Ichinkhorloo, B. (2017). Environment as Commodity and Shield: Reshaping Herders’ Collective Identity in Mongolia. In A. Ahearn, T. Sternberg, & A. Hahn (Eds.), Pastoralist Livelihoods in Asian Drylands: Environment, Governance and Risk (pp. 41–70). Winwick: The White Horse Press. (original) (raw)

Chapter 3

ENVIRONMENT AS COMMODITY AND SHIELD: RESHAPING HERDERS’ COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN MONGOLIA

Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo

Introduction 1{ }^{1}

With the transition from state socialism to a market economy in Mongolia since 1990, competition for better access to and control over natural resources has been increasing among local herders, mining companies, conservation agencies, central and local governments and other actors such as wildlife hunters and legal or illegal loggers. Local herders, members of socialist collectives (negdel), received livestock 2{ }^{2} when these were privatized in 1991-1994 and became the dominant users of local environmental resources including wildlife, pasture, water and forests. Due to economic crisis and the state’s weakened control over environmental resources, until the mid-2000s many people, including but not limited to herders, used their social network contacts in urban areas to commodify environmental resources, mainly wildlife and forest resources, to maintain their livelihoods. Meanwhile, the Mongolian government joined fourteen multilateral and/or UN-led environmental conventions in 1993-2003 and went on to develop 27 national environmental policies and programmes between 1996-2006. These conventions and national programmes led to a boom

[1]

1. 1. This chapter is based on my Ph.D. research at the National University of Mongolia in 2013-2015 and some of its funding was provided by the Green Gold Pasture Ecosystem Management Project in Mongolia. I am very grateful to Bumochir Dulam, Caitlin McElroy and Galen Murton for their helpful comments and to the organisers and participants of the Third Oxford Interdisciplinary Desert Conference where I presented a first draft.
   2. Livestock covers five types of animals: sheep, goats, cattle, horses and Bactrian camels.
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in conservation projects. At the same time, the government made ambitious efforts to attract foreign investment in natural resource extraction in the new millennium. This brought mining companies as new competitors to herders, especially with regard to use of pasture, water and hunting.

As many different actors now claim a legal or informal right to environmental resources, competition has increased and accusations of environmental damage are often used as a justification for resource control. A particularly urgent question is, who is a legitimate and capable agent for environmental protection: the government of Mongolia, conservation agencies or local people? In order to legitimise their right to protect the environment, these agencies often accuse each other of being ‘inefficient and slow on protection’, or ‘responsible for environmental damage’ (Addison et al. 2012, Brown 2010, Laurie et al. 2010, MNET and Tourism 2008, Schmidt 2006, Wingard and Zahler 2006). Environmental movements and civil society organisations in Mongolia further fuel this debate, targeting the government and mining companies in particular.

This chapter focuses on why herders think they are the only legitimate users of rural resources and how these perceptions are derived. Moreover, research findings show how local people use and protect their resources and what the hidden realities behind these social relations are. A discourse analysis of self and other (Bunzl 2004, Castells 2009, Fuary 2000, Humphrey and Ujeed 2012, Rasmussen 2011) is used to examine herders’ assumption of legitimacy made on the basis of their collective identity, or ‘nutag.’ The term nutag in Mongolian usually refers to territory and land, and it is later used as a term to describe the territory of administrative units along with its natural resources (Gongor 1978). Herders develop their nutag identities based on their shared belief system, traditional customs, access to resources and local space inhabited by all living and non-living beings, including spiritual beings (Baival 2012, Fernandez-Gimenez 1999, Murphy 2011, Sneath 1993, 2010). According to common belief among many senior herders, all beings form a whole in every specific place, which has a structure and internal hierarchy. Humans, who sit in the middle of this hierarchy, receive a mandate or blessing from higherranked spirits and nutag beings to use environmental resources, together with a duty to protect lower beings such as wildlife, grass and other resources. The revival of this spiritual belief system and traditional customs has played an influential role in changing herders’ perceptions of property ownership and sense of belonging to place.

This chapter demonstrates that notions of self and other are central to debates and contestations about land use and degradation in Mongolia. First,

Environment as Commodity and Shield

I argue that the rapid changes in the national property regime and donor-led conservation efforts are misleading people, especially herders, into commodifying their environmental resources and pasture. Secondly, any local environmental problems derived from commodification-related negative consequences are blamed mainly on non-local people, using a discourse of otherness. Thirdly, collective identity (nutag) is reshaped as a resistance to the advancing capitalist economy and emerging inequality in Mongolia. Finally, government conservation efforts are producing an anti-mining, resource-based and environmentally ‘defensive’ collective identity in Mongolia. Herders’ perception is that belonging to the world of ‘self’ or the nutag ‘community’ gives them legitimacy to use the resources in a specific locality for community members and to exclude other, non-nutag people. In return, this encourages people to rely more on the connections between urban and rural communities to leverage claims of belonging to a particular nutag to better access and utilise resources. For this reason, people often develop and strengthen their social networks and connections to other places.

After reviewing research methods used and the conceptual framework, the chapter explains the socio-economic background of rural Mongolia, situating herders in the environmental and natural resource debates. I then make use of the discourse of legitimacy of resource use to examine herder practice with regards to environmental resources such forest wood, wildlife and pasture. In the last two sections, I examine how herders in Mongolia construct their nutag identity through a discourse of otherness, how this identity governs herders’ actions on resource use and protection of the environment, and the consequences which this has.

