Call to Action: ”Managing green water for healthy rangelands and sustainable pastoral futures”

The Call to Action argues that healthy rangelands and resilient pastoral livelihoods depend on “green water” — rainfall that infiltrates soil, is stored as soil moisture and returns to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration, sustaining ecosystem services such as soil fertility, food production, and climate regulation. Water policy for rangelands has traditionally centred on “blue water” — the visible water in rivers, lakes, and aquifers — even though the availability and quality of that blue water depend directly on how rainfall is captured and cycled through soils and vegetation.

The document calls on all those working in and with rangelands and pastoral areas to recognize the fundamental role of green water in shaping healthy rangeland ecosystems, and to actively manage it as a foundation for rangeland resilience, water and food security, sustainable blue water development, and pastoral livelihoods and cultures. It outlines three priority areas for action:

• Supporting pastoral mobility — grazing calendars, seasonal access arrangements, secured mobility corridors — so vegetation and soils can recover and sustain green water functions.
• Restoring soils and landscapes to capture and retain rainfall, through reseeding native vegetation, assisted natural regeneration, water harvesting structures, and gully control.
• Embedding green water in governance and finance, so national water, land, climate, and agricultural policies — and climate and biodiversity finance — recognize and reward pastoral communities for managing green water.

The Call to Action builds on the working group’s first Call to Action, “Sustainable Water Development in the Pastoral Rangelands,” published in June 2025.

Both Calls to Action will be presented in the session “Chasing the Water – Pastoralists and Grazing” at World Water Week 2026, Tuesday 25 August, 12:00–13:00 CEST (online), which explores why pastoral mobility matters and how blue and green water must be managed together for resilient rangelands.

Link to the IYRP Working Groups where you can access both Calls to Action: Working Groups | International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists Initiative

This news item is adapted from an article originally published by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI). Read the original article on the SIWI website.,

More relevant links: 

Read more about the research project Restore4More

Access the Call to Action

See the session description at World Water Week