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Pastoralists make the most of resources distributed unevenly over space and time to provide a range of goods and services. Operating in a shock-prone environment, pastoralists deploy endogenous strategies such as mobility, diversification in agriculture or in non-agricultural activities, management of social networks, etc. However, accurate and reliable knowledge about the economics of pastoralism is yet to be understood and absorbed at the local, regional and national levels, based on reliable data. In the absence of such knowledge, governments and private firms neglect investment that would allow those systems to better connect to markets, and are unable to provide appropriate services, infrastructure and tenure security. With Argentina, Chad and Mongolia as pilot cases, this study by CIRAD, commissioned by FAO, funded by IFAD and facilitated by pastoralist associations (Fundación Gran Chaco, Réseau Billital Maroobé, and the National Federation of Pasture User Groups), aimed to fulfil this knowledge gap through a multifunctional assessment of pastoral production systems and their economic contribution. Importantly, incorporating self-consumption of pastoralist households' productions themselves as an key component of gross revenue shows a significant increase in their contribution to national GDPs. The diversified sources of revenue and the importance of self-consumption also indicate that pastoral systems fulfil a range of functions (income, food security, flexible labor, etc.). Further, the study promotes close cooperation between pastoralist associations, research institutions and development partners. Such new partnerships allow strengthening the capacity of those pastoralist associations in collecting and managing their own data, as well as using this data in policy dialogue.

The 11.8 million head of camel counted in East Africa account for 62% of the 2006 world camel population. Less than 4.75% of this stock is slaughtered for national consumption purposes. The official statistics report that annual exports did not exceed 41 thousand heads. This study attempts to examine the following issues: Firstly, how to understand the gaps between the live capital and its economic development through the markets and secondly whether the socioeconomic functions within the pastoral systems sufficiently explain these gaps. The cross-sectional data analysis between different sources revealed significant gaps. For example, the formal market was around 5,030 heads from Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia while the official data of exportation from the Berbera and Bossasso Ports registered 7,636 heads in 2004. However, according to the estimation of holding areas capacities in Ethiopia, around 57,000 camels could be exported. From a personal survey conducted in 2007 in the Somalian region of Ethiopia, exportations from said region are estimated to be around 37,000 heads with a profit margin for exporters ranging between 22 to 33 USD per head. At the regional level, official exportations would represent 10% of potential exportations. This range of various gaps that have emerged from different sources of data and from the differences between the collected data and the apparent reality raise a number of questions relating to the economic development of camels. Furthermore, the lack of reliable data on camel activity may explain why camels are often viewed almost as a myth of the pastoral area despite the reality being quite different.

The Mediterranean basin has faced important changes in its environment : (i) urbanization and demographic pressure on natural resources, mainly land and water; (ii) increased food demand, and changes in habit and culture, and (iii) climate. Due to strong historical and cultural links with the natural and social environment of the North Coastal zone of the Western Desert in Egypt, livestock activities hold a structural role in the social and spatial organization or land use. The exploratory ELVULMED project entitled: "Role of livestock activities in the process of adaptation and reducing vulnerability of Mediterranean societies facing global changes" aimed at : (i) analyzing and understanding the role of livestock activities in reducing the vulnerability at the family and territorial levels in the face of global change and (ii) identifying the key determinants of adaptive processes in the South Mediterranean.