Grasslands of the World.pdf - Disasters and Conflicts - UNEP

Grazing management in Mongolia 297
dated, although little other than labour input is required to make them useable.
Mobility is an essential part of the system; previously ger-moving was facilitated
by the provision of motor transport; now herders often have no access to
or funds for lorries, and their movements are restricted. Carts and camels are
returning as a means of moving, but their number is insufficient; wheels and
axles are scarce outside the forest zone and using them to move requires much
more labour and time than did a motorized move.
With state subsidies for inputs removed and services reduced or absent,
herders have reverted to traditional risk -management (in what has always been
a risky environment), including keeping multispecies herds and cooperating
with other households in herding tasks to help cope with the greater labour
needs of diversified herds. The basis of this collaboration is the khot ail, a
traditional level of household collaboration, camping and working in a group ,
which existed before collectivization, especially for summer and autumn grazing
. The sur of the negdels partly copied this, but avoided the kinship basis that
is common in the khot ail. These units are often, but not necessarily, based on
family ties, but associations between households with common interests are
as important. The size of the khot ail varies with season and ecological zone:
in the Gobi the khot ail often consists of a single household; in better watered
areas up to five households may group together.
At neighbourhood and community levels, other customary institutions have
re-emerged. At neighbourhood level, groups provide an approach to regulating
access to grazing . They are often kinship-based and related to a natural grazing
management unit, such as a valley, or, in dry areas, a water source. They exist
within the limits of a wider traditional unit, the bag, a customary institution that
was responsible for pasture allocation and dispute settlement in the pre-collective
era. Present bag boundaries are generally based on those of the brigades . A
further type of cooperation is appearing, in that many herders now store their
winter gear that is not required on migration; since winter camps are not secure,
the storage is often with people settled at the sum centre; payment may be in
kind or by other services.
The socio-economic changes have had a marked effect on access to basic
foodstuffs and the dietary pattern of the herders. FAO (1996) stated:
“Herders are self-sufficient in meat and milk products and consumption of those products
increased by 30 percent and 50 percent, respectively, between 1990 and 1992. In the same period
the consumption of other food decreased, e.g. by 40 percent for flour and by more than 80 percent
for various food grains. This was a result of the worsening of rural trading services, as herders
could only get commodity goods in sum centres, instead of from brigade centres and travelling
agents as previously.”
Reforms have changed a highly organized grazing system into one where
privately-owned livestock graze public land; this is often a certain recipe for
pasture abuse. Although ownership of land is often a prerequisite for its good
management , this is not the case for extensive grazing land in Mongolia (for