Regreening the Drylands with Livestock: Climate Smart Pastoralism #BeatingFamine
1. Regreening the Drylands with
Livestock: Climate Smart Pastoralism
Climate Smart Agriculture must include Climate Smart Pastoralism
2. 11 Shrub Cover, closed-open, evergreen 12 Shrub Cover, closed-open, deciduous
13 Herbaceous Cover, closed-open 14 Sparse herbaceous or sparse shrub cover
Grasslands and rangelands make up vast areas
of the earth’s surface
5. Livestock Related Emissions by GHG
Production fertilisants N
Chemical N. fert. production
Energie fossile fuel
On-farm fossil ferme
Déforestation
N2O Deforestation
e Sol cultivé from ag. soils
OM release
ur
an % Désertification pâturages
Pasture degradation
M 25 Transformation fuel
Processing fossil
Deforestation
34% CO2 Transport fossil fuel
Transport
Fermentation ruminale
Enteric fermentation
Effluents,storage / processing
Manure stockage/traitement
Epandage fertilisants N
N fertilization
Enteric fermentation Production légumineuses
Legume production
26% Effluents,storage / processing
Manure stockage/traitement
Effluents,spreading / dropping
Manure épandage/dépôt
Effluents, emission indirecte
Manu indirect emissions
Steinfeld, 2009 CH4
7. Kenya’s Rangelands
• Grazing lands make up 40% of
Kenya’s of total land area
• Dryland Grazing Systems
under Sustainable Grazing
Practices can sequester 0.05 –
0.7 Tonnes C/Ha/Yr
• Room for improvement
because of land degradation
• Integrating trees
(silvopastoral systems) ramp
up the potential for carbon
storage (along with other co-
benefits)
9. Solar Energy Flow Nutrient Dynamics
Photos: C. Legg
Managing Ecosystem Processes
Water Cycle Biological Community Dynamics
Photos: C. Leggett
Photos: C. Leggett
10. Non-effective water cycle Effective water cycle
50-80% of rainfall is lost through run-off 1 % increase in SOM
and evaporation. 144,000 L H20 per Ha
Soil bare between plants Soil covered with plants and
mulch
After:
water table www.managingwholes.com
11. Can livestock be used to
manage ecosystems
processes?
Photo credit: C.Neely
Photo credit: C. Leggett
Photos: C. Leggett, C. Neely
Photo credit: C. Leggett
12. Overgrazing and Land Degradation
Cessation of overgrazing alone could sequester
167.7 MtCO2e yr-1 globally (Conant and Paustian 2002).
RECOVERY PERIOD
Planned grazing
Source: Belinda Low, Grevy’s Trust
Animal impact
Slide adapted from Belinda
Low Grevy’s Zebra Trust
19. Laikipia
Westgate
Northern Rangelands Trust
Kajiado
Turkana
Among others
Scaling up may require at least one hundred
community mobilizers and thousands of herders
along with well placed learning sites
23. Will climate change be the ultimate incentive
to do what we have meant to be doing all
along?
Notes de l'éditeur
Dryland Pastoral Systems and Climate Change: Implications and Opportunities for Mitigation and Adaptation.
Grasslands are land cover with herbaceous plants with less than 10 percent tree and shrub cover. “Grasslands” is used in a wider sense of rangelands, grazing land, agro-silvo-pastoral systems, and cultivated pastures. Grasslands are an important land use system and have considerable technical potential.
Livestock related livelihoods is easily a billion persons
Now let ’s look through a different set of windows. These are the ecosystem functions. It is all one house but the ecosystem functions are solar energy flow (photosynthesis), mineral or nutrient cycling, biological community dynamics and the water cycle. A clear understanding of these functions and how they work together will be critical to evaluating ways forward for adaptation and mitigation of climate change as well as moving in a direction of carbon finance or payment for environmental services.
And, we need to also think about adaptation - a 1 percent increase in organic matter in these grasslands can sequester over 100 Picograms C. This same 1% increase increases the water holding capacity by as much as 144,000 liters per hectare (dwarfing that in the world ’s dams). I draw your attention to the right frame. The importance of a good ground cover, as noted earlier (as shown on the right) can vastly improve water infiltration – reducing losses due to run off and evaporation. When we manage soil for a cover, deep root systems, we are getting water back into the soil and into the bore holes and streams where we can use it. A key indicator of an ineffective cycle is bare ground. When we leave soil bare we are creating a drought condition since the water that does fall runs off or evaporates. The numbers vary but bare soil can mean losing as much as 80% of the rainfall that does fall. What it takes to get this soils functioning – organic matter and soil cover are the same that we need for building soil carbon.
Good grassland management practices are those that also improve soil carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration is inhibited by loss of groundcover, bare fallows, burning and continuous grazing (not allowing the land to recover). Biomass burning from the savannas contribute 42% of gross carbon dioxide to global emissions (Levine et al. 1999, Andreae 1991). By just using the tools of grazing (allowing the plants to recover before the they are grazed again) and animal impact (mobbing the animals so that you get effective nutrient distribution from dung and urine and letting the livestock break the soil surface – particularly crusted soils - to assist in capturing the rainfall).
Cost of refurbishing land: Recent estimates reported in the controversial document entitled Livestock ’s Long Shadow, indicate that the rehabilitation of degraded lands to pasture with conventional methods can cost as much as USD $40 per hectare per year Requier-Desjardins and Bied-Charreton,