Small livestock (goats, sheep, llamas, camels ...) like other agricultural activities could have to face dramatic social, economical and environmental challenges. These challenges are identified underlining that these activities are often important and well present in countries with low incomes or in less favored areas. Although they are often low input production systems with lower environmental impacts, they face desertification and less water availability, genetic erosion, soil degradation and degradation of rangelands, competitions for land use. The needs of policy on more research, education, micro credits, organization and extension are enhanced. A global review of publications in the main scientific journals shows that relatively few works are still dedicated to marketing, Economic development, management and productions systems. The main subjects related to these challenges are the control of emergent diseases and parasites, the improvement of nutrition in harsh conditions, the genetic characterization of local breeds. But these results confirm that most articles have few links with the demand for innovation. The several journals in social science publish relatively few works on these livestock activities. To face these challenges, the discussion proposes new forms of governance in which priority is given to the participation of all stakeholders and the confrontation between local and scientific knowledge. This would have consequences on educational programs and training. The awareness of the public powers on these questions has to be improved by a coordinated and argued active communication. At short term, new types of events and conferences at local and international levels have to be created to manage innovation and transitions towards the necessary destabilizing changes. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.