February 10 marks World Pulses Day. There are hundreds of forgotten and sidelined species of beans that could change the game when it comes to improving global food security and cutting world hunger. The world’s human population gets more than half its calories from just three crops: rice, wheat and maize. But these carbohydrate-rich crops require huge amounts of fertilisers and water to grow. The humble bean asks for much less.

Humans are by far the most powerful ecosystem engineers that have ever existed—having the ability to change the environment, to extent of affecting planetary boundaries. What positive changes can we make? How can we improve ecosystems to help us live more sustainably, while sharing our Earth with all the other creatures that inhabit it?

Pastoral communities living in dryland ecosystems have historically shown ways of coping and absorbing shocks of droughts or effects of famine within their natural ecology. However, in the past 4 decades, droughts in Somalia have become a major problem causing depletion of resources, environmental degradation, impoverishment, loss of livelihood and forced migration.