2024/09/19 by Rubén Serrano-Zulueta, Antonio Gómez‐Sal, Ferrán Pauné +8 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Environmental Science · Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology #Agriculture and Rural Development Research #Cooperative Studies and Economics
paper · doi:10.3828/whpnp.63837646691057
openalex publication_date 2024/09/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/16
After centuries as a flagship economic activity, pastoralism in Spain is today in danger of collapse due to the simultaneous processes of abandonment and industrialisation. With a consensus on the need to revert this decline, a characterisation of pastoralism is needed in the design of an efficient framework for action. Through a participatory process with experts, we carried out this characterisation of Spanish pastoralism, identifying the most representative systems and communities. We studied the causes and consequences of pastoral evolution over the last 250 years, explained by biophysical, technological, governance and social parameters. We achieved a harmonised classification of eleven pastoral systems, classified into four groups with mobility parameters (large migratory systems, short-distance transterminance, daily mobile grazing and semi-wilderness). Large mobility systems were subdivided into ten pastoral communities, characterised by strong sociocultural ties beneath farm management. The consideration of pastoral systems and communities in policy can orient effective rural development, while optimising the allocation of resources for environmental conservation and climate neutrality. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ .