Turning the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists 2026’s Vision into Action: Regenerative Grazing, Carbon Finance, and the Future of Pastoralism

CarbonSolve, and its partner organizations Soils for the Future Africa, (SftFA) and Soils for the Future Tanzania (SftFTZ), offer a model for how regenerative grazing and carbon-financed rangeland restoration can help deliver many of the goals central to the upcoming International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists 2026 (IYRP), especially in East and parts of Southern Africa. Importantly, this model demonstrates that the long-term survival of pastoralism itself is inseparable from the protection, restoration, and sustainable financing of rangelands. In a rapidly changing climate, approaches that restore rangeland health while sustaining pastoral livelihoods are foundational to the future of pastoral systems.

How regenerative grazing and CarbonSolve align with IYRP 2026 aims:

Restoring degraded rangelands & improving ecosystem health

CarbonSolve specializes in “rangeland carbon projects” which aim to restore degraded rangelands, conserve wildlife, and improve soil and ecosystem health. Healthy rangelands are the ecological basis of pastoralism; without functioning soils, perennial grasses, and intact ecosystems, mobile livestock systems cannot persist.
The Kajiado Rangelands Carbon Project (KRCP) in southern Kenya, sees CarbonSolve + SftFA working across a 1.5 million hectare area to revive soil carbon and biodiversity. Learn more about the KRCP here, which was recently awarded a BeZero Carbon ex ante Rating of “A.pre”.
The grazing management strategy, known as rapid rotational grazing, helps degraded soils recover. By rotating livesi vtock rather than continuously overgrazing a fixed patch, grass has time to regrow, soils recover, infiltration improves, and carbon accumulates in deeper organic soil layers.
- That contributes to improved rangeland health, resilience to drought, water retention, and better forage, all of which support both ecosystem stability and pastoral livelihoods.

Supporting pastoralist livelihoods and customary land use / mobility

CarbonSolve works with local communities, and the projects use grazing committees drawn from the community itself to manage grazing rotations and make decisions about livestock movement.
Grazing commitments are voluntarily adopted; land remains community-owned. There are no imposed fences or privatization of ancestral lands.
This model aligns with traditional pastoral mobility by allowing herders to move livestock seasonally, e.g., to drought-refuge areas if needed, while still following the rotational grazing plan.
By providing financial incentives (via carbon credits) for sustainable grazing, CarbonSolve offers an economic rationale to restore and properly manage rangelands, helping pastoralist communities maintain their livelihoods in a changing climate. For many pastoral regions, carbon financing represents one of the only mechanisms capable of sustaining rangeland stewardship while keeping land under pastoral use rather than conversion or fragmentation.
Further reading.

Generating sustainable financing, building capacity & enabling long-term stewardship

CarbonSolve’s model uses carbon markets: as soils store more carbon under improved grazing/fire management, the projects generate carbon credits, which can be sold. Credits are generated via an independent third party assessment of the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere and stored in the soil (carbon removal). The assessment of carbon follows a two step process of first establishing a baseline (validation) and then accounting for how much carbon has increased from the baseline as a result of project activities (verification). Once the amount of carbon credits are approved and registered, they can be sold on the voluntary carbon market to create a revenue stream for the continued financing of ecological restoration activities and support for pastoralist communities.
Governance is community-led: grazing committees, locally hired “grazing coordinators,” and inclusive decision-making reflect participatory governance which resonates with IYRP’s emphasis on “customary and inclusive governance.” Every project follows the FPIC process, meaning that communities are not forced or coerced (they are “Free”) to engage with the project, that they are given time in advance (Prior) and sufficient information (Informed) to consider before making a commitment (Consent) to join the project, or any other significant decision during implementation.

Long-term monitoring & reporting (soil sampling, biodiversity surveys, tracking grazing movement) are built into the projects: carbon credits can continue to be created as long as the activities that generate them continue, and that monitoring continues to document changes in soil carbon – the timeframe is currently estimated at 40 years. This helps ensure that rangeland restoration is sustained over decades.

Why CarbonSolve-style Projects Are Particularly Valuable Under IYRP 2026

The IYRP vision calls for “policies that secure pastoralists’ access to land and natural resources, support mobility, and promote customary and inclusive governance, while encouraging investment in rangeland management, ecosystem restoration … and equitable value chains.” CarbonSolve’s model meets these criteria by combining ecological restoration with community-led governance and financial incentives.
Because the model builds on traditional pastoral mobility and land-use customs (rather than undermining them), it offers a respectful, successful way to modernize rangeland management without displacing pastoral communities.
Carbon finance creates investment flows that many pastoralist areas lack, enabling long-term stewardship and resilience, a key challenge for many rangeland regions. Without such financing, degraded rangelands continue to decline, pastoral livelihoods erode, and pressure mounts to abandon pastoral systems altogether.

Overall, CarbonSolve’s regenerative-grazing and carbon-finance approach offers a concrete, real-world pathway for turning the vision of IYRP 2026 into action. By aligning ecological restoration, climate mitigation, and pastoral livelihoods (under community governance) this kind of model helps transform degraded rangelands into more resilient, productive landscapes while protecting pastoralist cultures and livelihoods. It reinforces pastoralism as the primary activity that generates carbon credits, that in turn provides a primary source of sustainable financing for improving the overall health and resilience of these lands and peoples for decades to come.