DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.7160/KS.2024.220101en
Author: Hermann Kreutzmann
Address: Institute of Geographic Sciences, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany
E-mail: h.kreutzmann@fu-berlin.de
Language: English
Issue: 1/2024 (22)
Page Range: 3-26
No. of Pages: 24
Keywords: Shrinking pastoralism, rangelands, resettlement, Central Asia, tragedy of responsibility, South Asia.
Abstract: Shrinking pastoral spaces are phenomena that have occurred on a global scale and in particular in mountain areas. Interrupted migration routes, state regulations, administrative and strongholders’ control have contributed to this process as well as the forces of settlement expansion and modernization strategies. The 20th century is characterized by infrastructure development, cultivation of formerly pristine lands, destroying of forests and revaluation of natural assets, population and settlement growth. Archaic forms of extensive forms of pastoral practices found their anti-thesis in the spirit of modernization and technological progress. The promotors of modernization and resource exploitation supported a ‘modern’ mobile society, but termed classical forms of mobility as outdated, backward and refutable. Underlying is an old and well-known cultural conflict between mobile and resident communities, which seem to be mutually suspicious about the behaviour and lifestyles of the other. Thus, the shrinking of pastoral spaces is as much a spatial phenomenon focusing on area and distance as it is a political, socio-cultural and development theory-inspired process that has accelerated programmes of sedentarisation and settlement of mobile communities in most countries. The culmination of this process might be the so-called final settlement of all nomads that has been implemented in the People’s Republic of China during the last decade. My discussion about a ‘tragedy of responsibility’ will exemplify the process that has occurred in the rangelands and highlight diversities and legislation differences in the framework of social and climate change in High Asian pastoral spaces.
Prof. Dr. Hermann Kreutzmann is a leading authority on human geography, specialising in geographical development and high mountain studies, particularly in South and Central Asia. His career began with studies in geography, physics and anthropology and led to prestigious positions such as Professor of Human Geography at the Free University of Berlin and Chair of Geography at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His work, notably recognised by a prestigious Heisenberg Fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG), spans critical areas such as minority studies, migration research and political geography. His extensive involvement on editorial boards and scientific advisory boards underlines his commitment to the advancement of his field. His contributions are vital to understanding the complexities of geographical, socio-economic and environmental issues in mountain regions.
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Introduction
Between the UN-announced ‘International Year of Sustainable Mountain Development’ (2022) and the upcoming ‘International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (2026) it is appropriate to reconsider the position of pastoralism and to reflect about its stakeholders’ participation in decision-making in respective countries. Rangelands and pastures compose the widest area of mountain landscapes that have been incorporated in human utilisation strategies and widely contributed to human survival in harsh and remote environments for centuries. Nevertheless, pastoralists have been regarded in most societies as insignificant and marginal people from the peripheries; very few exceptions have existed in human history such as the dominant Mongolian Empire stretching across Eurasia in medieval times. Such steppe empires need to be distinguished from mountain areas where the theme of peripheralization and drift into marginalisation is omnipresent. In this paper I would like to draw attention to the neglected and side-lined regions of High Asia and highlight its diversities in ecological, economic and socio-political dimensions. These shifts are not given traits or resulting from laws of nature; they have been linked to path-dependencies and external interference into livelihood conditions by powerful actors and controlling states. A closer look might illustrate how societal developments shape the living conditions of pastoralists and how rangelands are affected by decision-making in urban areas far away from remote pastures.
Figure 1: High Asia – the region of yak-breeding and keeping. Source: Modified from Hermann Kreutzmann 2012; p. 3.
The setting
The wider Himalayan Arc consisting of mountain ranges that incorporate major mountain systems such as the Tien Shan, Pamir, Hindukush, Karakoram, Himalaya and Kun Lun Shan Mountains, the latter enclosing the Tibetan Plateau is ecologically an extremely diverse mountainous region with prominent peaks and extensive plateaux.[1] Steep mountain slopes and deeply incised valleys, glaciated areas above the snow lines, deserts and steppes, forests, rangelands and wetlands compose a region that offers limited space for mountain communities to settle in compact oases and vast areas for extensive forms of pastoral practices. The latter is widely congruent at its higher elevations with the distribution of the yak and its hybrids, indicator species for complex forms of pastoralism (Figure 1). Sheep and goats dominate as marketable livestock species in lower elevations.
High Asian Mountain ranges often contain little and compact oases in deeply incised valleys for irrigated cultivation compared to often more than half of its entire surface that can be utilised for one or the other form of animal husbandry and livestock-keeping. Vast areas of rangelands offer sometimes meagre fodder resources that only economically contribute if extensive spaces are combined and utilised over long distances. Consequently, it is not surprising that due to seasonal variation in fodder availability long- and short-ranging mobility has been part of human adaptation over centuries by utilising and maintaining natural resources in a sustainable manner. The romantic vision of free-ranging nomads that have been avoiding settled and governed areas probably never existed although state evasion and freedom from exploitation and expropriation has often been their objective.[2] Pastoral communities were as much dependent on their settled neighbours for supplies of grain and other commodities as cities and villages were markets for animal products and purchase of basic needs. The great demand for all kinds of transport services linked the settled with mobile communities. The latter’s interlinkages with regional potentates and rulers, consumers and customers required flexible responses to changing power structures in space and time.
