Mobile Pastoralism and Problems of Pastureland Management

—An Approach from the Case of Mongolia—

Abstract

This paper tries to investigate proper management system of pastureland where mobile pastoralism is taken place, by means of case study of Mongolia and a simple model based there. Since the allegory of “The Tragedy of the Commons”, it has been often said that pasturelands under common ownership lead to collapse because overuse is inevitable under such ownership, and that transfer of property rights is essential to avoid it. The same is the case of Mongolia, where misuse of pastureland promoted the damage of natural disaster dzud and privatization of pastureland is discussed according to the “Theory of ‘the Tragedy’”. However, researches in many actual commons have shown that “The Tragedy” does not necessarily occur and that the thesis proved to have theoretical errors. Moreover, there proved to be some places where transferring property rights itself caused depletion of natural resources. Therefore, privatization has a defect in its “theoretical” background. Besides, if pastureland is distributed to herdsmen, pastoral movement will no longer be possible, but in regions where water access is fluctuating years or seasons and not correlating between areas within the regions, sedentary pastoralism is less desirable than mobile one in terms of efficiency measured by the numbers of livestock which can be kept there. This is because if movement is allowed, herdsmen can move from an area with bad access to water to an area where herds can have better intake of water.

Because of these, far from solving the management problem, privatization or distribution of pasture-land has the possibility to lessen efficiency in pastureland utilization by impeding pastoral movement. Therefore, in mobile pastoral regions, a system is needed to support and promote movement for efficient and sustainable use of pastureland.