Implications of norms and knowledge in customary reindeer herding units for resource governance

Pastoralist societies have developed customary institutions to respond to an unpredictable environment and fluctuation in grazing resources for their livestock. This chapter describes how reindeer herders’ customary institutions, including laws, norms and rights embedded in social networks, as well as traditional knowledge, structure these responses. Furthermore, it analyses how reindeer herders’ customary institutions are integrated into state governance of natural resources or recognized in national legislation. Central to the chapter is the Sámi siida and the corresponding Finnish tokkakunta – both represent customary herding groups that seek to balance the relationship between human–reindeer units to the spatial and temporal availability of grazing resources. The need for revitalization and a better understanding of reindeer herders’ customary institutions is identified, as well as an increased recognition of their traditional knowledge in resource management and land use planning to increase the resilience of reindeer husbandry to the cumulative challenges of climate change and resource extraction

Collaborative foundations of herding: The formation of cooperative groups among Tibetan pastoralists

The pastoral literature place little emphasis on the cooperative aspect of being a pastoralist. Part of the neglect stems from conflating the livestock owning unit, i.e. the household, with the herding group. Among Tibetan pastoralists, the herding group consist of people and animals from one or several households. They herd in groups because there is an optimal size of the herd concerning daily herding: too few animals and the animals disperse while too many negatively affect grazing efficiency and subsequently livestock survival during winter. The individual household also frees up members for e.g. selling or trading livestock products. Furthermore, group formation makes it possible to split herds into smaller sub-herds that consider differing needs for varying livestock species and age-categories. While herding groups can change both seasonally and annually, they are a fundamental unit for pastoral social organisation because they are concerned with daily cooperation

Climate Change and Migration for Scandinavian Saami: a Review of Possible Impacts

Migration, especially of indigenous peoples, related to or influenced by climate change continues to gain increasing research and policy attention. Limited material remains for this topic for Scandinavia’s indigenous people, the Saami. This paper contributes to filling this gap by providing a review for the Scandinavian Saami of the possible impacts of climate change on migration. Environmental influences, social influences, and a synthesis through livelihoods impacts, including for reindeer herding, is provided, followed by a discussion of Saami responses to climate change and migration mainly through a governance analysis. Overall, climate change’s impacts on the Saami do not necessarily entail abandoning their traditions, livelihoods, or homes. Instead, the most significant impact is likely to be migrants moving into the Arctic to pursue resource opportunities. Working collaboratively with the Saami, policies and practices are needed to ensure that indigenous interests are respected and that indigenous needs are met

Climate Change and Migration for Scandinavian Saami: A Review of Possible Impacts

Migration, especially of indigenous peoples, related to or influenced by climate change continues to gain increasing research and policy attention. Limited material remains for this topic for Scandinavia’s indigenous people, the Saami. This paper contributes to filling this gap by providing a review for the Scandinavian Saami of the possible impacts of climate change on migration. Environmental influences, social influences, and a synthesis through livelihoods impacts, including for reindeer herding, is provided, followed by a discussion of Saami responses to climate change and migration mainly through a governance analysis. Overall, climate change’s impacts on the Saami do not necessarily entail abandoning their traditions, livelihoods, or homes. Instead, the most significant impact is likely to be migrants moving into the Arctic to pursue resource opportunities. Working collaboratively with the Saami, policies and practices are needed to ensure that indigenous interests are respected and that indigenous needs are met

Wealth of nomads – an exploratory analysis of livestock inequality in the Saami reindeer husbandry

Abstract The evolution of political complexity is a perennial issue in humanities and social sciences. While social inequality is pervasive in contemporary human societies, there is a view that livestock, as the primary source of wealth, limits the development of inequalities, making pastoralism unable to support complex or hierarchical organisations. Thus, complex nomadic pastoral organisation is predominantly caused by external factors: historically, nomadic political organisations mirrored the neighbouring sedentary population’s sophistication. Using governmental statistics from 2001 to 2018 on reindeer herding in Norway, this study demonstrates that there is nothing apparent in pastoral adaptation with livestock as the main base of wealth that levels wealth inequalities and limits social differentiation. This study found that inequality generally decreased in terms of the Gini coefficient and cumulative wealth. For example, the proportion owned by the wealthy decreased from 2001 to 2018, whereas the proportion owned by the poor increased. Nevertheless, rank differences persisted over time with minor changes. In particular, being poor is stable; around 50% of households ranked as poor in 2001 continued to be so in 2018. In summary, the results of this study indicate that pastoral wealth inequality follows the same pattern as all forms of wealth. Wealth accumulates over time, and while the highest earners can save much of their income (i.e., newborn livestock), low earners cannot. Thus, high-earners can accumulate more wealth over time, leading to considerable wealth inequality

Consequences of COVID-19 on the Reindeer Husbandry in Norway: a Pilot Study Among Management Staff and Herders

The outbreak of COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on most of society. The most effective measure to prevent the spread has been reducing mobility, which is especially problematic for pastoralists relying on mobility to follow the movement of their livestock. We investigated to what degree Norwegian reindeer husbandry and the reindeer husbandry management system are affected by COVID-19 and government restrictions to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. For reindeer herders, our main finding was that the COVID-19 had little to no impact on their daily work. However, impacts varied by domain, with work in corrals, income, and slaughter being negatively affected. For employees in the management system, communication/contact with herders and visits/control of corrals/slaughter have been negatively affected. Employees in the management system were satisfied with how information concerning COVID-19 and prevention measures have been communicated by the central government, while the herders were mainly dissatisfied

Why Herd Size Matters – Mitigating the Effects of Livestock Crashes

<div><p>Analysing the effect of pastoral risk management strategies provides insights into a system of subsistence that have persevered in marginal areas for hundreds to thousands of years and may shed light into the future of around 200 million households in the face of climate change. This study investigated the efficiency of herd accumulation as a buffer strategy by analysing changes in livestock holdings during an environmental crisis in the Saami reindeer husbandry in Norway. We found a positive relationship between: (1) pre- and post-collapse herd size; and (2) pre-collapse herd size and the number of animals lost during the collapse, indicating that herd accumulation is an effective but costly strategy. Policies that fail to incorporate the risk-beneficial aspect of herd accumulation will have a limited effect and may indeed fail entirely. In the context of climate change, official policies that incorporate pastoral risk management strategies may be the only solution for ensuring their continued existence.</p></div