The advent and expansion of colonial powers into High Asia resulted in a multi-lateral contest that led to identifiable claims and designated spheres of influence; finally, they would result in the demarcation of imperial boundaries and regional borders. When delineated boundaries became efficient geopolitical instruments of state control in borderlands, it significantly affected the mobility range for pastoral communities and led to shrinking pastoral spaces by barring access and restricting entitlements.
Prominent examples are the restricted movement of Afghan nomads across the Durand Line, separating nowadays Afghanistan from Pakistan, on their way from the summer pastures in the Hindukush heights to the fertile oases of the Indus Valley during winters.[3] The Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan significantly affected the seasonal migration of Bakerwal pastoralists across the line of control.[4] Many other examples are known from the Pamirs where border closures hindered pastoralists, traders, and pilgrims to cross from Russia or the Soviet Union into China or Afghanistan, or in recent years between newly independent Central Asian Republics.[5] Salt caravans from the Tibetan Plateau provided for centuries the valuable commodity to Himalayan communities, but were refrained to cross from Tibet into Nepal after China’s conquest by enforced boundaries and border closures.[6] These developments affected and modified the position of Indian pastoralists in the Himalayas; trading routes and exchange patterns were adjusted with pastoral migration routes.[7]
Figure 2: Pastoral strategies in High Asian Mountain regions: Classical forms have been augmented by detached mountain pastoralism in the aftermath of collectivisation processes. Source: Design by Hermann Kreutzmann.
Nevertheless, shrinking pastoral areas occurred not only by interrupting migration routes; regulations and control contributed to selective spaces as much as the forces of modernisation strategies in the shape of infrastructure, extractive industries and settlement expansion became more prominent. The 20th century is characterised by infrastructure development, cultivation of formerly pristine lands, destroying of forests and revaluation of natural assets and mining potential, population and settlement growth. Archaic forms of extensive forms of pastoral practices found their anti-thesis in the spirit of modernisation and technological progress (Figure 2). Two scenarios emerged: First, where ideology-inspired collectivisation took place the ‘classical’ interlinkages in combined mountain agriculture and nomadism were abandoned. Detached mountain pastoralism – the separation of crop cultivation in collective farms and animal husbandry in independent and self-contained pastoral collectives – became the established production strategy using motorised transport between pastoral camps. Secondly, in future visions stationary animal husbandry was to replace free-roaming herding groups. The promotors of modernisation and resource exploitation supported a ‘modern’ mobile society, but termed classical forms of mobility as out-dated, backward and refutable. Classical herd mobility as part of the livelihoods in pastoral communities represented the ‘traditional’ and was stigmatised as socio-economically stagnant and less productive agricultural practice. Underlying is an old and well-known cultural conflict between mobile and resident communities, which seem to be mutually suspicious about the behaviour and lifestyles of the other. Thus, the shrinking of pastoral spaces is as much a spatial phenomenon focusing on area and distance as it is a political, socio-cultural and development theory-inspired process that has accelerated programmes of sedentarisation and settlement of mobile communities in most countries. The culmination of this process might be the so-called final settlement of all nomads in the People’s Republic of China since the beginning of the 21st century.[8]
Adopted responsibilities between ignorance and tragedy
My discussion pinpointing at a ‘tragedy of responsibility’ will exemplify the process that has occurred in the rangelands and pastoral areas of High Asia in the framework of social and climate change. Why should it be appropriate to label a development process as ‘tragedy’ and why such an adverse designation could and would be connected with ‘responsibility’? There seems to be a link to an earlier discourse about resource depletion and environmental losses. The seminal and long-lasting debate about the ‘tragedy of the commons’ initiated by Garret Hardin in 1968 was his attempt to promote and show how liberal policies of privatisation could preserve valuable land resources.[9] The transfer of common property into private hands was earmarked as an ideal solution to optimise resource use and the conservation of land for believers in market forces. Elinor Ostrom and her team have proven in many case studies the opposite effects and have challenged this axiomatic paradigm of conventional wisdom.[10]
In my approach the notion of ‘tragedy’ appears in relation to pasture resources as a three-fold feature. First, the tragedy occurs in the guise of state neglect and ignorance. When social and climate crises affect endangered lands and marginalised people often no or insufficient responsibility by state authorities or the like is extended to benefit vulnerable communities or to mitigate their risk exposure. Such events could be droughts, earthquakes, floods and landslides, but as well political turmoil, revolutions and/or civil war. Secondly, one could term active external interventions as a tragedy when state authorities interfere in the affairs of communities without any participation by the affected and concerned persons in decision-making about their future. Thirdly, the concerned actors and stakeholders are perceived as insignificant and negligible communities which can be treated in top-down approaches of governance.
External interferences could be modernist endeavours such as collectivisation of farmers and pastoralists, sedentarisation of nomads, resettlement of communities in the case of dam construction. Infrastructure development, cutting of forests along with denudation and desertification could result in altered property rights and amendments of inherited practices, new rules and regulations. These could be changed in a way that people are driven away or forced to comply. Government action and measures come in a wide range reaching from the implementation of development packages to total expropriation of common pool and private resources.
Pastures and rangelands represent the largest extensively utilised space in mountain regions and highland steppes of Central and South Asia. The perceived challenge of combining socio-economic modernisation with ecological sustainability has led to severe forms of intervention and forceful interference with long-lasting effects in recent years. Policy makers try to combine both strategies in their development plans for nomads, transhumant and peripatetic pastoral people. Entitlement and sustainability are two dominant aspects that are shaping human-environmental relations in the fields of water, pasture and forests.
