Livestock may contribute to food security and provides livelihoods to the poor, but also puts pressure on ecosystems. The need to enhance sustainable livestock is increasingly recognized, resulting in, i.a., visions on sustainable intensification. However, a large potential of knowledge, technologies, and services remains untapped. To improve concerted action across scales, global dialogues are organized (e.g. the Livestock Dialogue by FAO), bringing together stakeholders from businesses, governments, and civil society. After initial successes, supported by promising local pilots, these dialogues face now the challenge to connect their initiatives to tangible transformations of local practices. This paper aims at understanding the relation between global dialogues, local governance arrangements, and the intermediate structure between these scales. It contributes to theoretical propositions on the multi-level relationships between global and local networking, social capital, and sustainable pathways and governance innovations in the livestock chains.
