This month sees the end of the PASTRES programme. It has been an amazing journey since 2018. We are grateful for the support of the European Research Council through an Advanced Grant, and to our co-hosting institutions, the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex and the European University Institute in Florence.
Six PhD students passed with flying colours, several books and 28 journal articles were published and more than 200 posts have been added to the PASTRES blog. And not only academic work – we have hosted many policy dialogues and events, shared our photographs at many exhibitions and produced a comic series and many short videos reflecting on our learning from around the world.
The PASTRES website will remain online as a legacy archive, and we have organised the material in a way we hope will be accessible to all.
Global lessons
When we started, we set ourselves an ambitious task – to generate ‘global lessons from the margins’ through understanding how pastoralists navigate uncertainty in diverse settings around the world. At our launch workshop in April 2018, participants reflected on the timeliness of the project in a series of videos.
In the years since, we have done much more than we ever planned. The ‘global lessons’ have been explored in a number of collaborative journal articles – on pastoralists’ practices, economics, migration, pandemics, knowledge, insurance and knowledge networks.
Comic series and new animation
Uncertain Worlds – lessons from pastoralists
The seven journal articles were in turn expertly interpreted in a series of comics by Daniel Locke, under the title ‘Uncertain Worlds’.
The core argument, for a shift from an individualised risk and control paradigm to one of uncertainty and care, is captured in a new animation by David Blandy.
A new narrative
Our research in China, Ethiopia, India, Italy, Kenya and Tunisia (and beyond through our network of affiliate researchers and postdocs) has generated a new narrative on pastoralism, where issues of uncertainty are central.
The recently-completed ten-part blog series has showcased our collective work, linking to many of the blogs, papers and other materials on the website. Check out the series to get a flavour of our findings, alongside our edited book, Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Development, that has chapters from all our core sites.
Podcast: Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Development
PASTRES features in the latest episode of Between the Lines, the podcast produced by the Institute of Development Studies which focuses on new books.
In the episode, our affiliate researcher Rashmi Singh interviews Ian Scoones, editor of the book Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Development.
Exploring uncertainty through visual methods
Our work on visual methods as ways of exploring uncertainty and the contexts for pastoral livelihoods in all our sites evolved over the past five years. We hadn’t planned it, but the enthusiasm and skill of Roopa Gogineni and Shibaji Bose meant that our visual outputs are some of the most important and influential.
Our exhibition – Seeing Pastoralism – has been seen in many places around the world, from Isiolo to Stockholm, as well as in our field sites. The recently-released photovoice guide and documentary photograph book offer a taste of what we saw, experienced and learned.
Recent publications
Wolford W., White B., Scoones I., Hall R., Edelman M. and Borras S.M. (2024) Global land deals: What has been done, what has changed, and what’s next? LDPI working paper 2024-001
Pappagallo L. (2024) Recasting Tenure and Labour in Non-equilibrium Environments: Making the Case for ‘High-Reliability’ Pastoral Institutions. Land Use Policy
DeMartino G., Grabel I. and Scoones I. (2024) Economics for an uncertain world. World Development
Leach M., Macgregor H., Scoones I. and Taylor P. (2024) Post-pandemic Transformations and the Recasting of Development: A Comment and Further Reflections Development and Change
Singh, R. and Kerven, C. (2023) Pastoralism in South Asia: Contemporary stresses and adaptations of Himalayan pastoralists. Pastoralism: Research Policy and Practice
Gongbu Zeren, Jing Tan, Zhou Zeng, Menglin Li and Fan Yang (2023) Use of subsidized insurance policy in climate adaptation strategies: the case of pastoral regions in China. Climate Policy
Gongbu Zeren, Jing Tan, Qian Zhang & Bading Qiuying (2023) Rebuilding rural community cooperative institutions and their role in herder adaptation to climate change, Climate Policy
Scoones I. and Nori M. (2023) Rethinking policies for pastoralists – governing the rangelands, The Rangeland Journal
Unks R. et al (2023) Diffuse land control, shifting pastoralist institutions, and processes of accumulation in southern Kenya, Journal of Peasant Studies
New book – Navigating Uncertainty
Look out for the new book by PASTRES lead researcher Ian Scoones, Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World. The book will be published by Polity Books later in the year and will be available open access. If you prefer a paper copy, these can already be ordered online in advance from Polity Books and Amazon.
With chapters on finance and banking, technology, critical infrastructures, pandemics, disasters and climate change, Navigating Uncertainty draws lessons from pastoralists and others for wider society. The book picks up on the themes of the PASTRES project and extends the discussions started in 2019 at our uncertainty symposium that gave rise to the edited volume – The Politics of Uncertainty: Challenges of Tranformation – published in 2020.
Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World
Edited by Ian Scoones
Published 2024
Polity Books
Available Open Access
What next?
Everyone asks us: will there be a PASTRES 2? What next? The wider network that PASTRES has generated will have to decide this, individually and collectively. The lesson-learning and engagement across regions has been unique and there are many possible avenues for follow up.
As a legacy, we leave the website with its extraordinary array of materials. Our free online course provides a 16-part training that anyone can follow to engage with the ideas behind the PASTRES project. Reformatted and reorganised, the website is an open archive for everyone to use, so do take a look and share widely.
We hope that through our research, networking and policy engagement we have contributed in a small way to generating and promoting a new, positive narrative on pastoralism and extensive livestock more generally, with variability and uncertainty at the centre. We hope the UN International Year for Rangelands and Pastoralists in 2026 will pick this up and ensure that this is central to policymaking globally.
Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience - PASTRES 