Peter Hongler ist Professor für Steuerrecht an der Universität St. Gallen. 
Agustin Redonda ist Senior Fellow beim Council on Economic Policies (CEP). Er ist Mitbegründer und Co-Direktor des Tax Expenditures Lab, das die Global Tax Expenditures Database (GTED) und den Global Tax Expenditures Transparency Index (GTETI) publiziert.

Peter Hongler is a professor of tax law at the University of St. Gallen. 
Agustin Redonda is a Senior Fellow with the Council on Economic Policies (CEP), where he leads CEP’s work on
tax expenditures and tax incentives. He is also the co-founder and co-director of the Tax Expenditures Lab, which
hosts the Global Tax Expenditures Database (GTED) and the Global Tax Expenditures Transparency Index (GTETI).
 

The annually celebrated World Desertification and Drought Day on 17 June 2026 falls into the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. This is an occasion to remind that pastoralism is an important element of global land use and that sustainable pastoralism must be promoted to enhance global (rural) sustainable development. Pastoralism means that livestock is not (only) kept on a permanent farm but part of the year and/or part of the herds roams in the landscape in search of fodder (grass).

The International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists is guided by the motto “Recognize, Respect, and Restore.” The first step – recognize – is to make the importance of pastoralism more visible. Given its contributions to food security, biodiversity conservation, climate protection, and rural development, this recognition is long overdue. In fact, permanent natural grasslands (grass is the typical vegetation cover of rangelands), covering more than 3.2 billion hectares, are the second-largest vegetation type on Earth after forests and occupy roughly twice as much land as cropland. Globally, between 200 and 500 million people, depending on the definition used, rely on pastoralism for their livelihoods. Pastoralists make a substantial contribution to global meat production; in addition, they provide milk, hides, manure, and other products. In some African countries, such as Somalia, pastoralism even forms the backbone of the economy. In many regions, rangelands also provide the foundation for tourism and recreation.

However, the importance of rangelands extends far beyond their economic function. Natural grasslands store large amounts of carbon, protect soils from erosion, regulate water cycles, and support high levels of biodiversity. Depending on the way they are used, these functions can be maintained and even enhanced or seriously deteriorated. Sustainable pastoralism follows the available vegetation in the landscape, avoids overgrazing, allowing vegetation, including the scarce trees, to recover. Animals trample grass into the soil, thereby increasing soil organic carbon. In contrast, unsustainable pastoralism exists if herds are overstocked, overgrazing leading to vegetation degeneration up to bare soils. This makes the land prone to wind and water erosion, sand and dust storms and losing its carbon storage function.

The second step - respect - aims to preserve the achievements and potential of pastoralism. This, however, should also clearly see the challenges. In traditional pastoralist systems vegetation availability and herd density roughly corresponded, including through losses of (parts of) the herds in times of droughts. In modern times, this balance can be challenged in multiple ways. For instance, loss of parts of the grazing/ecosystem e.g. to agriculture can deprive pastoralists of important sources of permanent, seasonal or reserve grazing areas. Infrastructure and border controls may cut the movement of herds. Creation of fenced ranches and compartmentalisation of rangelands for more intensive grazing can increase the carrying capacity in the short run but also deteriorate or change the ecosystems, depending on rainfall patterns, vegetation and management system.

The third step - restoration - focuses on correcting developments that have weakened rangelands and pastoralist livelihoods. Important measures include greater tolerance and active support for the mobility of livestock herds, effective protection of animals, and the restoration of floodplains or peatlands that can be used for variable grazing. Livestock migration corridors must be maintained, restored, and legally protected. The expansion of irrigated agriculture or large-scale ranching operations must be regulated in a way to respect the interests of pastoralists. Improvements in animal health, marketing systems, and infrastructure can increase incomes and can be combined with measures to prevent overgrazing. Investments in animal health can also reduce both the risk and fear of disease transmission and epidemics, thereby facilitating herd mobility. 

Nevertheless, the long-term trend toward sedentarisation is unlikely to be completely stopped or even reversed. Many pastoralists themselves choose settled lifestyles because these offer better access to education, healthcare, and additional sources of income. Population growth and climate change also place limits on pastoral systems. These moving factors make balanced and location-specific consideration of competing interests all the more important.

Despite its importance, pastoralism often receives little attention in politics. A prerequisite for more attention is the stronger involvement of pastoralists in decision-making processes. Their representative organisations must be strengthened, and their participation rights institutionally embedded. If this can be achieved, many of the goals embodied in “Recognize, Respect, and Restore” will follow. Developed countries can do more in their own countries in (some of) these regards, as well as encourage and support their partner countries to do the same. According to the broad spectrum of issues, potential entry points are numerous: In policy dialogue and project planning on rural areas, human rights of indigenous people, environmental protection, economic development, peace and security, poverty and food security.

Today, the 64th session of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies (SB64) opens at Bonn's World Conference Center. Over 5,000 delegates, government negotiators, and civil society representatives gather here to prepare COP31, taking place later this year in Turkey. The Subsidiary Bodies are the engine room of global climate diplomacy, where technical groundwork is laid, positions are negotiated, and coalitions are built. Both, party delegates and non-party stakeholders are formally welcome – but participants from the Global South face a range of obstacles to participation: accreditation, travel costs, accommodation, and visas. The latter is distinct as it could be addressed directly by Germany as permanent UNFCCC host.

