Observations from Kyrgyzstan

The development discourse maintains that community-based approaches are generally equitable, sustainable, and legitimized strategies for the management of natural resources. It remains frequently unnoticed that the policies and legal frameworks designed to regulate such local governance approaches oftentimes are externally initiated and top-down in nature, and frequently not adapted to local demands and capacities. Significant differences between the goals of such interventions and the lived reality and associated unintended effects were often concealed within the debates. A similar indication can be stated for Kyrgyzstan’s pasture law, which demands that local communities are fully responsible for the management of pasturelands. The recent innovation in pasture law has not comprehensively resulted in the desired outcomes on the ground. Based upon a comparison of Kyrgyzstan’s pasture-related legislation with the impacts of its implementation in the walnut-fruit forest region located in the south-west of the country, this article points out that community-based pasture management in local practice appears to have resulted in hybrid institutional arrangements comprising aspects of the existing formal legislation and local- specific informal regulations. Simultaneously, case-specific circumstances, particularly the constellation of uneven power holders and interest-driven players and their interactions, as well as the respective socio-economic conditions, highly influence the resource management performances on the ground. The actual outcomes do not necessarily correspond to the requirements of the formal legislation. They can even contradict the requirements of the formal legislation and generate subsequent problems. At a first glance, due to the assumed high participation of the immediate users and the belief in their supposedly intrinsic interest in eco-friendly resource use, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approaches seem to have a great potential for creating economic, social, and ecologically sustainable development at the local level. However, the risk of failure is high if the whole approach rests on an apolitical understanding of communities as being homogenous and tensionless groups of social organization and on an idealized image of their ecological awareness. A consistent development strategy that goes beyond the mere definition of unspecific goals has to take the community-specific power relations and the respective socio-economic conditions into consideration. It is also necessary to consider the local needs and costs for CBNRM and the opportunities for its implementation, in order to ensure the adequate representation and participation of all interested resource users within the management bodies and the decision-making processes. If requested, appropriate support should also be provided to communities in need, to assist the transition to the envisaged new regime. Taking these aspects into consideration, Kyrgyzstan’s approach for a community-based pasture management could become a more successful and broadly accepted instrument to empower the people at the local level and to enable comprehensively sustainable resource management practices on the ground

Collaborative Action and Social Organization in Remote Rural Regions: Autonomous Irrigation Arrangements in the Pamirs of Tajikistan

This paper proposes a bottom–up “nexus medium” perspective to examine and understand social organization and how socio-ecological challenges in remote rural regions are dealt with in communities that receive only limited external support. While “nexus mediums” constitute substances, matter, or objects that combine manifold vital meanings and can be seen as socially constructed and materialized arenas of social interaction, autonomous resource management is seen as a means of local social organization. Taking water as the nexus medium of choice allows us to generate locally informed insights about the role of this scarce resource for the everyday life and social organization of communities inhabiting arid rural areas. This reasoning will be exemplified by three local case studies conducted during empirical research in the Pamirs of Tajikistan utilizing a mix of qualitative methods. The findings reveal how many fundamental everyday-life-related aspects and activities of the studied communities are related to water, and how these communities are organized around common water use and management arrangements that are based on joint decision-making, shared benefits and responsibilities, and collaborative action. The “nexus medium” concept appears to be an appropriate approach for research that seeks to understand from a local perspective how communal living is organized and how socio-ecological challenges are addressed

Legal Arrangements and Pasture-related Socio-ecological Challenges in Kyrgyzstan

It has to be stated from the beginning that grasslands in Kyrgyzstan have a crucial economic importance from the macroeconomic national level down to the level of local households as supplier of natural animal fodder, as well as crucial ecological meanings such as for water and nutrient cycling, filtration, and soil formation. In spite of the vast expanse of pasture lands and the reduction of livestock numbers in the 1990s, the scope and diversity of pasture-related socio-ecological challenges have increased remarkably, and have come to endanger the continued provision of these services (Wilson 1997:62–63; Undeland 2005: 22). Degradation leads to a growing shortage of grassland, and pasture-related conflicts jeopardize the country’s social integrity. Based on these facts, this presentation has two objectives. The first is to shed light on the importance of legal institutions for the emergence of pasture-related social and ecological problems. Second, it advocates for a participatory approach to the creation of institutional regulations regarding the management and utilization of natural resources. Including the local population in the pasture utilization-related institution- building process can make a decisive contribution to a sustainable development of the country’s society by balancing different interests. The hypothesis to be explored is that formal institutions, especially top-down-initiated legal rules, are decisively contributing to the formation of socio-ecological pasturerelated challenges

