Annah Lake Zhu
Charles Arupur
In Mongolia, COP17 of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification brought governments, researchers, and practitioners to Ulaanbaatar in late August, and CuHeMo was part of the conversation. Our colleague Annah Lake Zhu, Associate Professor of Environmental Policy at Wageningen University & Research, joined the Land Day panel “Sustainable Rangeland Governance and Pastoral Futures” as a featured speaker.
The session was co-organised by Wageningen University & Research with Conservation International, Public Foundation CAMP Alatoo, and WWF China, and it asked a fairly practical question: what does it actually take to keep rangeland systems resilient as land degradation, climate risks, and rural livelihood change accumulate?
Annah opened the panel with her CuHeMo research on Africa’s Great Green Wall in Senegal. Her point was that inclusive policy design, pastoralist knowledge, and landscape restoration have to work together, otherwise restoration risks sidelining the mobile livelihoods it is meant to support. It is a concern that runs through CuHeMo’s work in Senegal, Ethiopia, and Thailand alike.
Pastoralist voices from the South Omo Valley
COP17 also brought CuHeMo field resercher Charles Arupur, from the Initiative for Pastoralist Communication to Ulaanbaatar, representing pastoralist communities from Ethiopia’s South Omo Valley. Across the conference he engaged with civil society organisations and decision makers, arguing for stronger recognition of pastoralists’ own institutions of governance, land stewardship, and peacebuilding, which are too often treated as background context rather than as functioning systems.
His message to the COP was direct: land restoration cannot succeed if it excludes the peoples who have sustained these landscapes for generations. Recognition, respect, inclusion, resourcing, and genuine collaboration were the terms he set out, along with a clear demand for movement from consultation towards participation, partnership, and finally shared decision-making. Or, as his slogan puts it, nothing about their lands, territories, knowledge, and future without them. Indigenous peoples, he argued, need a seat at the negotiating table rather than a voice outside the room.
