We carried out a global analysis showing possible scenarios for system changes in an attempt to move beyond the static picture given by the poverty maps in the previous sections. These changes represent both opportunities and risks for poor households. They can represent an opportunity if the system changes lead to a growing and more diversified economy, increased market integration and more off-farm income, for example. This requires, however, that policies and interventions are designed to target some or most of the benefits to the poorer segments of society.  These can exacerbate inequality and poverty if the benefits of system changes are captured mostly by the richer households, and if these changes destroy the livelihood systems of the poor (World Bank, 2001). It is reasonable to hypothesise that in countries and geographic areas that already have large gaps between rich and poor in terms of access to land or natural resources, it will be much more difficult to make these system changes beneficial to the poor.
     The scenarios focus on two types of change: predicted changes in population density (and corresponding land use) to 2050 for all developing countries and possible impacts from climate change to 2050 for Africa. These plausible futures are intended to highlight the importance of including a time dimension in poverty analysis. They certainly fall short of more comprehensive scenarios, that could include other important factors affecting livestock production systems and human well-being such as urbanisation and migration rates, changes in market integration and trade relationships and changes in the capacity of ecosystems to continue to provide goods and services. 

To identify potential changes in the boundaries of production systems by 2050, we applied two thresholds linked to population density—20 persons km^-2, and 85 persons km^-2—and projected them to 2050. The 20-persons km^-2 threshold combined with LGP was discussed in more detail in Section 2.2 and was used to delineate additional cropped areas to those originally classified as grassland/rangelands in the global land-cover characteristics database. In the global livestock production maps, this threshold represents the boundary between the livestock/rangeland-based category and the mixed category (or between pastoral and agro-pastoral systems). The 85-persons km^-2 threshold is a boundary within mixed production systems and represents the transition zone from areas with little fallow to areas with no fallow. It is based on earlier work that investigated the distribution of tsetse in Africa (Reid et al., 2000; and see Footnote 2.). The transition to production systems with no fallow can have significant impacts on livestock keeping by, for example, reducing the range area (if fallow is used for forage) and changing the nature and degree of crop–livestock linkages (nutrient and energy flows).
     Map 15a and Map 15b show changes in rangeland and mixed systems between 2000 and 2050; the largest contiguous areas remaining in the livestock only, rangeland-based production system category by 2050 are located in the Central African Republic, southern Chad and the Sudan, northern Namibia/southern Angola, western China, northern Mongolia, and areas in Venezuela, Colombia and Argentina. Over the next half-century, SSA will undergo substantial transition from pastoral to agro-pastoral systems. Map 15c identifies SSA as the region with the largest potential for reduction in fallow land by 2050.
     Table 8 lists various examples of how these system changes could be beneficial or detrimental to poor households. 

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