Small-Scale Irrigation Self-Governance in a Mountain Region of Tajikistan

In the Pamirs of Tajikistan, meeting food needs is an ongoing struggle. One of the challenges to local agricultural production is water scarcity. This paper presents a case study of a small-scale, self-organized irrigation governance system in a village in the western Pamirs, applying the concept of “hydrosocial arrangements” to explore its physical and social components and the interactions between them. It concludes that the system has proven sustainable and resilient, largely because of its strong sense of community ownership and its flexibility. Political actors and development practitioners often lack detailed knowledge about such well-functioning local solutions, but external interventions applied without that knowledge risk destroying effective systems that are already in place. It is important to design interventions that are tailored to local needs and based on a comprehensive and well-contextualized understanding of local structures, relations, and values

User-Based Pasture Management in Kyrgyzstan: Achievements, Challenges, and Trends

In Kyrgyzstan, a high mountain country in Central Asia, grasslands occupy almost half of the territory. These extensive resources represent the basis for seasonally mobile animal husbandry, which is relevant for both individual households and the national economy. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Kyrgyzstan’s transition into a market economy, these formerly state-owned grasslands were parceled out and privatized. Considerable socio-economic distortions and ecological problems occurred during this process. In order to meet such unintended effects, a legal framework for user-based pasture management was established in the course of an institutional learning process. This package of measures corresponded to a decentralization of responsibilities in natural resource management through the stronger involvement of rural communities and, thus, aligns with a central paradigm of the global development discourse at the time. Positive examples can be observed in terms of increasing equal access to grazing land, the empowerment of rural communities, and reduced ecological damage. At the same time, there are local cases of pasture-related ecological problems and overstrained management institutions. In addition to the challenges posed by cross-border pastoral mobility and scrub encroachment on summer pastures, social issues came into focus in current pasture-related interventions in Kyrgyzstan. This paper traces the developments of the regulations and practices of pasture management after 1991, placing an emphasis on the analysis of current trends, achievements, and challenges

Grenzen und mobile Viehwirtschaft - ein vernachlässigter Problemzusammenhang in Zentralasien

Mobile Viehwirtschaft ist unter den in weiten Teilen Zentralasiens bestehenden natürlichen Bedingungen eine vorteilhafte und deshalb seit Jahrhunderten verbreitete Wirtschaftsform. In vorkolonialer Zeit wie während der Zarenherrschaft und der Epoche des Sozialismus zogen Menschen ungehindert von Herrschaftsoder Verwaltungsgrenzen mit ihrem Vieh in jahreszeitlichem Rhythmus zu ihren Weideplätzen, auch wenn administrative Maßnahmen oder ideologische Vorgaben sie zu sesshafter, besser zu kontrollierender Wirtschaftsweise anhalten sollten. Erst die neuen, viel hermetischer geschlossenen Grenzen der Nachfolgerepubliken der UdSSR stellen unüberwindbare Hindernisse dar und sind Ursachen für zwischenstaatliche Konflikte, aber auch sozio-ökologische Probleme

Collaborative Action and Social Organization in Remote Rural Regions: Autonomous Irrigation Arrangements in the Pamirs of Tajikistan

This paper proposes a bottom–up “nexus medium” perspective to examine and understand social organization and how socio-ecological challenges in remote rural regions are dealt with in communities that receive only limited external support. While “nexus mediums” constitute substances, matter, or objects that combine manifold vital meanings and can be seen as socially constructed and materialized arenas of social interaction, autonomous resource management is seen as a means of local social organization. Taking water as the nexus medium of choice allows us to generate locally informed insights about the role of this scarce resource for the everyday life and social organization of communities inhabiting arid rural areas. This reasoning will be exemplified by three local case studies conducted during empirical research in the Pamirs of Tajikistan utilizing a mix of qualitative methods. The findings reveal how many fundamental everyday-life-related aspects and activities of the studied communities are related to water, and how these communities are organized around common water use and management arrangements that are based on joint decision-making, shared benefits and responsibilities, and collaborative action. The “nexus medium” concept appears to be an appropriate approach for research that seeks to understand from a local perspective how communal living is organized and how socio-ecological challenges are addressed