In 2014, the USAID project‘ Grazing lands, livestock and climate resilient mitigation in Sub-Saharan Africa
held two workshops, hosted by the Colorado State University, which brought together experts from around the world. Two reports resulted from these workshops, one an assessment of the state of the science, and the other an inventory of related activities in the region to date.. In this short communication we summarize the main points of the first report.The state of the science (Milne and Williams, 2015). A second report is in preparation.The recent historical Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to well below 2C, ideally below 1.5C. In order toachieve this, emissions reductions need to be accompanied by mitigation activities. The potential role of agriculture and land use in emissions reduction and mitigation has now gained recognition. Land based emissions are to be increasinglyincluded in countries Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC's formally INDCs).