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)
Related papers
2004
Nomadic pastoralism is the way of life and basically the only income for around a third part of the Mongolian population. Pastoral lands are state property in Mongolia whereas the livestock is owned by the herding households who received it after the dismantling of the herding collectives in the beginning of the 1990s. The last fifteen years have been characterised by changes in the herders grazing practice, and changes in the pastoral land management policy as a result of the new land legislation. The problems most often related to the new grazing patterns are: reduced mobility of the herders, high concentration of livestock in some places, out-of-season grazing and trespassing. These factors are all said to lead to overgrazing and pasture degradation. The Mongolian Land Law promotes allocation of the pasture land to groups of herders’ for possession and management thus trying to facilitate more sustainable grazing practises. Sustainable Grassland Management projects implemented by...
Living off the land: Nature and nomadism in Mongolia
Geoforum, 2010
The demise of the Soviet Union precipitated profound changes in formerly collectivised rural spaces across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. However, it is only recently that attention to the post-Soviet 'land question' has begun to move beyond predominant, practical concerns with land restitution and fragmentation and towards engagement with diverse discourses of rurality, nature and modernity. In particular, longitudinal accounts of the narratives and practices of Soviet modernisation and post-Soviet ''development" in specific rural places and societies are lacking. This paper is concerned with the complex linkages between environmental policies, practice and concepts of nature in such spaces and over recent history. Through examination of the management and representation of nature amongst pastoralist communities in Mongolia and in the collective and post-collective eras this paper seeks to understand local-level enactments, reworking and assimilation of externally-derived discursive and policy formulations. In doing so it acts as a corrective to state-centred and homogenising visions of Soviet and post-Soviet rurality. It highlights how local herders' 'room for manoeuvre' in expression and enactment of diverse ideas of nature and its management resides primarily in informal spaces, facilitated by recent trends of devolution in natural resource management. Finally, the paper demonstrates how nomadism has been constructed and reconstructed as a component of, rather than inimical to, modernity, albeit with as yet unproven implications for livelihoods and for nature in rural Mongolia.
Mongolia: Pastoralists, Resilience and the Empowerment of Climate
Chapter 8 from my forthcoming book, The Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation: Livelihoods, Agrarian Change and the Conflicts of Development. Pastoral livelihoods in contemporary Mongolia are argued to be uniquely vulnerable to climatic change. In response, this chapter turns the question around. It deploys a political ecology of agrarian change to argue that climate has been made an increasingly powerful force on the steppe through policies that led to increased herd sizes and systematic overgrazing. These dynamics create the conditions in which winter storms are empowered to destroy herds and livelihoods. Interrogating these contradictions allows the chapter situate Mongolian pastoralism within global flows of finance, energy, materials and pollutants that are not present in the discourse of climate change adaptation or localistic accounts of resilience.
Chapter 14 Pastoral Mobility and Pastureland Possession in Mongolia
2012
Pastoralists in Mongolia have adopted a number of models of Europeanor Western-style modernization or development since the middle of the last century: in the Socialist period, collectivization to establish herding collectives, which may be recognized as a Socialist version of development; in the early 1990s, during the transition to a market economy, a market-oriented model based on private property, with the dissolution of the herding collectives and privatization of livestock, although pastureland remains for common use; and currently, since the late 1990s, "Community-based natural resource management" (CBNRM), a development model for common-pool resources management. The situation in the past two decades alleged to require new management institutions in the pastoral sector in Mongolia could be summarized as follows. Mongolia has been undergoing two processes impacting the pastoral economy and society: integration to the global economy or the transition to a market econ...
The Next Steppe? Herder Perceptions of Environmental Change in Mongolia
2017
I would first like to thank the people and groups who helped me with my field research in Mongolia: My dear friend and co-researcher Azjargal Jargalsaihan for her engagement, skill, and good humor, the Swarthmore Social Sciences Division and Colorado State University for making this research and funding possible, and Dr. K David Harrison for interest in Mongolia and for helping me write my grant proposal. Many American and Mongolian women from the MOR2 project guided me through my time in Mongolia and the research process.
2018
The Eastern Steppe of Mongolia is one of the world's largest mostly intact grassland ecosystems and is characterised by a close coupling of societal and natural processes. In this ecosystem, mobility is one of the key characteristics of wildlife and human societies alike. The current economic development of Mongolia is accompanied by extensive societal transformation and changes in nomadic lifestyles, which potentially affects the unique steppe ecosystem and its biodiversity. The changing lifestyles are mainly characterised by rural-urban migration, resulting in reduced mobility of herders and their livestock, and presumably affecting wildlife. The question is how mobility can be fostered under these transformation processes. Time is pressing as a new generation is born which is growing up in urban environments and with new skill sets but a potential loss of the tight connection to nature and the nomadic lifestyle.Монгол орны тал хээрийн экосистем нь дэлхийн хэмжээнд унаган төрх...
Between Cash Cows and Golden Calves: Adaptations of Mongolian Pastoralism in the'Age of the Market'
Nomadic Peoples, 2008
Pastoralism in Mongolia has increasingly been portrayed by two powerful and mutually reinforcing discourses. First, the neo-liberal discourse enthusiastically embraced and reproduced by most of the Mongolian political elite constructs pastoralism as backward and unproductive, in need of modernization, and sedentarization. Second, an increasingly powerful essentialist discourse argues for the preservation of 'traditional' Mongolian pastoralism. By presenting a stereotypical image of 'the nomadic culture' on the brink of extinction, outsiders (e.g. NGOs, the tourist industry) become stakeholders in the debate on Mongolian identity and the country's development path. They also help (unwillingly perhaps) reinforce the image of the pastoralist as obsolete and 'timeless'. The article shows that the realities of Mongolian pastoralists lie beyond these two constructs. The pastoralists have taken steps toward adapting to the new socio-economic realities: they use veterinary services, try to use the market system and social services. Yet their adaptive capacity is severely limited by unfavourable social and economic circumstance endorsed by the State.
Change has been the leitmotif of Mongolia in recent years as the country rides on the back of a mining boom, but enormous upheavals tear apart Mongolian economic, political and social fabrics. Yet, Mongolian imagination continues to be imbued with the idea of nomadic herders, the quintessential pasture and rangeland dwellers of the steppes. The conflicting visions raise the question: "How is the livelihood of Mongolia's nomadic herders responding to the diverse changes ushered in by the post-socialist economic reforms?" This paper investigates this question in the context of the growing artisanal and small-scale mining, which is described as informal mining, and argues that the Mongolian nomads are continually (re)adjusting their livelihoods through informal mining to cope with the variety of transitions triggered off by processes put in place by state policies. It argues that the nomadic herders are not only responding to climate change or poverty, but are also stepping up to seek a share of the mineral resource wealth that the state is promising to the international investors. The aim of the paper is to offer an alternative interpretation of the commodity rush by erstwhile ruralbased nomadic herders of Mongolia, and to link their involvement in informal mining with global debates of political economy.