This operational guide is dedicated to public, academic and private institutions working in the fields of climate, water, environment, agriculture, livestock, plant protection, food and nutrition security, climate disaster risk reduction, and any other related sectors using (or wishing to use) the products and services of AGRHYMET Regional Climate Centre for West Africa and the Sahel (AGRHYMET RCC-WAS), which is a specialized agency of the Permanent Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS). Its main objective is to enhance the value of AGRHYMET RCC-WAS's various products and services, by making them more visible and attractive to development stakeholders (public, academic and private), decision-makers and partners (technical and financial), through their performance, relevance, and effectiveness in meeting the specific and collective needs of different users in the countries of West Africa, the Sahel, and other zones. The guide maps out the various services provided by AGRHYMET RCC-WAS, which is a benchmark institution in the sub-region for diploma and continuing training in the various fields listed above, and for building the operational capacities of state, university and private technical institutions involved in reducing hydro-climatic and phytosanitary risks and improving the productivity of agro-sylvo-pastoral and environmental systems in West Africa and the Sahel. It explains the different types of services that AGRHYMET RCC-WAS provides or can provide, as well as the modalities and procedures that state technical institutions and other applicants must adopt to gain access to them, in accordance with their specific or collective, immediate, or future needs, and in compliance with environmental and social safeguard standards.

Checklist for the implementation of livestock sector activities or infrastructure projects in sub-Saharan pastoral areas The Conflict Sensitivity and Prevention (CSP) Checklist was developed as part of the "Pastoralism and Stability in the Sahel and Horn of Africa" programme (PASSHA, 2016-2017, World Bank). The PASSHA programme was designed to support CILSS (the Permanent Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel) and IGAD (the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development). It aims to integrate the Conflict Sensitivity and Prevention approach into the interventions of both institutions and strengthen their capacity in this area. Its content has been improved in the framework of the implementation of the Integrated and Secure Pastoralism in West Africa Project (PEPISAO 2018-2022). The checklist is a field tool associated with the Practical Guide to Conflict Sensitivity and Prevention in Livestock Sector Development Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. It has been tested within the framework of the Sahel Regional Pastoralism Support Project (PRAPS) and the Regional Pastoral and Livestock Resilience Project (RPLRP) respectively. If you are new to the checklist, please first read the Practical Guide

The Integrated Farming Project and Pastoralism and Secure in West Africa (PEPISAO) undertook the design of a teaching guide, for the prevention and management of conflicts related to mobile livestock. This document will provide orderly and practical content for stakeholders in particular, technicians accompanying projects as well as direct stakeholders in the field (POs, transhumance committees, etc.). It should be remembered that the objective of PEPISAO is "to reduce conflicts linked to pastoralism by initiating the construction of a shared regional vision on the different ruminant farming methods ".

The stakeholders involved in the project to Improve Food and Nutrition Governance and Sustainable Agriculture in the Sahel and West Africa (PAGR-SANAD), notably ECOWAS, UEMOA, CILSS and CEI/PREGEC region through ROPPA, have been heavily involved in improving the food and nutrition situation for many years. On an institutional level, nutrition has been considered, following the accession of all the countries in the Sahel and West Africa region to the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement. Almost all the countries have revised their nutrition policies and strategies in line with the multi-sectoral approach. However, the issues of nutrition-sensitive sustainable food security remain a major challenge.

Pastoralism and transhumance are livestock production practices in Africa in general and West Africa in particular. Moreover, continental, sub-regional and national organisations consider that pastoralism is useful for preserving and increasing livestock production. On the whole, this practice is faced with various difficulties, notably clashes between the different users of natural resources. In order to maintain social peace, which contributes to the promotion of regional development and integration, continental, supranational and national bodies have enacted legal texts and policy guidelines to enable pastoralists to carry out their activities in peace alongside the other economic actors. As a reminder, it can be noted that "a regulation is a legal concept that covers a set of legal instruments in the form of laws, decisions, rules and regulations, and other legal texts that frame a social and economic activity, etc. It is, in fact, about subjecting an activity to regulations”. Regulations govern activities related to the movement of people and their economic activities. To this end, the African Union, ECOWAS, UEMOA, States and communities, through legislative and regulatory measures, have laid down strong legal and institutional foundations to facilitate the movement of animals in their sub-regional and national areas. Between 1998 and 2004, ECOWAS, UEMOA and other partners adopted several legal texts and policy documents to regulate cross-border transhumance and reduce conflicts between farmers and herders, and then to protect public health, in the light of the global health environment (resurgence of animal diseases transmissible to humans). In order to control transhumance and reduce conflicts between herders and farmers, the States have adopted, since independence, laws that have been adapted to regional regulations. Despite this body of legislation, conflicts remain and the management of transhumance is still a major concern in the States and at the cross-border level. In order to contribute to better application of the regulations, the Integrated and Secure Livestock Farming and Pastoralism Project (PEPISAO), financed by the Agence française de développement (French Development Agency) (AFD) and coordinated by ECOWAS, which has delegated the implementation of Components 1 and 2 to CILSS, is working to promote the most relevant texts and also to facilitate their accessibility. The elaboration of the information directory of regulations required a process that helped to identify regulations relating to the prevention and management of pastoral conflicts with regard to the measures to be taken before going for, during and after transhumance, procedures for settling cases of field damage, natural resource management, access to resources, etc. The main regional and national texts have been compiled to extract relevant information to facilitate accessibility, better understanding and application by field actors