High Asian rangelands and mountain pastures are covering an extended area, normally devoted to marginal communities and peripheral locations at the altitudinal, aridity and thermal borders of human habitations. Classical topics of debate have been intensive utilisation practices and the limits of the ecumene. The term ecumene represents the totality of habitable global space; at its High Asian borders people have developed adapted practices, which enable their survival at high altitudes, at the margins of lowland and highland deserts or in the amphibian zone of wetlands. Their critics previously labelled them as backward and despised them as anti-modern. Their practices have found increased appreciation in recent years as favourably adapted strategies for survival and for the preservation of endangered ecosystems.[11]
In times of debates about chances for ‘green economies’, the feasibility of ‘payment for ecosystem services’, the threat of ‘land-grabbing’ and controversial attitudes towards ‘property rights’ it is worthwhile to address society, space and sustainability from the rural perspective and learn from the margins of the ecumene and neglected economies about adaptation to climate and social change. The difference between paradigms and practices shows a big gap and looking at it could offer substantial insights in significant future challenges.
Spatial control and neoliberal conquests have been driving agents for the creation of permanent settlements for former nomads. This ideology-driven approach aimed “… at reducing flexibility in favour of concentration and rootedness. Modernisation theory translated into development practice captured all elements of pastoral life and tried to optimise breeding techniques, pasture utilisation, transport of animals and products, and related processing concepts to increase the value of livestock products.”[12] The antagonism shines up in the meeting of the mobile and the settled. Both ascriptions refer to prevalent dichotomies: tradition and modernity, weak and powerful, rural and urban, the slow and the fast mover. In mountain terminology it was captured in the highland-lowland antagonism. It originates in embedded suspicion against mobile people by settled communities. The opposition between mobile and settled often disguises fundamental differences in the perception of what decision-makers think development should look like and should achieve. In the following I shall focus on the modernisation of traditional practices and tendencies to preserve modernisation as a key concept of development.
Modernisation theory applied in global and national contexts
Modernisation theory seems to be a common denominator crossing ideological borders during the Cold War, during which capitalist development experts and communist central planners aimed at changing people’s lifestyles to attain higher levels of production and welfare. Nomadism was one of their main targets; settling of nomads was a powerful symbol and visible attestation that change had taken place.
The settling of nomads resulted in an early version of land-grabbing, expropriation of inherited resource access and resource conversion, albeit it took place mainly within the boundaries of nation states and promoted input-demanding forms of agriculture in order to increase material output. For example, collectivisation in its Soviet and Chinese interpretations and expressions has significantly altered and shaped High Asian pastoral practices. The conversion of pastures into arable land has caused one of the most significant environmental impacts of land degradation on Earth. In the Kazakh steppe, for example, 25 million hectares of pastures were converted into arable land within a span of less than seven years.[13] The subsequent process of degradation is mostly irreversible; half of this land has fallen fallow in the meantime. Arable land was not expected to revert to pasture again.
The Kazakh example is a good case in point about the vagaries of forced changes being rooted in colonial strategies and creating path-dependency in pastoral practices. The Russian occupation of the northern grasslands and subsequent territorial control and boundary-making in the 19th century deprived the Kazakhs of some of their most fertile grazing grounds. After 1868, the Russian colonial administration declared all land as state property, thus expropriating the former owners of scattered pastures and gave land in usufruct to pastoralists. Especially land in the northern parts, the summer pastures of Kazakh herders, were confiscated in order to accommodate Cossacks and Russian peasants to be settled there.[14] Along with these interventions a first attempt was made to fix migration routes and control mobility by imposing taxes. These interventions changed the economies of the Kazakh steppe by allocating the best lands to immigrant settlers and by depriving Kazakhs of their best resources.[15] Thus, the interlinkages and interdependencies of farmers and pastoralists were formalised and increased.
This path to development was interrupted in November 1927 when during the ‘Sixth Regional Communist Party Conference’ the Kazakh elite was to be expropriated and eradicated by deporting them and their families, thus weakening tribal solidarity structures within the community. The end of decolonisation was aggravated by forced grain procurement and growing repressions. Another outcome of these harsh interventions was the renewed permission for outside settlers to migrate to Kazakhstan. Without going into further details the abrupt end of the so-called decolonisation phase again changed the population structure in Kazakhstan and prepared the phase of forced collectivisation, sedentarisation policies for mobile pastoralists, and confiscation of livestock.[16] More than half a million Kazakh households were forced to permanently settle down and to become members of collective farms (kolchoz) and state farms (sovchoz); the same applied to the farmers and members of other nationalities. These external interventions faced strong opposition from the Kazakh community which led to a severe crisis with detrimental effects on the well-being of the people, economic downfalls, loss of livestock as the primary household wealth and finally the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Kazakhs to the East towards China.
The downfall in Kazakhstan’s animal production required a number of years to compensate losses. The number of sheep declined from its peak in 1928 to less than one fifth by the mid-1930s when collectivisation reached full swing. It took until 1958 to offset this loss and reach the same animal levels as those 30 years earlier. In a second major step, the steppe lands were then converted into agricultural fields, which intensified the effects of the disastrous planning and implementation of a multifaceted modernisation package. From 1954 onwards, the area of agricultural lands used for grain and fodder production increased fivefold within less than five years.[17] Shortly after these transformations of the agro-pastoral environment in 1962, Kazakhs left China for the Soviet Union, a form of reverse migration and flexible response that has found a new momentum in recent years.[18] Nevertheless, these external interventions with far-reaching consequences are not unidirectional effects in terms of pasture use and cross-border migration.
