The impact of climate change on pastoralism is currently outstripping its climate action potential. As a result, many farms are struggling to survive in a context of high temperatures, intense droughts, water shortages and extreme events.
This situation represents a double loss for society, firstly in the weakening of a key food source based on spontaneous plant material, and secondly in the loss of the skills to manage forests and prevent disasters related to misuse and climate change: abandonment, desertification or forest fires.
The European LIFE LiveAdapt project, involving partnerships from Portugal, Spain and France, culminates in an International Congress on Extensive Livestock Farming and Climate Change to propose practical solutions to the effects of climate change on extensive livestock farming and ecosystems.
Pastoralism, or extensive livestock grazing, is key to food production, ecosystem service provision and land and resource management. Its intimate relationship with affected landscapes offers two different and complementary perspectives on climate action. On the one hand, being outdoors, it is highly sensitive to climatic conditions, especially extreme events and changes; on the other hand, being one of the main tools available for the management of vegetation and uncultivated soils, it plays a vital role in the adaptation of our ecosystems to these same processes of change, also contributing to climate mitigation by increasing their carbon storage capacity and reducing emissions.
The congress aims to catalyse a radical change in the relationship between extensive livestock farming and climate change, through innovative, global and consensual approaches that provide a comprehensive vision that combines 1) producer knowledge and scientific research in the search for solutions, 2) adaptation and mitigation of climate change both in the territories and in the livestock sector, 3) policies and direct action in the support and implementation of solutions, and 4) the involvement of society as a whole in an essential activity to tackle global change.
The Life Live-ADAPT project would like to invite farmers, researchers, technicians, professionals and civil servants to join us and share the most advanced knowledge, the most innovative proposals and the most successful experiences available at the moment. We also invite them to reflect collectively on the way forward, the role of the different actors involved and the policies that can support these developments. We have tried to bring together the people who currently know the most, struggle the most and understand the relationship between climate processes and pastoralism the best, from livestock farmers to professors. We will try to use their wisdom as an engine of change to promote sustainable and quality livestock farming, which is able to meet the great challenges of our time, including climate change and apathy.
Please find attached the Congress Programme, which can also be consulted on the websites https://internationalcongressliveadapt.eu/ and https://liveadapt.eu/.