Methods

This research was conducted across a variety of physical and social landscapes in three different sums (districts) in three different aimags (provinces) of Mongolia. Bayanjargalan sum in Dundgovi aimag is the main research site and represents the semi-arid Gobi region. Tes sum in Uvs aimag represents the steppe ecosystem in the far west of Mongolia. The third site, Tariat sum in Arkhangai aimag, represents the forested khangai region (see Figure 1). Research across these three sums was conducted over the course of two years, including seven months in total of on-site fieldwork. Methodologically, data was produced through participant observation together with semi-structured interviews with 83 informants ( 31 people in Tes, 35 in Bayanjargalan and seventeen in Tariat).

Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo

Figure 1. Research sites: Tes in Western Mongolia, Tariat in Central Mongolia and Bayanjargalan in Southern Mongolia; Survey sites: Uvs, Khovd, Zavkhan, Dornogovi and Bayankhongor aimags.

This qualitative data was augmented by wide-ranging survey data conducted under the National University of Mongolia’s research project ‘Socio-cultural dimensions of pastoral economy’ (where I worked as a researcher for two years). This survey interviewed 288 respondents in nine sums in five aimags, including 23 questions focusing on herders’ perceptions about environmental degradation and protection, and another ten questions about environmental discourse.

In addition, I reviewed a range of administrative level and other secondary source materials collected in the target sums. In order to understand the socio-economic conditions of the sums, data was collected primarily from the citizen khural, 3{ }^{3} the sum governor’s office about official decisions and surveys including environment protection, resource use permissions and mining. I also visited three mines in Bayanjargalan and interviewed three officials and two mining company workers in order to find out how mining workers interact with local communities over environmental resources and wildlife hunting.

[1]

1. 1. The citizen khural (council) in a bag (brigade; subdivision of a sum) is a meeting of all the citizens; at the sum and aimag level it consists of representatives.
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Enviroment as Commodity and Shield

Conceptual framework

Themes and theories of political ecology serve as a guiding framework for this study. As summarised by McCarthy (2002), four key principles include: a) access to and control over rural lands and resources; b) informal and common property rights, relations and regimes; c) changing land use patterns under national and international conservation agendas; and d) transformations of property and production relations as a result of capitalist market integrations (pp. 1284-1290). Further drawing on Sikor and Lund’s (2009) distinction between property and access, this study considers property as ‘claims which are considered legitimate’ and access as ‘the ability to benefit’ (p. 6). Herders in Mongolia have access to a wide range of state-owned or ‘common’ environmental resources through social networks, but legitimate authority over private property including livestock, shelters and mobile and immobile assets remains predicated on purchase and privatisation. Moreover, herders belong to ‘residence-based groups’, or spatially-bounded organisations which are used in elaborating a territorially-based co-management concept (Fernandez-Gimenez 2002). Mearns (1993) further demonstrated herders’ view of entitlement to resources: ‘newcomers frequently justify their entitlement to use common pasture on the grounds that they have family ties in the area’ (p. 97). However, it is not necessary that people or households that form residence-based groups or informal institutions are all related by blood.

This study is also informed by debates over entitlements and endowments framed by Sen (1981). In explaining local people’s access to resources and their control, the ‘entitlement framework’ is used by Leach et al. (1999) to argue that people rely on many different formal and informal institutions that are involved in natural resource management through their environmental endowment and entitlement (p. 240). The term ‘entitlement’ is defined as ‘alternative sets of utilities derived from environmental goods and services over which social actors have legitimate effective command and which are instrumental in achieving well-being’, whereas endowment is ‘the rights and resources that social actors have’ (Leach et al. 1999, 233).

In his early research on rural Mongolians’ social relations, Sneath (1993) argued that a ‘network of social relations of obligation’ was formed in parallel with the official structure of collectives and farms during the socialist period in Mongolia. These networks controlled access to a whole range of resources, including services and produce. Private ownership of assets was restricted and access to state-owned resources was strictly controlled by officials or authorities who acted as ‘patrons’ in the social networks. Since the socialist regime in Mon-

Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo

golia collapsed, the social network has continued to serve as the basis of access to resources (Ichinkhorloo and Yeh 2016), especially environmental resources, for rural and even urban Mongolians. Privatisation of the livestock and assets of former collectives gave herders the opportunity to own property along with access to environmental resources such as pasture (Ahearn 2016) and wildlife.

According to Sneath, the former approach to management of livestock husbandry as a ‘socio-technical system’ has been transformed into an ‘atomized pastoral sector of subsistence-oriented pastoral producer households’ (Sneath 2004, 179). In Mongolia, a ‘neo-classical economic and conservationist discourse’ has become the government’s main policy on land use and rural development (Sneath, 2003, 453). Accordingly, herders in post-socialist Mongolia are in the process of adapting to a new property regime while creating their own new form of a ‘socio-technical system’. In this process, herders are drawn into a project of nation-building through ‘asserting collective identity, reconstruction of tradition and deploying of sense of belonging’ as argued by Sneath (2010, 261). In the context of collective identity (nutag), Sneath’s argument can be advanced to suggest that ‘networks continue to be of vital importance for accessing resources and opportunities, and the claims of regional and local collective identities are often seen as highly influential’ (2010, 257). Following these lines of argument, this research examines tensions between an ongoing process of ‘atomized households’ joining forces around public property and environmental resources in response to intervention by other competing agencies, and the emergence of formal and informal institutions through which people get access to and control over resources through mechanisms of ‘environmental entitlements’.

Socio-economic changes and inequality

The collapse of the planned economy in 1990 and de-collectivisation in 1991-1994 led to a return to rural life for large numbers of Mongolians. Livestock husbandry was a natural alternative livelihood after the collapse of planned industry, and contributed over 35 per cent of GDP in 1993-2000 (see Figure 2). This created employment opportunities and self-sufficiency for 270,000 households or almost one million people. By 1999, two thirds of the population ( 1.6 million out of 2.38 million) were living in 21 provincial centres and 323 sums (NSO 2014b). Livestock numbers had increased by 23 per cent compared to 1990 . However, the number of herding households fell significantly after 2000 (see Figures 3 and 4).