Similar processes took place south and east of the Soviet realm with varied expressions and changing efficiency. Pastoralists were ‘developed’ into farmers. From Afghanistan to Bhutan, modernisation strategies have resulted in shrinking numbers of pastoralists and numerous programmes and packages to modernize agriculture since the last quarter of the 20th century.[19] Input-driven forms of development aimed to increase productivity. In both areas perceptions of modernisation did not differ significantly. The process of settlement continued, and in the true spirit of modernisation theory the convergence of life-styles was envisaged, meaning the settling-down of all people.
When the Cold War ended changing property regimes and global exchange of knowledge seemed to provide a new impetus and drive for pastoralism studies. The debate on human-environmental relations again focused on adaptive strategies for the utilisation of marginal resources, leading eventually to a shift away from acceptance of pastoralism as a niche production system, when climate change and biodiversity paradigms became stronger.[20] A second area of attention is connected to governance and (in)security issues when the appropriation of space is discussed as part of a civilisation and modernisation project in the age of globalisation. Both perspectives implicitly contain a critique of external interventions by predominant actors and powerful stakeholders as well as a repudiation of capitalist and communist concepts of modernisation. The replacement of Cold War development strategies with ‘global’ approaches to proceed from ‘plan to market’ seem to even have narrowed the set of blue-prints that is discussed by policy planners and implemented by development actors. The spectrum of amendments crosses ideological and regional boundaries (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Cross-border trans-montane trade routes linking High Asia. Source: Design Hermann Kreutzmann
Resettlement – the Chinese way
The Chinese government is taking a pro-active role in interfering in all dimensions of pastoral livelihoods and practices. After collectivisation and deregulation, leading to the household responsibility system, a new approach has been followed. The present holistic Chinese state intervention justifies being termed as a renaissance of state dirigisme and modernisation pragmatism, if it had ever been dead. The straightforward and solitary approach to changing rural livelihoods in pastoral areas involves significant financial contributions and professional support from affluent coastal areas of China and is centrally planned.[21]. The announcement in May 2012 by former Prime Minister Weng Jiabao of the ‘Twelfth Five-year-plan for the project of sedentarisation of nomads within China’ seemed to be the final verdict on settling the remaining pastoralists in Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang and adjacent areas. The key concept is strongly linked to resettlement schemes that put the aspect of mobile versus settled in the forefront. The detailed regulations have wider implications regarding the reduction of the number of individuals active in pastoralism, the application of ‘modern’ techniques in animal breeding and health, the introduction of sophisticated pasture management through fencing, the introduction of economies of scale in herd management and marketing of livestock products. In the true spirit of modernisation theory, the future of pastoral people is not envisaged in settled circumstances only; here, the aim is the ultimate modernisation: modernity can only be achieved in urban settings. Urbanisation is perceived as a holistic process resulting in townships that provide adequate infrastructure and access to improved health facilities and educational institutions, thus enabling people to move upwards on the social ladder.[22] Consequently, townships are planned and built – in great style – as the nuclear cell of ‘resettlement schemes’.
The justification for such a severe move is from a rationale that identifies an ecological crisis as the prime driver and draws on the convergence principle in modernisation theory. An alleged degradation of pastures provides the pretext for intervention in order to secure a valuable societal resource. In this perception pastoralists are picked as the culprits responsible for overgrazing and they would need to be controlled.[23] In judging the value of the argument, we are confronted with two competing schools of thought: Is mobile pastoralism a well-adapted and sophisticated form of utilizing available and accessible marginal resources spread over wide spatial areas, or is mobile pastoralism prone to overgraze and destroy its own base. Ample evidence can be provided for both opinions, and the specific cases need to be scrutinized in order to arrive at a judgement. No general patterns can be generated. In several cases it could be confirmed that shortage of labour and shepherds contributed to overgrazing in easily accessible locations, while other sites were abandoned and left aside.
In China, the active planning process is aiming at a reduction of the use of natural pastures as a source of forage. International conventions on ecological protection, environment and development are quoted; compensation schemes such as payment for ecosystem services are being experimented with. The second line of argument is just as important, as here the Chinese authorities take responsibility for raising the social status of pastoralists. This is implemented by advocating geographical and social mobility. Settling the pastoralists in townships, as well as the introduction of centralized and regulated livestock-breeding with less manpower, means that pastoralists and their children lose their livelihoods and are expected to take up other occupations.
Pastoral futures in High Asia
The regional expressions subsequently introduced for non-Chinese High Asia have in common that we are observing a depopulation of the pastoral periphery while people are being flogging to and concentrated in urban settlements. Fieldwork experiences from the Himalayan range of India, Nepal and Bhutan tell us that migrants stem from the remotest locations; in some villages nearly each and every household was linked to a migration scheme that could extend as far as to Southeast Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Europe. While the income-generating for livelihoods connects far-away destinations with the Mountain village, a second tendency shows that the remaining residents are shifting from rural to urban settings in order to provide adequate schooling and health facilities to household members. From these multi-locally configured households only elderly people remain in their villages.
