ABSTRACT
For 50 years, governments across West Asia and North Africa have sought to raise the productivity of steppe rangelands through a series of centralized rehabilitation and grazing schemes. Technically-led and top-down, these interventions have left their legacy in state and customary institutions, but with little noticeable impact on the steppe pastures. Indeed, by most accounts, the degradation of biodiversity and the resource base has accelerated. The inadequacy of a centralist approach and the need to involve pastoralists and their institutions has been recognized for some time as fundamental to rangeland management and conservation. Nevertheless, some of the factors behind why they were excluded in the past still echo today. Largely political in nature, these factors constrain the nature of the participatory process and increase its complexity, although considerable opportunity remains for a sustainable future.