Environment as Commodity and Shield

Figure 2. Contribution oflivestock sector in Gross National Production ofMongolia. Source: Statistical Yearbooks 1989-2013 (NSO, 2014b).

After thirty years of socialist collectives, Mongolia’s policies changed to neoliberalism, a system which has led to privatisation of national resources and new free market orientations towards resource management (Harvey 2005, 2). Complicating this neoliberal agenda in Mongolia (and elsewhere), however, is that local knowledge of the free market system and private property management was inadequate and assets were often privatised in ways leading to perverse outcomes. A common local experience with neoliberal schemes in Mongolia is illustrated by the privatisation of wells. When wells were privatised, the mechanical components were often divided into three distinct parts - the motor, shelter and well cement structure - and then distributed to three different people, thus rendering the well effectively useless.

Beginning in the 1990s, animal husbandry became increasingly associated with poverty in Mongolia. Following widespread efforts at privatisation and a subsequent period of economic decline in the 1990s, people fell back on livestock herding as the main source of survival and self-sufficiency. Mongolian husbandry is mainly subsistence-oriented, such that, with the exception of a few households, it lacks the financial or management capacity to develop husbandry commercially (Chuluundorj 2012, Janzen 2011). As a result, pastoralists generally receive government incentives rather than paying taxes. The

government reduced taxes on livestock and pasture several times, eventually exempting herders from all taxes 4{ }^{4} in 2008 and providing them with subsidies (premiums) for cashmere in 2008 and wool and skins since 2011 and 2014 respectively. According to large scale household socio-economic surveys (NSO et al. 2004s NSO and World Bank 2009s NSO 2011, 2012, 2015), poverty persisted among herders throughout the 1990s and 2000s, reaching 56.1 per cent in 2010 after the 2009-2010 zud. 5{ }^{5} As numbers of sheep, goats, cattle, horses and camels grew significantly from 32.7 million to 51.9 million between 2010 and 2014, poverty declined sharply from 56.1 per cent to 27.9 per cent. At the same time, as a direct outcome of neoliberal reforms, livestock became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few while overall herd sizes decreased, as illustrated in Figures 3 and 4 showing the trajectory for 1994-2013.

Along with significant state subsidies, incentives and increases to herd sizes, poverty and income inequality have grown across Mongolia’s herding communities in the past two decades. In 1998, for example, herders who owned up to 200 livestock constituted 87 per cent of total households and owned 63 per cent of total livestock. By 2013, this level of ownership fell to 64 per cent of households and 23 per cent of total livestock. Conversely, the percentage of herders with more than 500 livestock increased from 1.4 per cent in 1998, when they owned 5.5 per cent of total livestock, to ten per cent of herders and forty per cent of total livestock in 2011 (See Figures 3 and 4). Moreover, even though livestock husbandry is mainly subsistence oriented, about 36 per cent or 75,000 households own almost 77 per cent of total livestock.

Government policies to support a majority of relatively poor herders have been exploited by wealthier livestock owners, whose herds have increased dramatically. These policies include the elimination of rangeland taxes (user fees), which had been calculated per head of livestock, in 2008; the introduction of cashmere subsidies of 5,000 tugriks (US$ 3.5) per goat in 2009; and the introduction of price premiums of 2,000 tugriks (US$ 1.5) per kilogram

[1]

1. 1. Livestock taxes were calculated in sheep unit. Horse or cattle equals 5 sheep and goat 5 sheep. Camel equals 2 sheep. It is 100 tugriks per sheep in central region near Ulaanbaatar, Erdenet and Darkhan, 75 tugriks in the northern and southern regions and 50 tugriks in far western and eastern regions. Also herders do not pay livestock product sale taxes. The only taxes imposed on herders are gun, pet and garbage taxes. In 2008, government provided herders with 5,000 tugriks per kilogram of cashmere due to cashmere price decline in the international market and 2,000 tugriks per every kilogram of wool sold to national wool factories. In addition, 15,000 tugriks per horse or cattle skin and 3,000 tugriks per sheep or goat skin have been provided to herders since 2014.
   2. Extreme winter weather causing heavy livestock mortality.
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Environment as Commodity and Shield

of sheep and camel wool in 2012. These statistics represent how state liberalisation led to increasing wealth differentiation and dispossession in Mongolia.

Figure 3. Number of herder households in Mongolia by herd size. Source: Livestock Censuses 1994-2013 (NSO, 2014a).

Figure 4. Total livestock in Mongolia by household herd size. Source: Livestock Censuses, 1994-2013 (NSO, 2014a).

Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo

Herders’ role in environmental degradation and competition for resources

The fact that inequality is deepening amongst already-marginal herders coincides with intervention by government and development agencies in environmental resource management. The herders’ efforts to secure their subsistence and maintain basic livelihoods by accessing environmental resources (pasture, water etc.) have been met by accusations of environmental damage from both local and international organisations. Environmental degradation was first raised publicly by environmental and conservation programmes, including the Mongolia Action Plan for Sustainable Development for the 21st Century. These programmes were initiated following Mongolia’s ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1993 and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1994, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora in 1995 and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in 1996 (MNEM 1998). In the mid-1990s, Mongolia’s pastures were considered to be in a healthy condition compared to those of China and Russia, and were characterised by year-round livestock mobility and the delivery of efficient services to mobile herders (Humphrey and Sneath 1999). However, according to the Government of Mongolia, by 1997, almost 34 per cent of the total territory of Mongolia had been degraded compared to its condition in the 1950s (MNEM 1997). The new government established in 1998 after parliamentary elections re-asserted that pastoral herding was one of the drivers of pasture degradation and increasing desertification, as a result of competitive self-interests of herders (MNET 2008). In 2010, the proportion of degraded land across Mongolia was estimated at 77.8 per cent (MEGDT 2015). That is, within one decade 33 percent of Mongolia’s land was classified as degraded and overall livestock numbers doubled.