The Pamirian Mountains are devoid of a young pastoral workforce, as are other regions in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Are we facing a new drama? A process of transition from state-owned property rights to leasehold and private and/or community-based pasture rights characterizes the state of affairs in the former Soviet Central Asian Republics. Kyrgyzstan introduced a new law on pastures in 2019, and Tajikistan has been following suit in the same year.[24] Both countries acknowledge the importance of utilizing the natural potential; the so-called ‘new breeders’ are making ample use of their opportunities; modified legislation has changed the rules and regulations in the relationship between the state as proprietor of land and pastoral users.[25].
In Afghanistan, processes of re-nomadisation are observed despite the high prevalence of land-mines. Investors who seek a profit from mobile animal husbandry have taken the risk despite continuing and even growing insecurity and poor governance.[26] The passing of a new pasture law seems to lead the civil path despite of all kinds of growing insecurities. The ‘Pasture Law’ of 1970 codified the property rights of the government. The latest amendment was decreed under the Taliban in 2000. Currently the pasture law is being re-drafted under the guidance of international agencies to incorporate community-based pasture management systems. But the provisions of 1970 remain the official policy to date with little effect on pastoral practices and interferences by powerful actors.[27]
Conclusions
In the context of this paper the pastoral commons might be more narrowly defined than usual. Forests, pastures, and rangelands are the target regions of the ‘modernisation project’. Here in the border zone of the ecumene where state and common property rights meet and where certain degrees of freedom of movement and usufruct utilisation have been enjoyed over long periods the present contest has found its arena. Growing pressure on these commons has changed the attitude of policy-makers and rangeland management planners who had long treated rangelands and their inhabitants as ‘marginalised people in regions of neglect’.[28] The debate on the ‘tragedy of the commons’ triggered by Garrett Hardin more than half a century ago has moved forward from its supposed starting point and gained significant pace in recent times. Land-grabbing and expropriation of resources take place in an environment in which customary rights can easily be breached and community practices do not count. This state of affairs could well be noted as a ‘drama of the commons’, a term coined by Elinor Ostrom twenty years ago that might more appropriately capture the situation.[29] Even during the past decade, the pressure on land resources has continued to grow and led to an unequal positioning of interests. Hardin’s solution for alleviating the ‘tragedy of the commons’ was the privatisation of community land. Presently we are observing an alternative form of privatisation – the selling-off of vast tracts of agricultural land resources to powerful state investors and multi-national corporations. The ‘drama of the commons’ is gaining further pace and appears to be a ‘drama of responsibility’ where the vital interests of rural people and communities are at stake and grossly neglected by their own governments. Land and rangelands – even remote pastures – have significantly appreciated in value in a world of commodification. Neglect in our context is understood to express the notion of inadequate policies for pastoral communities and their stakes.
Talking about lack of responsibility is a double-edged issue. Up to the 1950s, pastoral areas were niches of evasion as James Scott has shown so prominently in his book on the ‘art of not being governed’.[30] Researchers’ sympathy for the periphery has transformed into administrators’ greed. Bureaucrats have penetrated as far as the limits of the nation states, borderlands have been incorporated into mainstream societies, and spaces for evasion are shrinking tremendously. We have seen the attention that post-revolution China has directed towards its pastoral communities during the past 70 plus years. China has a legacy of top-down interventions accompanied by all kinds of legislation, incentive packages and modernisation programmes. But what have the neighbours done?
India and Pakistan have inherited rangeland management policies as a colonial legacy. Both started designing a national rangeland management policy rather late, as a side effect of new forest legislation. Their common point of reference was the ‘Cattle Trespassers Act’ of 1871 and the ‘Forest Policy’ of 1894. In Pakistan a ‘National Rangeland Policy’ has been announced; a decision about the draft is still pending. India envisaged a paradigm shift with the ‘National Forest Policy’ (1988), in which rangelands played an important role, followed by the 2006 ‘National Environmental Policy’. In both countries livestock production is supposed to be intensified to meet growing market demands in an arena of decreasing rangeland availability. Both are apparently failing to cope with the challenges as it needed a Supreme Court ruling in 2011 to force the upcoming formulation of India’s own grazing policies. Similar statements could be made for Nepal. Only Bhutan nationalized its rangelands, made pastoralists – who are assumed to constitute a tenth of Bhutan’s population – mainstream actors and made them eligible users within the framework of the 2007 ‘New Land Act of Bhutan’.[31] Here we see governance and policies making a serious attempt to provide mountain pastoralists with adequate livelihoods, thus providing them incentives to remain in the mountains and close to their pastures.
In South Asian countries the adaptation and modification of their colonial legacies in pasture and forest legislation is discussed and leading the way to the challenges posed by climate change adaptation and international conventions on nature protection. Pastoralists are among rural dwellers who remain grossly neglected. Their marginalisation and neglect became again obvious when the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development published their ‘Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment’ in 2019.[32] Mountain pastoralists are more or less absent on the 627 pages, which reflects their political position and social marginalisation. As stakeholders and actors, they are often deprived of any rights and entitlements. On the other hand, they would and need to play an important role as landscape managers in climate-change-related transformations. Shrinking spaces for pastoralism are often the result of abandoning customary rules in favour of state interference under the pretext of nature protection and afforestation.[33] Pastoralists are losing their local markets as food production is shifting away from rural areas; basic food items for the supply of rural households are often purchased at urban markets; the alienation of combined mountain agriculture in which crop farming and livestock-keeping were strongly interlinked is progressing at fast pace. Thus, former production niches are shrinking and finally lost as was documented by the ‘International Land Coalition’.[34] One of the major draw-backs is the missed chance of a participatory mediation and complete ignorance of their potential contributions. This is the place to hint on desiderata in academic discussions and in preparation of the UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) 2026 and demanding a greater awareness of pastoral diversities and analysis of survival strategies and adaptations to ecological and social challenges and constraints.
