A herd moves. The map does not.
IEG joins the ICCA Consortium at the Yerevan Conservation Symposium, the day before COP17 opens.
Conservation policy likes a boundary. Draw a line, name the area, count the hectares, report the target. It is an approach that works considerably better for a forest than for a herd.
Mobile pastoralists have maintained biodiversity and soil health across arid and semi-arid territories for millennia by doing the one thing a protected-area map cannot easily accommodate: moving. Their governance systems are sophisticated, customary, seasonal, and almost entirely invisible to the instruments that decide what counts as conservation.
Ahead of the official opening of CBD COP17, IEG will take part in the Yerevan Conservation Symposium on 18 October 2026, held in collaboration with the ICCA Consortium. Under the theme “Territories of Life, Mobile Livelihoods, and Community Stewardship”, the pre-COP symposium brings Indigenous pastoralists, local community leaders and conservation scientists into the same room to work on governance in mobile and rangeland ecosystems. Armenia, with its own long highland grazing traditions, is a fitting place to hold it.
Focus areas for the pre-COP dialogue
- Recognising pastoralist rights. The role of mobile pastoralism in maintaining biodiversity and soil health across arid and semi-arid territories.
- Customary governance systems. Documenting and honouring traditional tenure and management structures on their own terms.
- Policy integration into the GBF. Ensuring Target 3 on area-based conservation and Target 22 on participation and justice explicitly recognise mobile community stewardship.
Holding the symposium the day before COP17 opens is ideal. Field dialogue that finishes the night before the event has the best chance of influencing the negotiations.
IEG thanks the ICCA Consortium for convening the Yerevan Conservation Symposium, and the pastoralist and community representatives bringing territorial practice into the pre-COP dialogue.
Image: A shepherd and a flock of sheep on the Gegham Ridge, Armenia by Wowan1978, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.