According to a 2015 report by the Green Gold Ecosystems project implemented by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SRC), the principal cause of land degradation was livestock overgrazing. The report’s key recommendation was to control livestock numbers and revive pasture fees. Furthermore, development practitioners argued that, ‘as a result of overgrazing, poor herd rotation practices, mining vehicle tracks - and compounded by climate change - biodiversity is declining, weeds are encroaching, soils are eroding and deserts are advancing’ (Brown 2010, 11). However, commodification of all services and privatisation subsequently led herders to new competitive practices and pursuit of individual interests. In sum, pasture overgrazing and land degradation became the dominant concern among development decision

makers and projects, especially after the zud disasters of the 2009-2010 winter and two consecutive winters in 1999-2001 (Viguier et al. 2010).

International organisations increasingly advise methods to reverse negative trends of overgrazing through pasture fragmentation. This includes the establishment of residence-based herder groups with exclusive rights to use environmental resources. Furthermore, many government and donor agencies report that uncontrolled opportunistic hunting by local herders has led to the total extinction of wildlife locally, while wildlife habitats are increasingly destroyed by livestock and mining operations (Addison et al. 2012, Laurie et al. 2010, Sneath 2003). These assessments and advocacy, especially the promotion of exclusive rights, have influenced herders to change their view towards more individualistic behaviour and to adopt an attitude of not sharing resources with others. These assessments are documented by much grey literature produced and funded by development agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme (Laurie et al. 2010), the World Bank (Wingard and Zahler 2006), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) (MFA et al. 2015, Usukh et al. 2010) and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) (Schmidt 2006). In parallel, these agencies have advised the Government of Mongolia to improve its legal framework, establish more environmental or pasture management institutions, increase the size of protected areas at the national level (Addison et al. 2012, Batkhishig et al. 2012, Dorligsuren et al. 2012, Ericksen 2014, Marin 2008, Upton 2012) and even to privatise pastureland to herders, a recommendation that is strongly opposed by herders (Sneath 2003). The government and Mongolian parliament have followed these recommendations through adoption of the National Mongolian Livestock Programme in 2010. This programme has enabled the institutionalisation of livestock husbandry and established a new state agency in every sum, while promoting herders’ ‘communities’ to take over pastoral management and decisions.

Government measures and interventions to stop degradation have been heavily influenced by development agencies and donors. However, these parties are mainly concerned with overgrazing and have targeted herders, further complicating land management problems. Many donor organisations promoted conservationist (environmentalist) ideas through their public awareness and capacity building projects (Sneath 2003, 453). These interventions are also justified by discourses based on an imagination of ecologically-benign and homogenous groups of herders or ideal ‘communities’, rather than evidence-based research. These discourses argue that herders manage resources more effectively based on their close relationship to nature. These more effective practices include

Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo

Figure 5. Herder family in seasonal movement to autumn encampment in Tes, Uvs aimag. Some herders, often senior, instruct youths to practice cultural traditions threatened by modernity while keeping camels in use. Photo: Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo.

Figure 6. Senior herder at the one of local horse races at Ovoonii naadam, where people extend their social networks and gain prestige. The herder is being interviewed by Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo in Bayanjargalan, Dundgovi aimag. Photo: Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo.

management of pastureland under pre-collective traditional ‘socio-economic’ or ‘territorial units’ called neg nutgiinkhan (Bazargur et al. 1993, 7, 11).

However, previous research in the field has failed to consider how development advice and misunderstandings connected with the transition from the socialist to the neoliberal model have changed public perceptions about protection of the environment and concepts of individual responsibility. After the zud winter disasters of 1999-2001 and 2009-2010, public opinion was divided over the herders’ responsibility for these events. As Erickson (2014) observed, the herders who lost livestock during the zud were called ‘lazy’ and irresponsible, and blamed for their individualistic actions which were said to have contributed to rangeland degradation. However, she argued that there is a conflict between the socialist legacy that encouraged government and community to support individual herders, and current neoliberal approaches ( p . 47). Before the start of open market systems in 1991, all herders were members of collectives (negdel), and the state through the negdel organisation was the owner of all livestock, excluding 50-75 privately-owned livestock per household, as well as all other facilities and resources. As the owner, the state was responsible for managing livestock and resources during the socialist period. As a result of this model, herders formerly sought and received support from the state for everything from transportation for seasonal movements to overcoming harsh winters. The change to a market system in 1990 gave individuals total responsibility for their own private property, namely livestock. In response to this transition, urban populations that did not benefit from neoliberal privatisations frequently criticise herders for seeking support from the state against harsh winter conditions.

Blamed by donor countries and development agencies involved in environmental programmes on one hand, and threatened by the advance of mining over their pasture and water sources on the other, in the early 2000s herders started to vigorously assert their right to use resources, especially pasture, water and wildlife. As McCarthy (2002) identifies, herders use their collective identity to establish the legitimacy of their claim. ‘Effective property claims and rights in this broader sense can arise and derive their power and legitimacy from a wide array of sources beyond the legal, including customary usage, community sanction, economic power, regulatory practices, moral authority, and more’ (McCarthy 2002, 1289). According to interviews with herders, many believe that they are the legitimate users of natural resources, especially pastures, wildlife, woodlands, minerals and medicinal plants. On the basis of nutag identity, these herders often claim rights of resource use and accuse

mining companies (Chuluun and Byambaragchaa 2014) or others of stealing their resources, damaging the environment and threatening their livelihoods.

