Pastoralism is increasingly recognised as one of the sustainable solutions to face climatic and food crises, especially in a post-fossil world scenario. However, the livelihood remains in crisis – confronted with severe social, economic, political and environmental challenges. Affected by a limited generational renewal, it is also exposed to continued misunderstanding of its functionality with progressive losses of resilience and political power. Usurped of land access and rights and generally unheard, pastoralists world-wide are in many cases forced to transit out of their livelihood in search of more secure opportunities, or are constrained in the efficient use of natural resources. Such debilitation of pastoral livelihoods holds important social (marginalisation) and environmental (degradation) consequences. This is a global picture, but little is known about the current state of pastoralism in Latin America. In this paper we review 7 cases from 4 Latin American countries: Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina. The aim is to identify general patters of social and environmental sustainability, to invert the current trajectory of pastoralism in the region. From this comparative perspective, the identitarian and relational dimensions of pastoralism appear particularly important for its sustainability, whereas interventions in support of pastoralism tend instead to focus on its environmental and economic constraints.
