Pastoral mobility is a common trait of pastoralist systems, given its value as an adaptation mechanism for variability of natural resources. Its maintenance is a crucial element for the sustainability of pastoralist livelihoods, which are threatened with collapse when mobility is disabled. It is nevertheless increasingly subjected to different disruptive threats worldwide, highlighting the need to understand the elements that condition it. While attempts to understand different mobility types have been restricted to local or regional scales, a global typology of different pastoral mobility types can help understanding what elements are needed to keep its practice. A better comparative understanding can also reveal benefits hitherto ignored for many local settings, and advance protection strategies that consider the local circumstances. Here I present a classification of a total of 12 types, based on the combination of biophysical factors, conditioned by climate, topography and local ecology, on the one hand, and governance factors, largely conditioned by land tenure, on the other. I discuss the applicability of the proposed types to different pastoralist systems in very diverse settings. Finally, I show the further use it has for understanding pastoralist systems, developing comparable sustainability indicators, and promote positive policies to sustain pastoral mobility worldwide. Such a global classification can be useful for anthropologists, in order to frame local mobilities in a wider context, but also to other academic disciplines that are yet to fully understand mobile pastoralism and how it fits into social and natural systems.