Nutag collective identity and otherness

Nutag is both a traditional and dynamic concept. A traditional term, nutag was socially constructed and promoted by the State during the socialist period (Sneath 2010). In subsequent post-socialist decades, however, herder conceptualisations of nutag identity have changed to include the power to exclude others from resources.

Recent scholarship provides a preliminary understanding of the relationships between terminology and collective identity for rural Mongolians. Depending on the season, the term ‘nutag’ is used by herders interchangeably with neg goliikhon, people of one river basin, or neg usniikhan, people of the same water source, and neg nutgiinkhan, people from one nutag place (Fernandez-Gimenez 1999; Mearns 1996, 314; Sneath 1993, 201). These terms indicate that members of one nutag share their pasture land, especially during winter and spring time (Fernandez-Gimenez 2002, 62). Others refer to how nutag members imagine the community or informal pastoral institution (Bazargur et al. 1993) and how the concept is used in nation state building (Sneath 2010, 2014).

According to Tsevel’s Mongolian dictionary (1966), nutag more broadly represents territory on three levels: an administrative unit of settlement, different seasonal or temporary grazing areas and an encampment area. However, the term also encompasses a broad meaning of community, belonging, territory, inhabitants and social attributes of inhabitants such as family, locality, clan, region, ethnicity and nationality (Murphy 2011, 264). Baival (2012) argues that herders making up a single nutag identity can be treated as a ‘community’ and furthermore suggests using the ‘nutag framework’ as a basis for building community resilience. However, previous research on nutag has been limited to studying its socio-economic implications: how this identity is related to conservation and capitalist market integration in rural Mongolia and its internal structure and regulatory power over natural resources.

Following the informal commodification of pastureland under the name of seasonal campsites, herders have started to make great use of nutag identity for purposes of both land access and social identity. On the one hand, herders claim rights to resources based on nutag. On the other hand, however, herders are motivated to strengthen their social or nutag identity networks in order to secure their resource access. Twelve years have passed since the revision of

Figure 7. Private pasture enclosure for livestock emergency grazing during dust and snow blizzard in Bayanjargalan, Dundgovi aimag. The fencing supported by Development and environmental agencies encourages informal ownership of pasture and resource competition. Photo: Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo.

Mongolia’s land law in 2002, which opened the gate for issuing certificates for winter and spring campsite land for herders. This certificate provides possession rights over just 0.07 hectares of land for building or previously built winter or spring livestock shelter for herder households. However, herders also utilise informal mechanisms to leverage this certificate to cover surrounding pastures. Furthermore, livestock numbers have reached over 51 million head and the campsite certificates have brought pasture commodification. For example, in Bayanjargalan, herders have started to rent out their winter shelters for over one million tugriks 6{ }^{6} and they sell and buy shelters for the purpose of expanding their pasture area, despite the fact that noone is allowed to possess pastureland legally.

Herders establish nutag identity across multiple scales of landscape and kinship. According to herders, the neg amniikhan or the one valley people are identified by residence in the same winter camp area, and the neg goliikhon or the one river basin people by summer camp area. However, summer camp area households outnumber the households residing in nearby winter camps, because
6. Approximately US$ 500 or 330 GBP.

Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo

herder households from different winter camp sites move to and are crowded into one summer camp area as a result of dense and rich summer vegetation cover. Therefore, the lowest level of nutag identity refers to the households and people who occupy winter camps around the same mountain or valley. This nutag identity is the strongest. As the scale of territory gets larger, the nutag collective identity becomes looser. At the aimag or provincial level, different sums form their own nutag identity around the sum administrative unit. At the national level, herders prefer sum nutag identity rather than aimag identity. The sum is further divided into three to twelve bags that are headed by the bag governor and head of the citizen khural. As such, a nutag identity is stronger at the bag level than at the sum level.

Nutag collective identity can be explained by the ‘self’ versus ‘other’ model, where the ‘self’ is a member of the nutag and the ‘other’ is everyone else. For the purposes of this study, I use the ‘self’ as a member of nutag people and ‘other’ as non-member people. From the herder’s perspective, people who do not belong or are not included in nutag identity are ‘others’. As a result, the sum or aimag administrative units are divided into many different smaller nutag identity groups. These ‘self’ or nutag identified people share the same territory or proximate residence, history, norms, memory, resources and most importantly, spiritual or social belief system. They can be of different ethnic descent or ancestry but they are united under this identity. This collective identity is dynamic and its members can change over time. But people who left this nutag group and live in urban areas are still considered ‘virtual’ or distant members of it. In addition, nutag people always exclude ‘others’ or outside people from their area, mainly at the bag and sum levels. For example, a herder who is related to one of the illegal hunters coming from Ulaanbaatar explained,

My brother is in-and-out between Bayanjargalan and Ulaanbaatar. We grew up together in this place but police, together with local people in the neighbouring sum, caught him while he was hunting. If he were here (where he grew up), we would tell them ‘get off’.

This case shows that the brother is still an active member of his nutag but powerless in other places. If a herder from this nutag group is active in another place, people who live in the other nutag place often exclude the herder. Quite simply, this nutag identity is everywhere.

Herders are quickly adapting to an emerging resource management system that is locally regulated by nutag identity and ongoing commoditisation of resources. As many local people often legitimise access to local resources to their own nutag people, outside people find a way to use resources that belong

to other nutag people by expanding their social networks. Nutag groups have hierarchical systems and the exclusionary power of these groups varies depending on distance and social networks. As such, nutag identity provides social identity and land access as well as livestock security.

