New scholarly resources situate pastoral commons in their global context as a dynamic, future-oriented model of collective stewardship; they illuminate how mobility, territory, and collective rights intertwine to form living social–ecological infrastructures that challenge dominant assumptions about property, management, productivity, and sustainability.
First published on 03/03/2026, and last updated on 04/01/2026
By Pablo Dominguez, Honorary member, ICCA Consortium
New scholarly resources published by the Pastoral Commons international Working Group of the Global Alliance for Rangelands and Pastoralists present a broader re-framing of pastoral territories of life as a dynamic, future-oriented model of collective and sustainable stewardship.
These two publications, developed for the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) 2026, situate pastoral commons in their global context.
Pastoral Commons Conceptual Framework
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The Conceptual Framework establishes a foundation to gather existing evidence. It calls attention to the geographical extent of pastoral commons and their inherent values in terms of political organization, socio-cultural embeddedness, agro-economic productivity, environmental contributions, and legality. It stresses that the multifaceted “invisible reality” of these systems can no longer be ignored.
The development of this Conceptual Framework was led by Francisco Godoy-Sepúlveda, Santiago A. Parra, Pau Sanosa-Cols, Adrià Peña-Enguix, Daniel Maghanjo Mwamidi, and Pablo Domínguez (the PICCAHer team), at the same time as it received valuable feedback from over 30 experts and civil society representatives in the Working Group from all around the world. This Working Group emerged from the Working Group on Pastoralists and Land Rights of the Global Alliance for Rangelands and Pastoralists, set up to support IYRP and continue promotingits messages well beyond 2026.
The Pastoral Commons Working Group aims to foster collaboration between pastoral rights holders, Indigenous institutions, and Local Communities. It also involves civil society organizations, researchers, and public agencies. Together, they aim to turn knowledge and lived experience on pastoral commons into coordinated action. The Group documents contributions and highlights the value of the commons to strengthen governance. It also points to legal, policy, and market conditions at different scales. These efforts contribute to the IYRP 2026 and wider global efforts by the ICCA consortium and the International Land Coalition, and others.
Pastoral mobilities as commons
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The text highlights how communal forms and structures linked to transhumance and other mobility types like nomadism should not be overlooked. There are vigorous demonstrations of the key role that pastoral commons’ mindset and values still play. These values ensure pastoral mobility and its associated rangeland conservation and collateral environmental benefits, while also supporting livelihoods, cultural heritage, and unique economies in terms of food, landscape creation, and other types of production. Without the possibility of mobility, pastoralism would simply collapse, and without the communal mindset, mobility would be much more difficult to achieve or even impossible in many cases. By examining how herders collectively organize access to grazing lands and transhumance corridors, we can better grasp how mobility itself operates as a commons or a commoning. We can also see how they negotiate schedules and coordinate movement across large territories.
This text was written by Pau Sanosa, Francisco Godoy, and Pablo Domínguez (PICCAHers team).
Together, these texts remind us that pastoral societies continue to steward territories across continents, possibly as vast as half of the world’s land surface. And they do so most often through forms of collective organization that challenge dominant assumptions about property, productivity, and sustainability. Far from being archaic survivals, pastoral systems represent living social–ecological infrastructures. These infrastructures sustain food production, biodiversity, cultural heritage, and local governance.
Understanding their contemporary relevance requires moving beyond simplified binaries, such as private versus public or traditional versus modern. It also requires recognizing the central role of commons-based institutions in shaping pastoral landscapes.
Pastoral commons, in particular, illuminate how mobility, territory, and collective rights intertwine. Rangeland environments are characterized by variability, whether through seasonal, interannual, or longer-term climatic fluctuations. In these environments, flexibility is not a luxury but a condition for survival. Herders rely on shared and commonly governed pastures, water points, and corridors of movement. These shared resources enable them to respond to ecological change.
These resources are embedded in social institutions that coordinate access and regulate the timing and intensity of use. These institutions also mediate conflicts. They are sustained by moral economies in which reputation, reciprocity, and mutual aid play as significant a role as formal sanctions. In this sense, pastoral commons are not merely resource regimes. They are cultural and political systems that articulate livelihoods, identities, and landscapes all in one.
