Rangelands rarely get the same attention as, say, rainforests or coral reefs. Perhaps this is because they appear to be vast, empty expanses where little more happens beyond animals roaming and grazing.
But that perception only scratches their vegetation-dotted surface.
Rangelands, found on every continent, cover more than half of the Earths land area. They support the lives and livelihoods of some 2 billion people and underpin roughly one-sixth of global food production, providing 10 per cent of the global meat supply and about 70 per cent of livestock feed. Their soils hold crucial stocks of carbon below and give home to a vast array of biodiversity above.
Yet, as much as half of the worlds rangelands are now degraded a decline that has happened largely out of sight.
Efforts to revive and restore rangelands are happening across the globe. But this is only part of the answer to rangelands future. Equally important is preventing them from degrading in the first place.
Rangelands are a central focus of a major United Nations conference on land degradation currently ongoing on Mongolia, known formally as the 17th Conference of the Parties to UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17).
The outcome of COP17 must go beyond negotiated decisions and translate into concrete action, greater investment and stronger partnerships to halt and reverse land degradation, safeguard rangelands and soils, restore degraded land and combat desertification, said Sandag-Ochir Tsend, Mongolia's Minister of Environment and Climate Change,
What drives rangeland degradation?
Between 2001 and 2023, the global area covered by permanent meadows and pastures declined by an estimated 150 million hectares.
Perhaps the most unassuming culprit is grazing itself. Pastoral communities have migrated with livestock across landscapes for centuries, following changing sources of water and vegetation. This well-managed movement gives vegetation time to recover, spreads seeds, protects wildlife habitats, and supports healthy soil and water cycles.
Now, however, these traditional routes are increasingly blocked, broken or difficult. A widespread misconception that rangelands are unproductive leads to their development for agriculture, mining, public infrastructure, urban areas, and even conversion for tree planting or renewable energy projects. When grazing patterns are disrupted and restricted to smaller areas, the land struggles to support it and degrades.
Meanwhile, climate change is upping the intensity and frequency of droughts, floods and weather shocks. When pasture and water diminish, conflict between different groups of land users tends to rise. In parts of the Sahel, for example, pastoralists travel up to 1,000 kilometres a year. Increasingly severe droughts, coupled with changes to traditional migration routes, heightens their competition with farmers and other pastoral communities over dwindling resources.
Livestock also suffers. Rangelands have given rise to hundreds of locally adapted breeds, 40 per cent of which are now at risk of extinction.
Because of these as well as economic challenges, young pastoralists are increasingly eschewing their migratory lifestyles to live and work in urban areas. This leaves rangelands abandoned and ripe for encroachment and further degradation.
The deterioration of rangelands has far-extending consequences. Not only does it impact the food and livelihoods of people and the fodder of their livestock, but it also threatens global food security, biodiversity and the release of critical terrestrial carbon stocks roughly a third of which are stored in rangelands.
Developed by the UNCCD, a tool known as the Land Degradation Neutrality response hierarchy urges parties to approach land degradation through a three-pronged approach: avoid, reduce, reverse.
The latter receives the bulk of current attention through landscape restoration. Pushes for restoration, such as through regreening initiatives, regeneration, and global programmes like the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, aim to bring 1 billion hectares of land under restoration by 2030.
But restoration is a response to ecological damage that has already occurred. This is why, increasingly, experts are calling for more emphasis on avoidance.
To support the work of UNCCD and help bring rangeland degradation out from the shadows, weve recently begun focusing more on these landscapes, says Doreen Robinson, Deputy Director of the Ecosystems Division at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). A significant amount of work is now going into restoration to bring back ecological, economic and social resilience. But the important question is: how do we prevent degradation in the first place?
Keeping rangelands healthy
Avoiding rangeland degradation does not mean fencing off areas and putting them under conservation. Largely, it means ensuring that pastoralists can continue to be the sustainable stewards and custodians of rangelands, say experts
This hinges upon recognizing the communal and customary ways rangelands have been governed for centuries. While they might appear open access, rangelands have been managed through complex frameworks based not on national law but on systems of trust and reciprocity that have been developed between groups over generations. Protecting these traditional processes and including pastoralists in policy and decision-making processes is crucial to preventing these longstanding systems from being upended. In southern Angola, for example, forums of community chiefs and leaders known as Jango Pastoril were revived and supported by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and Angolan government, which has helped communities not only improve their rangeland management but also to stand together against pressures to convert and privatize these landscapes.
Concurrently, traditional migration routes must also be protected, even when they are transboundary. Back in the Sahel, efforts to formally secure almost 4,200 kilometres of pastoral corridors have helped place more than 13 million hectares of land under sustainable management.
And, pastoralists must be economically incentivized to remain on rangelands. The value chains of products coming from rangelands, such as gums and resins, ecotourism, handicrafts and wool also need attention to ensure they are sustainable and profitable.
Experts also argue that pastoralists should be paid for the regionally and globally beneficial ecosystem services they help protect carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, water regulation, soil health. Since 2023, for example, Spain has used eco-schemes to pay livestock farmers for extensive grazing on grasslands under conditions designed to maintain the rangelands health.
Perhaps the most fundamental shift required, though, is in mindset from viewing rangelands as empty, useless spaces to essential, productive and protective landscapes that are crucial for the global future. And while the restoration of degraded landscapes will be a big marker of global success, so too will be the area of rangelands that never needs restoring at all.
The 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is hosted by Mongolia in its capital city, Ulaanbaatar, from 17 to 28 August 2026. COP17 is expected to bring together delegates from UNCCDs 197 parties, alongside leaders from government, business and civil society, as well as scientists, youth, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralists and smallholder farmers. They will convene to forge solutions to the interconnected challenges of desertification, land degradation and drought.