Nutag groups are also highly political and carry on feuds just as they maintain networks. During the otor 7{ }^{7} movement, herders often experience the following types of difficulties:

During the 2004-2009 droughts, I had gone for otor almost five years. I collected the nutag people’s horses and went for otor with my elder son and other nutag herders. I was so brave at that time I had collected almost 1,000 horses. It was easy to negotiate with people in the neighbouring sums because I know them. But it was difficult to graze 1,000 horses in one place for a month. So I moved to other places. This way I passed almost Dornogivi and reached Khentii. I always relied on my acquaintances or relatives who have ties with our nutag. Of course I gave them one or two horses for their food and always helped them. For example I first water livestock of that nutag people and then I water my horses. But in Darkhan sum of Khentii aimag I had no acquaintance. So I met with local nutag people and asked who is indirectly who is a senior and prestigious person among them. Then I met that senior person and explained my difficulties and even offered two horses. He sat listening and then finally allowed us to stay for two months. But I stayed a little longer, almost four months there. Their pasture was good because it is a khangai type of eco-region which includes dense grasses that grow in the Khangai mountains. These people did not like us and when two months passed, they sent their bag governor. He came and demanded we should move within a week. I explained and asked to extend a month. Then later on the bag governor came and asked us to transfer our registration to that sum. But later on, drunken youths of that nutag divided our horses into three and chased our horses about fifty kilometres off.

The above narrative illustrates that even a small tie with one nutag person provides power and access rights. The informant also explains the interrelation between nutag access rights by social networks and legal legitimacy. Even though different nutag ‘communities’ come under the same administrative units, for example sum or aimag, and pasturelands are public and free to everyone by law, every nutag community has special exclusionary power over its own (residencebased) places by traditional informal laws. Therefore, it is no surprise that bag

[1]

1. 1. Herders’ movement in search of fresh grazing in addition to regular seasonal movements. This otor movement often occurs during autumn for fattening animals. If there are climatic difficulties, herders move to other places that are not affected or less affected by droughts or zud.
      ↩︎

and sum governors cannot mediate or handle pasture conflicts among herders from different nutags especially in the event of zud. Likewise, with regard to illegal hunting mentioned in the next section, the sum environmental inspector together with her rangers and policeman cannot protect wildlife effectively.

Claims to nutag are also widely used in disputes over land use and environmental degradation. Across Mongolia, environmental damage and conservation failures are often blamed on non-local agents such as outside people, mining companies, the government and development agencies. For example, most illegal hunting and logging is attributed to temporary visitors, outside company workers or neighbouring sum or aimag people, and reduction of water supply in wells is supposed to be the direct impact of any mining in the sum or aimag.

While apportioning blame is not the purpose of this paper, it bears noting that a revitalisation of nutag identity is widely used to claim rights to resource use and refute the accusations of environmental agencies and conservation programmes. In the research survey, 79 per cent of respondents answered that herders can protect their environment and natural resources by themselves. In many other non-western societies, resource and habitat taboos and informal institutions like nutag identity are widely used in resource management and conservation (Colding and Folke 2001, Upton 2010). Thus, it is essential to recognize that herders in Mongolia use their own nutag collective identity and their spiritual and social belief system and customs in the management of natural resources.

Legitimacy of resource use among herders

According to Suchman, ‘Legitimacy is a generalised perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions’ (Suchman 1995, 574). The entity can be an individual or a group of people such as herders who have shared and socially constructed beliefs and values. As Sikor and Lund (2009) argue: ‘the exercise of authority is intimately linked to claims of legitimacy of the particular institution. This often involves a general, historically-based claim as well as a specific claim to legitimacy’ (p. 7). In taking this conceptualisation further, the claim to legitimacy is linked to authority that is exercised by institutions (Fortmann 1995; Rocheleau and Ross 1995, cited in Sikor and Lund 2009, 7) and is continuously re-established through conflict and negotiation.

According to Mongolian herders’ perception, they are the ‘legitimate users’ of both biotic and abiotic natural resources because they were born in that locality. Detailed interviews with herders reveal that many individuals consider these resources as ‘ours’ or ‘our nutag people’s’ and the government as just the manager. To consider how herders distinguish ‘us’ from ‘others’, the section below asks: why do herders think they are the legitimate users of natural resources, specifically wildlife, trees, rangelands, pasture, water sources such as rivers and lakes, even minerals exploited by mining companies? Under the notion of legitimacy discussed above, it seems that herders actually have a socially or historically accepted claim over resources and the following empirical data shows that herders are challenging governments and other agents for their legitimacy of authority over their local resources. Survey results show that 74 per cent (n=288)(\mathrm{n}=288) agree that the environment where they live is seriously degraded and 65 per cent oppose sharing of environmental resources with outside people, even with relatives who do not live in that sum or bag but come from outside (NUM 2015).

Using conceptualisations of legitimacy and practices of nutag as an informal institution, the following interviews demonstrate how herders perceive themselves as legitimate users of environmental resources and how they exclude people who do not belong to their nutag. Self-identification is a matter of similarity and solidarity, of belonging and community, of ‘us’ and ‘we’ (Jenkins 2008). Local people, especially herders, often distinguish locals from outsiders when it comes to hunting and use of natural resources (Scharf et al. 2010, 325). In Bayanjargalan sum, the environment inspector and rangers make great efforts to protect marmots and gazelle that used to be hunted without licenses. The reason for protection is clear: numbers of these species have fallen significantly and they are about to be included in the list of threatened species. As a result, the Ministry of Environment has prohibited hunting them.