Dedication
This article is dedicated to the memory of the late Professor Kazuo Mizushima, Nihon University in Tokyo.
[1] Kathleen A. Galvin, Robin S. Reid, Roy H. Behnke and N. Thompson Hobbs (eds.): Fragmentation in semiarid and arid landscapes: Consequences for human and natural systems. Dordrecht, Springer 2008; Hermann Kreutzmann, Yang Yong and Jürgen Richter (eds.): Regional Workshop in Lhasa 2010. Pastoralism and rangeland management on the Tibetan Plateau in the context of climate and global change. Bonn, GIZ 2011; Dennis P. Sheehy, Daniel Miller and Douglas A. Johnson, ‘Transformation of traditional pastoral livestock systems on the Tibetan steppe’, In: Sécheresse 17 (1-2), 2006; Rashmi Singh and Carol Kerven. ‘Pastoralism in South Asia. Contemporary stresses and adaptations of Himalayan pastoralists’, In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 13 (21), 2023.
[2] See James C. Scott, The art of not being governed. An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia, Yale University Press, New Haven; Hermann Kreutzmann, ‘Boundary-making as a strategy for risk reduction in conflict-prone spaces’. In: Detlef Müller-Mahn (ed.): The spatial dimension of risk. How geography shapes the emergence of riskscapes, Milton Park, Routledge 2013a, p. 154-171; Hermann Kreutzmann, ‘Pamirs at the crossroads’, In: Jelle Wouters & Michael Heneise (eds.): The Routledge handbook of contemporary highland Asia., Milton Park, Routledge 2022, p. 116-128.
[3] Richard Tapper, ‘Who are the Kuchi? Nomad self-identities in Afghanistan’. In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14, 2008, p. 97-116.
[4] Padma Ladon, Marcus Nüsser and Satish Chandra Garkoti, ‘Mountain agropastoralism. Traditional practices, institutions and pressures in the Indian Trans‑Himalaya of Ladakh’. In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 13 (30), 2023; Aparna Rao and Michael Casimir, ‘Vertical Control in the Western Himalaya: Some Notes on the Pastoral Ecology of the Nomadic Bakrwal of Jammu and Kashmir’, In: Mountain Research and Development 5 (3), 1985, p. 221–232.
[5] Hermann Kreutzmann, Pamirian Crossroads. Kirghiz and Wakhi of High Asia. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz 2015.
[6] Barry C. Bishop, Karnali under stress. Livelihood strategies and seasonal rhythms in a changing Nepal Himalaya. Chicago, Chicago University Press 1990; Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf, Himalayan traders. Life in Highland Nepal. London, J. Murray 1975.
[7] Ramachandra Guha, The unquiet woods: Ecological change and peasant resistance in the Himalaya. New Delhi: Oxford University Press; Chandra Singh Negi, ‘Declining transhumance and subtle changes in livelihood patterns and biodiversity from the Kumaon Himalaya’, In: Mountain Research and Development 27 (2): 114–118; Tirthankar Roy, ‘Changes in wool production and usage in Colonial India’, In: Modern Asian Studies 37 (2), 2003.
[8] For the discussion presented here, please see for references and case studies Hermann Kreutzmann (ed.), Pastoral practices in High Asia. Agency of development effected by modernisation, resettlement and transformation. Springer, Dordrecht 2012; Hermann Kreutzmann, ‘The tragedy of responsibility in High Asia. Modernizing traditional pastoral practices and preserving modernist worldviews’, Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 3 (7), 2013b; Michele Nori. Assessing the policy framework in pastoral areas of Asia. San Domenica di Fiesole, European University Institute, 2022; Michele Nori and Ian Scoones, ‘Rethinking policies for pastoralists. Governing the rangelands’, The Rangeland Journal 45 (2), 2023, p. 53-66; Ian Scoones and Michele Nori, ‘Living with and from uncertainty. Lessons from pastoralists for development’. In: Ian Scoones (ed.): Pastoralism, uncertainty and development. Rugby, Practical Action Publishing 2023.
[9] Garret Hardin, ‘The tragedy of the commons’, In: Science 162, 1968, p. 1243-1248.
[10] Elinor Ostrom, Joanna Burger, Christopher B. Field, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Policansky, ‘Revisiting the commons: local lessons, global challenges’, In: Science 284 (9 April 1999), p. 278-282; Elinor Ostrom, Thomas Dietz, Nives Dolšak, Paul C. Stern, Susan Stonich, and Elke U. Weber (eds.), The drama of the commons. National Academy Press, Washington DC 2002.
