Livelihood challenges in High Asian pastoral spaces

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modernization and resource exploitation supported a ‘modern’ mobile society, but termed classical forms of mobility as outdated, backward and refutable.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.