WeCaN’s Gender-Responsive Pasture Management Practices

Nurturing Community of Knowledge Practice for Women in Dryland Forests and Agrosilvopastoral Systems (WeCaN) wrapped up a series of knowledge-sharing sessions on gender-responsive pasture management practices. The primary goals of the sessions were to emphasize the key role women play in leading pasturelands and learning from India, Mongolia, and Tanzania’s best practices. 

WeCaN champions from Mongolia are extremely active in cross-pollinating lessons learned and their experiences with sustainable pasture management. The Mongolian organization Environment and Development Association JASIL  advocates for women’s leadership through revised community management contracts that incorporate women’s solutions and inputs. Thanks to gender-responsive and community-based approaches, JASIL empowers herder communities to manage their natural resources in alignment with the country’s “Law on Environmental Protection.” A key piece of this strategy is a JASIL-developed guideline, since it outlines a clear process for pastoralist communities to gain legal recognition and co-manage their pastures, water sources, and wildlife. The impact is far-reaching: over 1,150 pastoralist communities (encompassing roughly 17,500 households) were registered under this co-management system. These communities manage over 34 million hectares of leased land. JASIL is constantly innovating and exploring how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can be used to deliver local weather data to pastoralists. This information enables women and men to make informed decisions about pasture management, ultimately improving livelihoods and resource sustainability. 

By openly discussing the failures and successes amongst other pastoralists from Mongolia, India and Tanzania during WeCaN’s knowledge sharing Cafes', members have reflected on how these approaches and methodologies could be adapted and improved in their own contexts to promote more sustainable and equitable pasture management practices. 

Capturing Sustainable Land Management through MEV-CAM's Participatory Video Tool

Using its participatory tools (such as video) to document impact, MEV-CAM has been at the forefront capturing the voices of community members to fully visualize the best practices that lead to sustainable pasture management. In 2022, members of the Project Management Unit from Mongolia participated in a year-long training on participatory video (PV) for capacity building, including what is PV, why it is relevant, and how to use it to document the most significant change that occurs over the course of a project’s lifespan.  In addition, trainees learned that PV can be used by communities to advocate for change they wish to see.  Part of the training included engaging with communities to document the baseline situation of herders in Bayan-Ovoo soum of Khentii aimag, where women herders shared their experiences of pasture management before the child project intervention.

MEV-CAM's recently published Toolkit on Participatory Video highlights how monitoring and evaluation and communications personnel can jointly use PV to capture the most significant change of a project from the community’s perspective.  The toolkit also lays out activities and tools that a facilitator can use when engaging in a participatory process to document lessons learned, to effectively engage communities in the process of change from the offset and throughout the course of the project’s implementation.