Jameel Observatory researcher Samuel Derbyshire introduces key messages from a synthesis report bringing together key SPARC learnings around the challenges and opportunities facing pastoralism and agriculture in the drylands, and where future investment might be most effective.
For decades, drylands farming and pastoralism have been perceived as marginal, passive and unproductive. Even as research has transformed understandings of these livelihoods, characterising them as dynamic, adaptive systems capable of making the most of unpredictable contexts, old perceptions remain influential in policy and practice.
Persistent crisis narratives reinforce these outdated assumptions, narrowing imaginations and constraining the kinds of investments and interventions that are considered viable. In the face of increased conflict and climatic shocks, the structural and political causes of vulnerability are overlooked in favour of short-term, standardised solutions that simplify complex problems.
Development that fails to see existing livelihoods as legitimate grounds for investment and support risks generating pathways for change that are poorly aligned with local priorities, values and long-term aspirations.
In many dryland regions, precedence is increasingly given to largescale commercial projects and schemes – ranging in focus from irrigation to energy – that implicitly assume meaningful change must be delivered from outside, rather than built on existing capacities and knowledge.
Many years of research and practice, strengthened by evidence from the SPARC programme, demonstrate that alternative pathways exist, rooted in existing social and economic systems and offering prospects for sustainable peace, prosperity and resilience.
Aim
This report aims to determine what these local pathways are and how they might be prioritised in the years ahead. Taking a long-term and future-oriented view, the report asks what drives some of the fundamental challenges faced in the drylands, how development and humanitarian aid have engaged with these challenges and what can be learned from local strategies and priorities to inform more effective investment and support in the years ahead.
Method
The report synthesises six years of research by the SPARC consortium to examine how the challenges facing people in the drylands are evolving and what processes of adaptation, mitigation and improvisation communities use to navigate them. Summarising key messages and insights from SPARC research, the report draws connections to wider bodies of research into peace, prosperity and resilience setting out implications for future investment and support.
Key messages
- Incremental progress. Smaller-scale, context-sensitive investments in pastoralism and smallholder farming usually drive long-term prosperity far more effectively than large, top-down projects. Gradual, incremental progress should be prioritised over largescale transformation in most cases.
- Build peace from the ground up. Sustainable peace is best achieved by centring what already works at the local level, addressing specific grievances and respecting community knowledge and values, rather than pursuing uniform, idealised solutions.
- Measure what matters. Rather than generic, universal language, the metrics and indicators used to set and measure progress towards development goals should make sense at the local level and reflect priorities in affected populations.
- Think local while acting across multiple scales. Effective interventions are not limited to the local level alone. They are oriented towards and informed by the local context, while addressing barriers across regional and national systems.
- Networks. Dynamic social networks shape livelihoods, trade and crisis response in the drylands. It is by prioritising these networks that investment and support can improve market access, social assistance and collaboration in conflict- and drought-prone areas.
- Collective practices and institutions. Collective resource management and sharing practices support dynamic and adaptive decision making in contexts prone to unpredictability. Interventions and investments can achieve greater impact by prioritising and working with this reality rather than focusing on individuals or isolated risks.
- Flexibility in livelihoods and knowledge systems. Both livelihoods and the knowledge that make them possible are open-ended and constantly evolving amidst shifting conditions. Drylands economies are built on locally driven flexibility and change. Innovation and growth are best supported through approaches that support this flexibility and the cross-sectoral collaboration it already underpins.
- Narratives. Longstanding negative narratives oriented around ideas of passivity and lack of productivity obscure the potential of the drylands. By seeing the drylands as places that have been underserved by broader systems rather than places that are inherently vulnerable, it is possible to identify and invest in local solutions.
Conclusions
The report calls for a rethinking of the drylands and drylands development, challenging common assumptions made about conflict, climate vulnerability and poverty and highlighting pathways to a positive future that emerge from the locally led approaches already sustaining communities in these regions.
At a time of far reaching environmental, economic and political transformation, it emphasises that challenging old ideologies, and the limitations they place on contemporary planning and practice, is more important than ever before.
Recognising that the future of the world’s drylands is still being shaped and that its trajectory depends on decisions made today, the report highlights diverse opportunities for new ways of thinking about the drylands to be operationalised within the complex, everyday realities of development.
More:
Download the report: Derbyshire, S.F., Mayhew, L.,Tangara, M.B., Balfour, N. and Seck, E. 2025. The drylands of tomorrow: Pathways to prosperity, peace and resilience. London: SPARC.