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

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Grasslands of the world
340 000 lived in poverty prior to the severe 1997–98 winter; in the following
year the percentage had increased to 40 percent.
Officials label heavy snowfalls and severe winters as “disasters”; however,
pastoralists have been herding on the Tibetan Steppe for centuries and have
dealt with snowstorms and cold weather – those of the winter of 1997–1998
are natural events of the pastoral system. Herding has always been a highrisk
enterprise; pastoralists adopt strategies that minimize risk and make best
use of the resources (Goldstein and Beall, 1990; Miller, 1998a). In contrast
to severe droughts in semi -arid pastoral areas, heavy snowfalls do not affect
the vegetation negatively. Unlike droughts, where the effects on livestock are
more prolonged, severe snowstorms are sudden events, with a very short or no
“warning” period, and often causing livestock deaths in days or weeks.
DILEMMA ON THE TIBETAN STEPPE
With attempts to transform pastoral livestock production towards a market
economy the goal has been to increase off-take. This has been promoted
through privatization of herds and land, settling herders, introduction of less
mobile , intensive grazing management and of rainfed forage. Many of these
interventions have been responses to political or economic objectives and while
they have improved the delivery of social services, in many instances, they conflict
with the goal of maintaining grassland health and stability since they limit
the mobile nature of pastoralism (Miller, 1999a; Goldstein and Beall, 1989; Wu,
1997a). Movements between seasonal pastures are being reduced or eliminated;
herd composition is being restructured along commercial lines; herders are
being compelled to become livestock farmers. The environment and the pastoral
cultures are under threat where mobility has been eliminated or substantially
reduced (Humphrey and Sneath, 1999; Sneath and Humphrey, 1996).
A disproportionate amount of research is oriented to maximizing livestock
productivity , rather than understanding how livestock fit into the ecological
system in a socially sustainable way. There is also a problem regarding the
effective privatization of pastoral land tenure . Transaction costs associated with
the policy are high, including high private costs relative to the benefits and high
public costs of monitoring and enforcing contractual provisions related to pasture
management (World Bank, 2001). As Banks (1999) has outlined, privatization
policy was based on the assumption that, through the better definition of
property rights and introduction of individual land tenure, security would be
improved and this would prevent a “tragedy of the commons” scenario which
in turn would give herders the incentive to manage their pasture better and
invest in improvement . It was asserted that private ownership, by combining
interest in both land and livestock, would prevent overgrazing (Banks, 1997).
This model has been widely rejected by most pastoral specialists, who have
found it a very poor guide to understanding transhumant pastoralism and planning
development of pastoral areas.