Pastoralism is the main livelihood of about 268 million people across Africa. In dryland areas, it is often the most viable livelihood, if not the only one. For many generations, livestock herders have created economic value from scarce natural resources, while also maintaining ecologically fragile ecosystems.

However, pastoral communities and livelihoods experience growing pressure, and not just from climate change. They face increasing stress from competing land uses, surging demographics, insecurity and hardening border regimes, poor governance of natural resources, and the marginalising of pastoralists from public services and political processes.

Climate change adds to these challenges as it threatens the health, value and survival of their herds and makes it more complicated to access water and grazing lands. By narrowing pastoralists’ options for mobility, climate stressors threaten to drive herders into more frequent conflict with other pastoralists or farming communities

In Senegal, pastoralists change their movement patterns in response to changing weather and climate conditions. Young people cope by taking up seasonal work in farming or urban areas. When resources become harder to reach, herders use modern technologies to cope. They transport water and fodder to where their herds are or use vehicles to move the animals around. Some herders combine nomadic life with farming. This partially sedentary approach – agro-pastoralism – can boost their income and their resilience to climate change. However, adopting new herding routes or settling down can split up families, increase the household burden on women, and expose families to insecurity.

When herders decide to settle, it may not always be voluntary. They may be forced to become sedentary as a result of livestock losses caused by disease, drought, or flooding, or by  policies that limit their ability to move.

For centuries, African pastoralists have drawn on intangible heritage to build their resilience to climatic variability and to support adaptation practices. Pastoral communities have recorded their experiences as memories that are passed down through generations and have been translated into a range of adaptive practices. However, changes to their traditional routes and the distances travelled to move cattle between grazing sites are affecting the effectiveness of this handed down knowledge. Climate change thus risks making traditional knowledge obsolete. The implications of these changes go far beyond the loss of pastoralists’ material resources, threatening a loss of heritage that could also erode family structures, marriages, cultures, religions, and polities.