ABSTRACT
With a long history as a livelihood and as a land use type, pastoralism has thrived for millennia, thanks to an efficient imitation of natural herbivory. Such highly circular systems have recently been disrupted by the industrial revolution, which has introduced a logic of linear production in livestock systems. We now have a better understanding on the role of pastoralists in ecosystems, including reduction in catastrophic wildfires or maintenance of biodiversity. However, recent societal concerns about deforestation and climate change have put grazing livestock on the spotlight. Interpretations of large climate impacts and extensive land use impact usually suffer from limitations of incomplete sustainability metrics. This disregards the role that pastoralism has at integrating itself into natural grazing ecosystems, identifying all livestock actions as intrinsically human-made. When interpreting much of pastoralism emissions as natural, the climate blame on such production systems becomes unsubstantiated. Pastoralist advocacy has mainly concentrated on the role of rangelands in stocking carbon, ignoring the limited mitigation capacity of soils and the large portion of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions that is attributed to grazing livestock. Better advocacy can lead to better arguments and policy action, recognizing the role pastoralism has in a society not dependent on fossil fuels.