The "Integrated and Secure Livestock Production and Pastoralism in West Africa" (PEPISAO) project is implemented by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as Project Manager, and CILSS, as Delegated Project Manager, with the financial support of the Agence française de Développement (French Development Agency) (AFD) and the technical assistance of the IRAM/ISSALA/ LARES consortium. With a duration of four years (2018-2022) and an amount of five (5) million Euros, the project covers the ECOWAS zone plus Chad and Mauritania. It has been extended at no additional cost to 31 December 2023. The project has been implemented since 2019 in a regional context marked by: (i) the deterioration of the pastoral, food and nutritional situation, (ii) the resurgence of insecurity of goods and people; (iii) the prevalence of the COVID 19 pandemic, on the one hand, and by (v) a significant increase in the number of regional projects dealing with pastoralism and (vi) a relative deterioration in the governance of cross-border transhumance, on the other hand. However, the stakeholders were able to overcome the effects of these factors through their commitment, and the project has achieved a lot. This report capitalises on the major achievements and results of four years of implementation.

Mobile livestock production systems have been facing a number of challenges over the past twenty years, including farmer-pastoralist conflicts and civil insecurity in West Africa and the Sahel. In recent decades, conflicts initially sparked by competition over natural resources have gradually evolved into struggles for control of land between socio-cultural groups, and politico-religious demands that have intensified the displacement of both animals and people. At the same time, we note that the media - print, radio and audiovisual - most often focus on pastoral issues, such as the management of land conflicts between farmers and herders, and access to transhumance corridors. Pastoralists and pastoral households are therefore most often described in terms of this general conception of pastoral farming as vulnerable to climatic, environmental, health and terrorist risks, and as inefficient in the context of agricultural modernisation policies. All in all, these observations lead us to conclude that pastoral livestock farming is a production system that is not only under-represented, but also little-known by the media in West Africa and the Sahel, who more often than not are content to relay current representations and official events about it.

The dynamics of livestock systems in sub-Saharan West Africa on the 2040 horizon will be determined more by current and expected societal changes than by climate change. Climate change is expected to result in increases in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air, in temperatures in the warmer seasons, and in rainfall mainly due to more frequent and intense heavy storms. These increases are expected to favour crop production, but also runoff, soil erosion and flooding. The rapid and persistent increase in rural population density despite dramatic urbanisation is expected to fuel further expansion of cultivated lands and the reduction and fragmentation of rangelands, hampering pastoral mobility. This is likely to reduce the activity of seasonally mobile pastoral livestock farming, but also that of sedentary livestock farming deprived of rangelands and a source of competitively priced young animals. A policy that would advocate the end of seasonal regional transhumance in favour of ranching and stabling, would precipitate the decline of pastoral livestock and increase their fragility in the face of climatic and security risks. This change would require an investment that is beyond the reach of livestock breeders, who would be reduced to working for private investors or agro-industrial companies. The only policy that could sustainably support livestock systems in their diversity and complementarity would be resolute public investment by States and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in the transformation and modernisation of pastoral mobility. Access to pastoral resources and regional and local herd mobility should be secured by reaffirming the community or public status of water points and rangelands in hyper-arid zones, but also of non-cultivable land in wetter zones, as well as negotiated access rights to cultivated land after harvest. Frameworks for local and regional consultation should be established, and contractual agreements between pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and farmers should be facilitated. It is necessary to complete, rehabilitate and manage the hydraulic and veterinary infrastructures, the livestock passage corridors, the land reserved for grazing, the lodgings or enclosures for the livestock, with a view to creating a network of infrastructures adapted to the available forage resources, established in consultation with the livestock breeders' associations and the local authorities. A national and international commitment should overcome the civil insecurity that is rampant in many pastoral regions, along with significant investments in education, health, roads and telecommunications infrastructure that would ensure security and the adaptation of pastoral livestock farming to societal changes.

PEPISAO aims to strengthen the capacities of States and regional and national actors so that they can develop approaches to secure livestock mobility and integrate livestock farming methods in line with a shared regional vision and offering maximum guarantees for the peaceful cohabitation of different users of natural resources. In order to achieve this ambition, the ECOWAS Commission, in collaboration with UEMOA and CILSS, has initiated a prospective reflection on mobile livestock systems. Such an exercise reflects an anticipatory approach based on the analysis of relevant factors of change for the future of livestock systems. The present note, which is part of this exercise, aims to characterise the socio-political dynamics at work in the region, in relation to mobile livestock systems. The link between anticipation and strategic planning is tenuous. Moreover, the challenge of exploring the likely future of transhumance and consequently the future of millions of people - development actors in their own right of territories for which they are overlooked - is of crucial importance for regional integration and stability of the region and for peaceful cohabitation between socio-cultural groups. Studies, regional programmes and high-level meetings have multiplied in recent years, reflecting both the acuteness of the issue for the various actors and the complexity of the process of constructing political and social arrangements at the relevant levels of decision-making and action in the areas concerned by these problems.

Livestock is a strategic sector in West Africa and the Sahel, both in terms of the size of its livestock population and production, as well as in terms of the importance in the livelihoods and food security of millions of households. Historically, ruminant husbandry systems are characteristic of the economies and management of the vast arid Sahelian spaces and they form a central element of the culture of the families of pastoralists, sedentary livestock breeders and sedentary agro-livestock breeders. But livestock farming is above all an illustration of the potential offered by the valorisation of the region's agro-ecological complementarities, which makes it the first vector for the integration of economies and territories through a system of complex exchanges. This system, which makes it possible to cope with the variability of natural resources, organizes synergies between agricultural production systems and livestock systems, is a vector of links and dialogue between communities. Finally, it helps to supply the animal protein deficit markets of the coastal countries.