[11] Shekhar Pathak, The Chipko Movement: A People’s History. New Delhi, Permanent Black 2021; Rashmi Singh and Carol Kerven, ‘Pastoralism in South Asia. Contemporary stresses and adaptations of Himalayan pastoralists’, In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 13 (21), 2023; Vasant K. Saberwal, Pastoral politics. Shepherds, bureaucrats, and conservation in the Western Himalaya. Delhi, Oxford University Press 1999; Chetan Singh, Natural Premises: Ecology and Peasant Life in the Western Himalaya. 1800-1950. Delhi, Oxford University Press 1998.
[12] Hermann Kreutzmann and Stefan Schütte, ‘Contested Commons – Multiple insecurities of pastoralists in North-Eastern Afghanistan’, In: Erdkunde 65 (2), 2011, p. 99-119.
[13] Sarah Cameron. The hungry steppe. Famine, violence, and the making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Ithaca, Cornell University Press 2018.
[14] George J. Demko, The Russian colonization of Kazakhstan, 1896–1916. Bloomington, Indiana University Press 1969.
[15] Niccolò Pianciola, ‘Nomads and the state in Soviet Kazakhstan’. In: David Ludden (ed.): Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. New York: Oxford University Press 2019.
[16] See Sarah Cameron. The hungry steppe. Famine, violence, and the making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Ithaca, Cornell University Press 2018; Anatoly M. Khazanov, ‘Pastoralism and property relations in contemporary Kazakhstan’, In: Anatoly M. Khazanov and Günther Schlee (eds.): Who owns the stock? Collective and multiple property rights in animals. New York: Berghahn Books 2012; Niccolò Pianciola, ‘Nomads and the state in Soviet Kazakhstan’. In: David Ludden (ed.): Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. New York: Oxford University Press 2019.
[17] For a detailed analysis and graphic description, see Iliya I. Alimaev and Roy Behnke, ‘Ideology, land tenure and livestock mobility in Kazakhstan’. In: Kathleen A. Galvin, Robin S. Reid, Roy H. Behnke and N. Thompson Hobbs (eds.): Fragmentation in semiarid and arid landscapes: Consequences for human and natural systems. Dordrecht, Springer 2008, p. 151–178; Ingvar Svanberg, ‘Turkistani Refugees’. In: Peter A. Andrews (ed.): Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey. Wiesbaden, Reichert 1989, p. 591-601.
[18] Astrid Cerny, ‘Going where the grass is greener: China Kazaks and the Oralman immigration policy in Kazakhstan’, In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 1 (2), 2010, p. 218-247; Carol Kerven, Sarah Robinson and Roy Behnke, ‘Pastoralism at scale on the Kazakh rangelands: From clans to workers to ranchers’, In: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 4 (590401), 2021.
[19] Kuenga Namgay, Joanne Millar, Rosemary Black and Tashi Samdup, ‘Transhumant agro-pastoralism in Bhutan. Exploring contemporary practices and socio-cultural traditions’. In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 3 (13), 2013; Liz Alden Wily, ‘The battle over pastures: the hidden war of Afghanistan’, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 133, 2013, pp. 95-114.
[20] Eckart Ehlers and Hermann Kreutzmann (eds.), High mountain pastoralism in Northern Pakistan. Steiner, Stuttgart 2000; Michele Nori and Jonathan Davies, Change of wind or wind of change? Climate change, adaptation and pastoralism. The world initiative for sustainable pastoralism. IUCN, Nairobi 2007; Deepika Rawat and Udo Schickhoff, ‘Changing Climate Scenario in High Altitude Regions: Comparison of Observed Trends and Perceptions of Agro-Pastoralists in Darma Valley, Uttarakhand, India’. In: Udo Schickhoff, R. B. Singh and Suraj Mal (eds.): Mountain Landscapes in Transition. Effects of Land Use and Climate Change. Cham, Springer 2022, p. 429-474; Emery Roe, Lynn Huntsinger, and Keith Labnow, ‘High reliability pastoralism’, In: Journal of Arid Environments 39, 1998, p. 39-55.
[21] For Tibet see an overview in Andreas Gruschke and Ingo Breuer (eds.), Tibetan pastoralists and development: Negotiating the future of grassland livelihoods. Wiesbaden, Reichert 2017; Hermann Kreutzmann, ‘Pastoral practices on the move. Recent transformations in mountain pastoralism on the Tibetan Plateau’. In: Hermann Kreutzmann, Yang Yong and Jürgen Richter (eds.): Regional Workshop in Lhasa 2010. Pastoralism and rangeland management on the Tibetan Plateau in the context of climate and global change. Bonn, GIZ 2011, p. 200-224; Dennis P. Sheehy, Daniel Miller and Douglas A. Johnson, ‘Transformation of traditional pastoral livestock systems on the Tibetan steppe’, In: Sécheresse 17 (1-2), 2006, p. 142-151. Further case studies are found in Gongbuzeren, Lynn Huntsinger and Wen Jun Li, ‘Rebuilding pastoral social-ecological resilience on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in response to changes in policy, economics, and climate’, In: Ecology and Society 23 (2), 2018; Jarmila Ptackova, ‘Sedentarisation of Tibetan nomads in China. Implementation of the nomadic settlement project in the Tibetan Amdo area, Qinghai and Sichuan Provinces’, In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 1 (4), 2011; Jarmila Ptáčkova. Exile from the grasslands. Tibetan herders and Chinese development projects. Seattle, Washington University Press 2020. For Xinjiang see Hermann Kreutzmann. ‘Kirghiz in Little Kara Köl – the forces of modernisation in Southern Xinjiang’. In: Hermann Kreutzmann (ed.): Pastoral practices in High Asia. Agency of ‚development‘ effected by modernisation, resettlement and transformation. Dordrecht, Springer, p. 109-125.