Preliminary interviews with environmental inspectors about illegal hunting in this sum indicated that there were no serious issues and that all official decisions prohibiting hunting issued by central government had been introduced. However two weeks later, I encountered local people hunting gazelle using motorcycles. When I met the inspector again and asked about this incident, such was the reply:

Just four staff is not enough to control all this illegal hunting in this sum. When rangers chase illegal hunters by motorcycle those illegal hunters just run away in their four-wheel drive car or jeep. Sometimes I go on patrol with our policeman but this is rare. Instead we focus more on illegal hunting of marmot and wild

sheep in the protected area. For marmots, illegal hunting occurs a lot especially by outside people from neighbouring sums or aimags because our sum is the only place with marmots. So we usually cooperate with and rely on our local nutag herders. If these local people were doing such acts, that is a crime.

These two meetings indicate that the inspector connects illegal hunting with people from outside and hesitates to admit local people’s hunting activity (or does not want to accept it). According to the inspector, local people have similarities in belonging to the sum administrative unit and solidarity of not hunting illegally, whereas outside people are different from the locals in belonging and solidarity. This is the simple form of nutag identity at the sum level.

In contrast to the above narrative, interview and survey data show that herders effectively use conservation advocacy and the environmental agenda to put environmental blame on outside people or other institutions. Hedging or defence of one’s own nutag community is common among local people and they often defend the exclusionary (resource-based) customary practice of their nutag. When conservationists or government environmental agencies raise issues of illegal activities or local environmental damage, herders often put the blame for environmental despoliation on non-local people and organisations, or link it to mining companies:

We believe spiritual beings who master water and mountains own local resources. Local nutag people only receive fortunes (khishig hurteb) blessed by the water and mountain owners. They have power to bless and punish local people on resource uses. In most cases they act like our father and mother and protect us and help us. If we do wrong actions they punish us. If outside people come and dig our land or kill these wild animals that belong to those masters, we have to stop them. Otherwise our share will be reduced and there will be less rain or no water … or punishment on us.

This herder underscores the ways in which spiritual beliefs shape management of natural resources and conservation activities at the individual and nutaglevel. During the socialist period, this practice or spiritual belief system was weakened by socialist ideology and it is being revived these days as a means of resistance to the ‘market’ economy and emergent resource competitors at local levels.

Another herder, whose winter campsite is very close to the gazelles’ grazing area, was asked whether she noticed any hunting around this area and if so, who was doing it.

Well, local nutag young men happen to hunt gazelle and marmots. These days, we have no rights to hunt and some people do it in a secret way. Anyway, these nutag people are nothing, but those travelling people from mining companies

just kill and they use gazelle meat for their food in order to save money from purchasing meat from herders. People who are in and out from those mining companies and who are passing through our sum and nutag often hunt these animals. We do not know how many people are going through our sum and their number is countless. But we herders are here and it is clear who is who and we will not escape from our nutag.

This perception that herders have lived for centuries using local resources and are the legitimate people to do so is widespread among herders. Instead of pursuing them, they believe the state or government should control those outside people and their ‘illegal’ use of local resources.

In response to the survey question ‘who would best organise environmental conservation activities’, most herders ( 79.2 per cent, n=288\mathrm{n}=288 ) supported individual herders as the most effective agents of environmental protection, though 77.1 per cent thought that there should be strong state regulation (NUM 2015). In sum, the conflict over access to environmental resources has started the long process of re-establishing perceived legitimacy in Mongolia.

In Tes sum, herders gave similar accounts of their practices over resource use. The Tes river basin includes forested areas, mainly willow, and open pastureland, and suffers cold wind from Lake Uvs in winter. The administration of the aimag protects this river basin and the lower reaches of the river that feed into the lake are included in the national Strictly Protected Area. According to the administration of the protected area, the most critical problem in Tes sum is illegal logging of forests for fuel and commercial logging for making ger, the traditional Mongolian dwelling. This forest is not only a winter encampment for herders but also a habitat for endangered wildlife such as wetland hogs, rare amphibians, and various migratory birds. In the early 2000s, people commonly burned areas of forest in order to prevent cross-border livestock theft between Mongolia and the Republic of Tuva.

To better understand this situation, I interviewed a herder who was preparing wooden poles from willow forests, and another family that was logging wood for their winter fuel. For the first woodman there was no problem because he was preparing these poles in his bag territory, his homeland or nutag. But the other family collecting fuelwood came from the centre of the sum. This family used their social network in that area to avoid repercussions and they stopped by two families on the way to appease them with vodka. Also this family left the sum centre early and came back with fuelwood at night to hide from officials.

Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo

Figure 8. Abandoned vegetable field enclosed with support from Donor project to motivate collective action of herders who are busy with livestock all year round in Tariat sum in Bayanjargalan, Dundgovi aimag. Photo: Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo.

Figure 9. Winter fuel wood collection in the Tes river basin in autumn that is often practiced through formal permission from local government or informal nutag identity access. Photo: Byambabaatar Ichinkhorloo.

Environment as Commodity and Shield

From the cases above, it appears that nutag herders often exercise their right to log woods in their locality and do not seek official permission from the bag or sum administration. Herders who do not belong to a specific nutag have no access to natural resources in that area. The above interviews further suggest that herders distinguish local herders from others or outside people. Within the logic of legitimacy-perception, these local herders believe that they have a right to the natural resources if they belong to the nutag. However, there is also a strong sense of custodianship of the natural resources for all locals, rather than ownership among herders (Sneath 2001, 2004). This custodial relationship is often connected to the spiritual and social belief system.

