Roads Less Travelled is a new global initiative to help mobile pastoralists around the world move freely through the landscape for nature, for the climate, and for life and living. We propose here to LAUNCH the initiative with a nice evening event within the One Square Meter exhibition space (if possible).
At the proposed event, we will have some light presentations from organisations such as DiversEarth (coordinating organisation for Roads Less Travelled), Trashumancia y Naturaleza, Spain and Icimod, Himalayas. Plus we hope to have interventions from representatives of pastoral communities (budget dependent). This will take place hopefully within the One Square Meter exhibition space, the creative exhibition that portrays the key messages from Roads Less Travelled.
Background:
The migration routes of the mobile pastoralists form on-land rivers of richly biodiverse corridors that move as effortlessly through the landscape as they do, creating links between different areas of high biodiversity; preventing the spread of wild fires; enriching the soils; and dispersing seeds of countless varieties. Whether over deserts, through forests, over open rangelands or snowy mountain passes, mobile pastoralists around the world today form a unique community, speaking the same language of the landscape.
Yet despite the many benefits of mobile pastoralism, migration routes in most countries are being fragmented, degraded or lost entirely, making movement difficult and often stressful for the communities who maintain the will to move. This, along with perverted policies, water shortages and climate change to name a few, is making the hard lifestyle of the mobile pastoralist even less attractive to younger generations.
In early human existence people were entirely dependent on nature and that vital connection was both acknowledged and worshipped. Over time this connection has been slowly fading and today it seems that many societies are disconnected with nature altogether. The world’s mobile pastoralists are living example of how some people have remained fully connected with the land and have been able to adapt to changing conditions for the past 10’000 years.
This programme of work proposed by DiversEarth and partners, and in close collaboration with mobile / nomadic groups in the Mediterranean, Central Asia and the Himalayas, aims to help mobile pastoralists around the world move freely through the landscape for nature, for the climate and for life and living.
Ecosystem: Agricultural , Ecosystem: Grassland , Big Issues: Biodiversity , Big Issues: Human-wellbeing , Solutions: Local/Traditional knowledge
