Global Destocking Trends and Their Consequences for Ecosystem Primary Productivity

Grazing by livestock is the most extensive land use on Earth, covering nearly 40% of the terrestrial surface, and is commonly portrayed as a major driver of global land degradation in drylands through overgrazing. Yet, the role of grazing livestock as a driver of global environmental change remains poorly addressed in Earth-system research.

In the first part of the presentation, we synthesize emerging global evidence to document the widespread and largely overlooked process of extensive livestock destocking and discuss its implications for ecosystem functioning. We show that regions containing 42% of grazing livestock species are experiencing reductions in stocking rates, while stocking rates continue to increase in other regions. This duality of increasing and decreasing stocking rates challenges the prevailing focus on overgrazing in research and calls for a more nuanced understanding of extensive livestock systems and their role in global environmental change.

Because grazing livestock is the dominant consumer of terrestrial primary productivity, global destocking can affect biodiversity, fire regimes, carbon sequestration, and land–atmosphere fluxes at large scales. In the second part, we present a regional case study from peninsular Spain showing that recent changes in extensive stocking rates have modulated both greening and browning patterns at large scales. In the most common situation, declines in extensive livestock have produced measurable increases in ecosystem productivity. In medium-to-highly destocked rangelands, destocking accounts for approximately 6% of the observed increase in net primary productivity over the last two decades.

Together, these findings demonstrate that extensive destocking is a relevant and underappreciated land-use driver of global change in drylands and highlight the need to rethink research and policy priorities around global grazing systems.