Extensive livestock farming has been analyzed to determine strategies against climate change, and to disclose its current situation to administrative entities and society in general.

Extensive livestock farming is an activity with great socio-environmental benefits that, despite its great capacity to adapt to climate change, is seriously threatened by a series of factors (demographic, economic, political…) that it is important to reverse to guarantee the continuity of an activity that provides important ecosystem services to society as a whole.

The Balmes University Foundation was a beneficiary in the 2017 Call for Grants for the implementation of the project “Strategies for adaptation to climate change of Spanish extensive livestock farming: a social perspective”. The purpose has been to identify the strategies for adaptation to climate change that are being developed in the extensive livestock sector in Spain in a framework of global change.

To begin with the delimitation and description of the pastoral areas studied, as well as to identify the changes and adaptations, the entity carried out a bibliographic review on the situation of extensive livestock farming in the territories in question, especially in relation to global change. Key informants from the main pastoral regions and extensive livestock farmers from different Autonomous Communities were also interviewed.

Once the research process and the study report were completed, the entity prepared an executive summary, aimed at political decision-makers with recommendations that affect institutions at all levels (local, regional and state) regarding the matter.

In parallel to the writing of the report at the root of the presentation of the project results at the 2nd International ADAPTtoCLIMATE Conference , the team was invited to publish the results in the scientific journal Euro-Mediterranean Journal for Environmental Integration.

To disseminate the results of the project to the general population, a video animation was made on “extensive livestock farming and climate change”. In this article, the main problems faced by extensive livestock farming have been exposed, as well as to publicize the socio-environmental benefits of it, and to point out some of the actions that could be carried out to reverse its current difficult situation.