Visa barriers to Global South participation in climate meetings are neither new nor unique to Germany. As far back as 2008, IIED raised concerns about the exclusion of delegates from least developed countries from UN climate negotiations in Europe due to visa delays. For the Bonn sessions SB60 in 2024, 223 delegates from Africa and Asia were documented to experience difficulties of getting visas in time or at all: 25 were denied outright, 167 applications were left unprocessed and 37 receiving visas delayed – leaving countries including Burundi, Cameroon, Egypt, Morocco, and Rwanda without a single representative in the opening days. In 2025, reported cases had risen to 298. The recurring reasons include refused appointments, requirements to apply in distant third countries, and denials citing alleged doubts about return intentions. Frustration about this has been voiced frequently, by delegates in the closing plenary of the Bonn sessions or, in a less diplomatic tone by the civil society network CAN, calling on Germany to “end its visa war on African Delegates”. 

Behind these figures are people with formal accreditation, a concrete work plan, and often full funding, who are still unable to attend. As a young delegate from Asia described: "Definitely visa challenges are one of the biggest barriers I have. Coming from the Global South, we have to spend like two to three months just running to the embassy for a visa, requesting it, appealing again and again. Many of my colleagues didn't get the visa, even they had full funding, even a complete plan on how we were going to work together — they were not able to be here." This is not an individual misfortune. It is a structural barrier that excludes precisely those voices, negotiators from the least developed countries, young activists, and frontline community representatives, whose presence is critical to the legitimacy of the multilateral climate process.

The argument that visa barriers are administratively unavoidable does not hold. Host countries of recent COPs in the UAE, Azerbaijan, and Brazil all introduced dedicated fast-track procedures for accredited UNFCCC participants. Crucially, so have Schengen member states. Article 25(1) of the Schengen Visa Code explicitly permits member states to issue visas where "international obligations" require it. For COP21 in Paris, France used this provision to grant accredited participants short-stay visas upon presenting their accreditation letter alone, exempt from standard supporting documents. For COP25, within barely four weeks of notice, Spain issued centralised instructions to all 182 of its consulates worldwide to guarantee a speedy procedure and negotiated agreements with other Schengen states for countries without Spanish representation.

Before the 2026 SB64, over 80 signatories, ranging from Amnesty International to the Zimbabwe People's Land Rights Movement, reminded Germany as home to the Bonn sessions in an open letter that the credibility of multilateral processes rests on who is in the room. Inclusive multilateralism is not only a matter of what is negotiated — it is a matter of who gets to negotiate. Germany, as host of the UNFCCC Secretariat, UNDP and UN Women and as an aspiring UN Security Council member, carries a particular responsibility to ensure that its consulates do not become the first barrier to legitimate global governance - and to the trust of the partners it depends on. The solutions exist. The precedents exist. What seems to be missing is the political will to act.

Over the last decades, the share of world population living in extreme poverty has been declining, except in the period just after the Covid-19 pandemic. However, in recent years the absolute number of people in poverty has slightly increased and is expected to rise even more after 2030. This is due to various factors, including the increased number of conflicts and extreme weather events and the stagnation of economies. At the same time, inequality and the number of people suffering from hunger remain high at the global level and are even increasing in many countries.

These worrisome predictions call for renewed efforts in the fight against poverty, hunger and inequality. It is therefore very welcome that Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ) has maintained the eradication of poverty, hunger and inequality as the first of four goals in its recent reform plan. It is less clear, though, what instruments will be used to achieve this goal. This will be impossible without social protection, which includes contributory schemes like social insurance and non-contributory programmes like cash transfers or cash-for-work. The experience of countries around the world shows that social protection systems are crucial for combating poverty, hunger and inequality. It is no coincidence that social protection is the first policy area mentioned in the first Sustainable Development Goal, which deals with poverty eradication. BMZ, however, plans to fade out its commitment to social protection in most partner countries.

Scholars from Tulane University provide evidence that most low- and middle-income countries have reduced poverty and inequality primarily through non-contributory social protection, health and education programmes. This result has previously been detected also in high income countries. Even China could not have achieved its remarkable poverty reduction without combining a major economic transformation with redistributive policies, such as land reform and social protection schemes targeting the poor. World Bank reports indicate that the world will not be able to reduce the share of people living in extreme poverty to under 3% over the next 20 years if countries do not significantly intensify income redistribution by raising taxes and strengthening social protection.

Just promoting economic growth will not solve the problem, as this year’s Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights emphasises. Especially when accompanied by high levels of inequality and driven by resource extraction or capital-intensive modes of production, growth has only limited effects on poverty. Such patterns are particularly widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example in Nigeria and South Africa.

The observation holds even more for multidimensional poverty, which has declined much less than income poverty during the last decades, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, economic growth has hardly any effect on non-monetary dimensions of poverty in low- and middle-income countries.

In order to make a lasting contribution to the fight against poverty and hunger, economic growth should be labour-intensive and complemented – or even preceded – by investments in social protection, education and health. Especially non-contributory social protection programmes such as cash transfers are essential to address pockets of poverty, i.e. to reach out to those who do not benefit from economic growth. These pockets include people living in remote areas, people with limited education and training, people with health impairments or disability, and older adults. Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, these social protection schemes do not discourage people from working.

German development cooperation should therefore support crisis-affected countries, but also other low-income countries, in establishing and expanding reliable and well-targeted non-contributory social protection schemes and not end its commitment to social protection in large parts of the world. Other instruments, like social insurance, are also useful but do not help low-income people who cannot afford to pay their social contributions, especially if they make their living from informal, unstable employment.

Investing in social protection does not necessarily mean that donors like Germany should pay the cash transfers themselves. Through technical cooperation, they could support partner countries build up stable social protection systems, ideally incorporated in national constitutions or other legislative frameworks. People must know what kinds of benefits they are entitled to, and when. Only if they can rely on the long-term existence of social protection schemes, they can invest in human capital and in more remunerative economic activities, which could substantially improve their wellbeing. This is a prerequisite for the full unfolding of social protection's potential to promote social, economic and political development in all parts of the world.