A new atlas published today shows that 54 per cent of the world’s land surface consists of vast tracts of land covered by grass, shrubs or sparse, hardy vegetation that support millions of pastoralists, hunter gatherers, ranchers and large populations of wildlife--and store large amounts of carbon.

Yet while most climate plans focus on forests, much less importance is given to rangelands, leaving this massive planetary ecosystems supporting people and nature exposed to a wide variety of threats.

This is among the key conclusions of the new Rangelands Atlas—an ambitious, first of its kind inventory compiled by a coalition of prominent international environmental, conservation and agricultural organisations cataloguing the contemporary character of the world’s rangelands, which include the Mongolian steppe, the savannas of Africa, the pampas of South America and the Great Plains of North America. Their goal is to make rangelands a prominent part of policy discussions around everything from confronting climate change to reducing poverty, managing threats to biodiversity and freshwater, and developing sustainable food systems.

“For the first time ever, we have an accurate understanding of how much of our planet’s land is covered by rangelands. So far, conservation and development efforts have focused mostly on forests – we now know that rangelands should also receive increased attention,” said Shirley Tarawali, assistant director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which collaborated on the Rangeland Atlas.

The Rangelands Atlas helps to fill that void and will be regularly updated. It captures key elements of the importance of rangelands, a large portion of which are dry, desert-like areas, for supporting people, wildlife and vegetation. For example, 70 per cent of Mongolia is rangelands. In Chad, grazing livestock across remote tracts of parched rangelands accounts for 11 per cent of GDP. The Northern Great Plains in the United States are one of the world’s four remaining intact temperate grasslands, supporting a menagerie of plants, birds and reptile species and providing home to several Native American nations. But the atlas reveals that due to threats, including large-scale industrial agriculture, these lands are being lost at a faster rate than the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

To date, 12 per cent of rangelands are designated as protected areas. Much of the rest is threatened from escalating conversion, particularly for croplands.

The atlas shows that in the past three centuries more than 60 per cent of wildlands and woodlands have been converted – an area larger than North America - and an area approximately the size of Australia (7.45 million km2) is now used to produce crops. This land-use change contributes to the climate crisis, but the atlas shows rangelands will also suffer from global warming. Drastic effects are predicated in an area twice the size of Europe, with nature being dangerously destabilized and the ability to produce food, fuel and fibre being reduced.

The Atlas includes a series of 16 sets of maps demonstrating how much of rangelands is key biodiversity or protected area, where threatened species are located, and what climate change impacts are predicted over the coming years. This is first of its kind of data.

The maps show African countries that are at risk from climate change and where urgent action is required. Rangelands have rarely featured on international agendas. Just 10 per cent of national climate plans (as part of the Paris Climate Agreement) include references to rangelands; comparatively 70 per cent include references to forests.
Although rangelands are known to play a key role in storing carbon, providing habitat for diverse wildlife and nature, and supporting the world’s largest rivers and wetlands, part of the reason they have been undervalued is the lack of definitive data on their extent and value.
54% per cent of the world’s terrestrial surface consists of rangelands, which are home to some of the earth’s most precious habitats and support the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.
This new data can equip policymakers to better manage rangelands, with major benefits for pastoralists, nature, and climate.
How rangeland restoration and improvement of data on rangelands must be made priorities in UN conventions and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, if drylands and dryland communities are to strengthen their resilience to climate change and other stresses and shocks, will be discussed at the GLF Drylands Forum on 2-3 June 2021.

In the second half of 2021, government leaders will participate in annual conferences for the three Rio Conventions, on climate change (UNFCCC), biodiversity (UNCBD) and desertification (UNCCD), along with the first ever UN Food Systems Summit. Published ahead of the 5 June launch of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, the atlas can help guide governments, international organisations, NGOs and donors on restoring, protecting and better managing rangelands.

The Rangelands Atlas consists of preliminary maps that are a starting point for gathering more detailed data on the exact ecosystem services and economic and social benefits that rangelands deliver to people and nature. It is available at www.rangelandsdata.org/atlas.

This mapping of rangelands was produced by focusing on seven of the 14 global biomes categorised by WWF in their mapping of terrestrial ecoregions around the world. This map of rangelands is combined with other existing global datasets on different themes, to produce a mapping of that data “for rangelands.”

Each entry is presented with a short explanation of the map, key figures produced from the big data that produced the map, and a story from the field. We are reliant on the accuracy of the datasets we have accessed: the data have not been verified at regional, country or local level, and therefore is only an indicator of broad and estimated figures and trends.

DID YOU KNOW:
Key Figures

Rangelands cover 54% of global terrestrial surface (148,326,000 km2) to a total of 79,509,421 km2.
The largest rangeland biome is deserts and xeric shrublands covering 27,984,645 km2 or 19% of global terrestrial surface.
Rangelands are made up of seven biomes or rangeland types namely: 35% deserts and xeric shrublands, 1% flooded grasslands and savannas, 4% mediterranean forests, woodlands and scrub, 6% montane grasslands and shrublands, 13% temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands, 26% tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas and shrublands, and 15% tundra.