The importance for 2026 IYRP of international legal change with respect to pastoralists worldwide

International legal change is an affair of societal and institutional practices about and around legal norms. Observe these practices, the social facts and not just the texts,. . .and you will see the real dynamics of international legal change. Nico Krisch recently took the matter to heart, and identified five paths of change in international law through social facts: the state action path (‘when states modify their behaviour and make corresponding statements’); the multilateral path (when ‘change is generated as a result of statements issued by many states within the framework of an international organization’); the bureaucratic path (through ‘decisions or statements produced by international organizations in contexts that do not involve the direct participation of states in the decision- making process’); the judicial path (change through ‘decisions and findings of courts and quasi-judicial bodies’); and the private authority path (where ‘change follows statements or reports by recognized authorities in a private capacity without a clear affiliation to or mandate from states or international organizations’, typically taking the form of ‘the production of technical manuals, standards, and regulations’).

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/leiden-journal-of-international-law/article/international-law-in-the-minds-on-the-ideational-basis-of-the-making-the-changing-and-the-unmaking-of-international-law/F7CE42451E97CCF68A87239E6E3485CF

If indeed multiple pathways are required to assess international legal change(s) with respect to pastoralists worldwide, then that topic, “international legal change in pastoralism,” is one ripe for study and action.

Some comparative studies of pastoralists across regions or in terms of World Bank, IMF and other IO programs, along with fewer comparisons of policy and management differences between relevant International NGOs, to which we can add some analyses of cross-country court cases and of international regulations governing the many aspects of livestock production and export hardly constitute a coherent foundation for describing the relevant international legal changes.

I’m just as guilty as others in habitually collapsing the legal under the rubric of “policy and management.” In advance of the 2026 International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. however, we are better advised to take greater care in separating the legal out from the rest in the next steps ahead. This is especially true, I believe, where pastoralist systems are a dominant infrastructure for generating options variety in the face of high uncertainty and complexity (the legal becomes much more obvious and relevant in infrastructure studies).