At the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, from August 17 to 28, a senior land tenure expert from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) shared critical insights on pastoral land management.

Ward Anseeuw, who leads the FAO's land tenure team, told financial media that pastoral governance should not follow the outdated path of privatization and individual land titling. Instead, he advocates for a system centered on collective rights, allowing the same parcel of land to be used flexibly by different parties at different times and for different purposes.

Anseeuw emphasized that herders are highly mobile and typically use land collectively. Therefore, governance systems must respect the customary collective rights and usage traditions passed down through generations, rather than simply applying conventional land registration methods. These standard approaches require registering each plot under an individual name, but pastoral land in most cases does not belong to any single person, making such methods unsuitable.

To shift away from this individual-registration-centric model, Anseeuw outlined two essential requirements. First, governance must recognize not only individuals but also the collective rights of herder communities over land, respecting their ancestral grazing and usage customs. Second, protection should extend beyond the single right of "who owns this land" to encompass multiple rights, including grazing, passage, and gathering.

He referenced the "bundle of rights" concept to explain that land rights are not singular but comprise a variety of coexisting entitlements. Consequently, protecting land rights requires greater flexibility, considering both different groups such as herders and farmers, and different types of rights simultaneously.

Anseeuw illustrated this with examples: in Mongolia, grazing is typically possible from around May to September, but during the rest of the year, the same land may serve other purposes or be used by different individuals. Similarly, in tropical Africa, certain seasons allow pastoral grazing, while in other seasons the same plot may be fenced off for agricultural use, temporarily excluding livestock before being reopened. This demonstrates that different people can hold different rights to the same land at various times throughout the year.

In Anseeuw's view, pastoral land systems should not only ask "who owns this land" but must recognize collective rights and multiple usage rights, arranged flexibly according to seasonal and functional needs. This approach represents a more sustainable land management model tailored to pastoral regions.