough to include corridors, routes, water points, temporary access and overlapping seasonal rights. Third, participation must mean decision-making authority and downward accountability, not merely consultation in externally designed conservation projects. Fourth, biocultural continuity must be recognized as integral to ecological resilience, because languages, memories, rituals, breeds and place-based knowledge are part of the institutional infrastructure of pastoral commons.

These principles suggest that the future of commons governance will depend not on uniform regulation but on the cultivation of diversity, dialogue and mutual respect. Pastoralists remind us that uncertainty is not merely a problem to be solved, but a condition to be lived with creatively. Their territories of life, shaped by movement, cooperation and shared responsibility, are not exceptions to the global order; they are exemplars of how collective governance can sustain life in fragile and interdependent landscapes. In learning from them, commons scholarship and conservation policy can move closer to an ethic of coexistence: governing not through enclosure and control, but through care, reciprocity and responsibility.

This review provides a broad synthesis but does not delve into specific empirical data analysis from individual cases, relying instead on existing literature and reported outcomes. Future research could focus on deeper comparative analysis of how ICCA recognition, common property rights and mobility-based governance interact across different pastoral contexts, especially where legal reforms, conservation initiatives and climate policies are reshaping pastoral territories of life.

Ethics and Consent

Ethical approval was not required for this study, as it is based entirely on a review and synthesis of published literature and publicly available information.

Data Accessibility Statement

No new data were created or analysed in this study. The article is based exclusively on published literature and publicly available sources.

Author Contributions

Both authors contributed substantially to the conception, research, drafting, and revision of the manuscript and approved the final version for submission.