The world has hundreds of millions of pastoralists. Facing discrimination and displacement since European colonization, their persistence attest to pastoralism resilience and political resistance. Although everyday less, some environmentalists continue to ignore the role of humans in long-term management of threatened ecosystems. In contrast, anthropologists and human ecologist have continue revealing how these socio-ecologies co-create. In their attempt to combat displacement and disposition, pastoralists have been forced to mobilised worldwide. They have forged alliances with anthropologists and political ecologists who have criticised the arbitrary imposition of conservation goals that ignore the complex interaction between social and ecological systems. Currently, in the face of evidence, most within the environmental movement recognise that outside of protected areas, the best managed lands and effective conservation of biodversity is happening because of informed management by indigenous peoples of their ancestral lands or in the reservation where they have been displaced to. However, conservation policies and agroecological strategies of agrifood systems continue to blame pastoralist as the main driving force divesting savannahs, dry forests and grazing lands. Ontologically, the recognised relationality of social and ecological systems overcomes the flawed assumption of a nature-people divide. In this presentation we will illustrate with case of the Wayuu people how we urgently need to move away from blaming pastoralists for environmental degradation. Instead, we argue, it is necessary to understanding how identity interlinks to ecological knowledge for the development of pastoralism in the context of discrimination and political hostility. Therefore, policy development needs to be informed by both scientific and traditional knowledge. Without knowledge exchange and non-hierarchical collaboration, it will be difficult to agree on long-term management plan of action for increased resilience of Wayuu livelihoods in Anthropocene that guarantees protection of biodiversity of peninsular Guajira, the home of the Wayuu people.