Numerous studies document socially accepted norms and spiritual beliefs among local herders regarding natural resources (Chimedsengee et al. 2009, Humphrey et al. 1993, Humphrey and Sneath 1996, Sneath 2001, Upton 2010). Herders often claim that wildlife and natural resources belong to people of the given nutag only, and they justify their access rights and perceived legitimacy assumption by reference to their religious belief. While this belief is often practised among local people, they do not often impose it on outside people. In response to the survey question (NUM 2015) ‘can local spirits and deities punish outside people who desecrate the environment’, 49.3 per cent of respondents answered ‘no’ and 22.9 per cent of herders answered ‘do not know.’ In contrast, 53.5 per cent of herders agreed that local spirits and deities punish local herders for their transgressions against the environment. According to social norms and corresponding to Humphrey et al. (1993), if a nutag herder hunted more wild animals than he was allocated (blessed with) from these nutag masters, there would be punishment or revenge (social discrimination).

Data analysis shows that herders strongly exclude ‘others’, or people outside of their nutag community and the resources that belong to it. These social norms are not written down and are perceived differently by different people. A main criterion is not to damage or degrade natural processes of growth or sustainability. If the nutag master allowed the resource, the nutag individual can take it. As suggested by one informant, the idea is to ‘take it if you are given or if you encounter wild animals or resources but do not search for them for commercial purposes’. In both cases, an individual member of the nutag is responsible for his actions and for damage done by others. The notion of responsibility for protection of the nutag in turn unites nutag people.

Exambabaatar Ichinkhorloo

Consequences of herders’ legitimacy assumption

Herders’ livelihoods are dependent on their rights to access and control natural resources. Nutagarkhakh, or the preference for relying on people from one’s nutag while discriminating against others, is increasing among herders. This is one type of adaptation strategy for local people and a social response to conservation efforts, commodification of resources and economic neoliberalism. In order to get around exclusionary limitations, rural people regularly expand their social networks to areas where they usually go on otor movements and otherwise have access to resources.

However, the rights of individual access and control conflict with the collective approach. Although nutag collective identity is influenced by the nation-building project, it helps herders to connect with each other and to reduce impacts of ongoing commodification projects that encourage commercialisation and exclusion, such as herders’ possession rights to campsites as well as the granting of mining licenses by the government.

Problematically, the new collective forms of nutag identity have constructed an assumption of legitimacy that is leading to more social and spatial fragmentation in Mongolia. On the one hand, local people argue that they benefit from the assumption of legitimacy over resources because they earn cash by leasing shelters and commercialising environmental resources to outside people. On the other hand, however, mobility for these same local people becomes restricted and pasture areas shrink as mechanisms of commodification deepen social and economic inequalities.

Nutag collective identity is also exploited politically in elections for parliament and for the local citizen khural (Sneath 2010). For example many citizen khural members have double or triple nutag identities acquired on the basis of where one’s parents were born as well as one’s natal and/or adolescent home. These multiple belongings to several places - or what Sneath identifies as ‘context-specific groupings, dependent on a particular discourse or point of reference’ (2010,262)(2010,262) - allow politicians and business people to generate political support and garner votes that in turn lend access to natural resources. Ultimately, the global trend of supporting community participation in the use of resources and decisions of redistribution, as well as the decentralisation of resource rights to local people (Arellano-Yanguas 2011, Ballard and Banks 2003, Bridge 2004), have helped the development of nutag identity in Mongolia.

Environment as Commodity and Shield

Conclusion

In the past two decades, Mongolian herders have adapted to a new socioeconomic or socio-technical system that brings many new institutions and users of resources. Most recently, conservation organisations, development agency driven projects and government environmental programmes have intervened in the management of resources that were primarily the purview of herders in past centuries. In addition, private mining companies, and urban people passing through or spending vacation time in the countryside, have competed with herders for pasture, water, wildlife and other natural resources. As a result, new competition for resources has challenged herders in multiple ways with respect to various institutional agendas and programmes. While some actors blame herders for environmental degradation, others encourage herders to organise artificial ‘communities’ and commercialise the environment. Across these relationships, herders are cast either as environmentally destructive and opportunistic or as environmentally benign and the only people capable of protecting the local environment and natural resources.

The ongoing changes to social and economic conditions across Mongolia have generated new identities for rural people, especially herders. Resource competition and commodification have led rural people to construct and reshape collective nutag identities in order to enable local people to exclude external or outside people from their local resources. This nutag identity has roots in herders’ traditional spiritual and social belief systems and is based on herders’ resource use interests and sense of belonging to places of home. Traditional beliefs remain powerful for rural Mongolian herders, as shown in ceremonies such as ovoo worship, morning libation of tea and praying to spirits to cure diseases. Spiritual beliefs and the socially accepted norms discussed above also reveal that nutag people’s sense of legitimacy over resources is getting stronger. This legitimacy is even accepted by outside people and increasingly used by politicians for opportunistic purposes.

With respect to resource management and environmental conservation, the modern form and practices of nutag present distinct tensions between individual agency and collective interest. The global trend of supporting community participation in decision-making or resource management, as introduced by conservation agencies, has influenced herders to revitalise this collective identity in order to claim ownership over environmental resources. This demonstrates that herders have started to see their environment as a commodity and have in turn commodified pasture, wildlife and other natural resources. At the same time, however, herders have reshaped their former nutag identity toward

individualistic and neoliberal subjectivity, and it is used as a shield to defend them from environmental accusations. Moreover, nutag identity and what goes with it further creates social problems such as social and spatial fragmentation and increasing cost of access to environmental resources for outsiders, as well as inequality among nutag people. Other social problems include future conflicts over resources between herders and formal legitimate agencies, since herders’ nutag identity has more legitimacy power in daily life than those legal legitimate powers. Ultimately, this modern form of nutag identity is fuelled by the decentralisation efforts of the government and development agencies. If these institutional and structural changes are not managed well by the multiple actors and stakeholders - including herders, the Mongolian government and international agencies alike - we can expect to see increased local internal and external conflicts, particularly over environmental resources.

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