[22] See Hermann Kreutzmann, ‘Transformation of high-altitude livestock-keeping in China’s mountainous western periphery’, In: Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines 43-44, 2013c; Emilia Roza Sulek, Trading Caterpillar Fungus in Tibet. When Economic Boom Hits Rural Area. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2019.
[23] See Richard B. Harris, ‘Rangeland degradation on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau: A review of the evidence of its magnitude and causes’, In: Journal of Arid Environments 74, 2010, p. 1-12.
[24] Andrei Dörre, ‘Land, people, and development interventions. The case of rangelands and mobile pastoralists in Central Asia’. In: Andrea Fischer Tahir and Sophie Wagenhofer (eds.): Spatial Control, Forced Assimilation, and Projects of ‘Progress’ in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Bielefeld, Transcript 2017; Andrei Dörre, ‘Common pool resources, collaborative action, and local knowledge in High Asia’. In: Matthias Schmidt, Rune Steenberg, Michael Spies and Henryk Alff (eds.): Beyond post-Soviet. Layered legacies and transformations in Central Asia. Augsburg, Universität Augsburg 2021, p. 49-63; Michelle Lim, ‘Laws, institutions and transboundary pasture management in the High Pamir and Pamir-Alai mountain ecosystem of Central Asia’. In: Law, Environment and Development Journal 8 (1), 2012, p. 45-58; Sarah Robinson and Mark Whitton, ‘Pasture in Gorno-Badakhshan, Tajikistan: common resource or private property?’ In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 1(2), 2010, p. 198–217.
[25] Andrei Doerre, ‘Promises and realities of community-based pasture management approaches: Observations from Kyrgyzstan’, In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 5 (15), 2015; Tobias Kraudzun, ‘Livelihoods of the ‘New Livestock Breeders’ in the Eastern Pamirs of Tajikistan’. In: Hermann Kreutzmann (ed.): Pastoral practices in High Asia. Agency of ‘development’ effected by modernisation, resettlement and transformation. Dordrecht, Springer 2012, p. 89-107; Hermann Kreutzmann and Teiji Watanabe (eds.), Mapping transition in the Pamirs. Changing human-environmental landscapes. Cham, Springer 2016.
[26] Stefan Schütte, ‘Pastoralism, Power and Politics: Access to Pastures in Northern Afghanistan’. In: Hermann Kreutzmann(ed.): Pastoral practices in High Asia. Agency of ‘development’ effected by modernisation, resettlement and transformation. Dordrecht, Springer 2012, p. 53-69.
[27] Hermann Kreutzmann and Stefan Schütte, ‘Contested Commons – Multiple insecurities of pastoralists in North-Eastern Afghanistan’. In: Erdkunde 65 (2), 2011, p. 99-119.
[28] Hermann Kreutzmann (ed.): Pastoral practices in High Asia. Agency of ‘development’ effected by modernisation, resettlement and transformation. Springer, Dordrecht, 2012, p. 323-336.
[29] Elinor Ostrom, Thomas Dietz, Nives Dolšak, Paul C. Stern, Susan Stonich, and Elke U. Weber (eds.), The drama of the commons. Washington DC, National Academy Press 2002.
[30] James C. Scott, The art of not being governed. An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. New Haven Yale University Press.
[31] Kesang Wangchuk, Jigme Wangdi and Tashi Dorji, ‘Governance of rangeland in Bhutan: Institutions and policy initiatives’. In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 13 (20), 2023; Sonam Wangdi and Nawang Norbu, ‘Good fences are key to sustainable pasture management and harmonious pastoral society of Merak and Sakteng in Bhutan’. In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 8 (4), 2018. For Sikkim see Nisam Mang Luxom, Rashmi Singh, Laktsheden Theengh, Priyadarshinee Shrestha and Rishi Kumar Sharma, ‘Pastoral practices, pressures, and human‑wildlife relations in high altitude rangelands of eastern Himalaya: A case study of the Dokpa pastoralists of North Sikkim’. In: Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 12 (37), 2022.
[32] Philippus Wester, Arabinda Mishra, Aditi Mukherji and Arun B. Shrestha (eds.), The Hindu Kush Himalaya
Assessment. Mountains, Climate Change, Sustainability and People. Cham, Springer 2019.
[33] See for Nepal Popular Gentle and Rik Thwaites, ‘Transhumant pastoralism in the context of socioeconomic and climate change in the mountains of Nepal’, In: Mountain Research and Development 36 (2), 2016, p. 173–183.
[34] International Land Coalition. Uniting for land rights. Rangelands in Central and South Asia. Rome, IFAD 2021. See for changes in the Karakoram Michael Spies, Northern Pakistan. High mountain farming and changing socionatures. Lahore, Vanguard 2019. Insights into the effects of climate change on pastoral adaptation are presented by Deepika Rawat and Udo Schickhoff, ‘Changing Climate Scenario in High Altitude Regions: Comparison of Observed Trends and Perceptions of Agro-Pastoralists in Darma Valley, Uttarakhand, India’. In: Udo Schickhoff. R. B.Singh and Suraj Mal (eds.): Mountain Landscapes in Transition. Effects of Land Use and Climate Change. Cham, Springer 2022, p. 429-474.
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