This article reports on a qualitative case study about pasture governance practices in Naryn oblast in Kyrgyzstan. It investigates the relationship between shifts in pasture legislation and herders' mobility. The article describes a study of the outcomes of 2002 pasture management legislation that introduced pasture lease agreements. It specifically looks at the implications of dispersed administrative responsibility for livestock mobility. Contrary to what other studies have found, results of this study suggest that, in the case study, municipality, administrative hurdles were not a major cause of the abandonment of seasonal migration. Based on this finding, the results of the study suggest that a second reform approach, which started in 2009 and replaced the previous administrative arrangement with community-based pasture management would not necessarily improve the sustainable use of pastures and boost livestock mobility. The author points to the importance of designing effective local enforcement mechanisms for seasonal migration.

This article focuses on cooperative adaptation strategies at the community, water user association, district, and national levels along the Khojabakirgansai, a small transboundary tributary of the Syr Darya in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Data were collected in the basin through in-depth expert interviews, site visits, and household surveys, and were triangulated with climate change data from the available literature. Basin inhabitants cooperate on extreme events that are exacerbated by climate change, including water scarcity, droughts, and flash floods. Water demand and efficiency are key issues driven by population growth, expansion of croplands, and deteriorating canal infrastructure. Lessons learned can be considered in other small transboundary tributaries in the Ferghana Valley and Central Asia, which demonstrate how, despite the international level of tension on water issues in the region, local communities can find solutions. Cooperation, however, does not always improve the basin environment or living standards, and is likely to be strained in the coming decades by climate and population trends, among other issues.

While the world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, physically and culturally, the wildlife of remote mountain regions is being affected both positively and negatively by such interconnectedness. In the case of snow leopards, the conservation impact has been largely, and rather unexpectedly, positive: Species-focused conservation projects, such as Project Snow Leopard (PSL) in Gilgit-Baltistan, remain mainly externally driven initiatives. PSL, initiated as a small pilot project in 1998, has relied on an approach that includes the use of an insurance scheme, the deployment of mitigation measures, and the empowerment of local governance. This approach has been successful in reducing the conflict with snow leopards and has built greater tolerance toward them. PSL is managed by local communities and cofinanced by them. PSL communities throughout the region are bearing the burden of carnivore conservation, and they are unwittingly subsidizing their populations by “feeding” them their livestock even though they are an economic threat to them. In this article, we argue that external intervention in the form of efforts that help alleviate the consequences of conflict through local empowerment have had a positive impact on the local mountain societies. We also show that such interventions have resulted in tangible conservation results, with the number of snow leopards staying at least stable. Our experience also shows that while the incentive component is critical, it is also part of a larger approach—one that includes developing and supporting local governance structures, improving access to education, and offering a range of tools to reduce the conflict that can be implemented locally. Finally, we suggest that investing in this approach—one that recognizes the species and local-context complexities surrounding the implementation of conservation incentives—can continue to inform international practices and guidelines for reducing human–wildlife conflicts worldwide.

As in many other high mountainous regions, local people in the Eastern Pamirs (Tajikistan) use biomass fuels, mainly teresken shrubs, to heat their houses during the winter months. This overuse of already scarce natural resources results in serious land degradation. Since 2006, thermal insulation measures have been disseminated and financed through microloans. This case study analyzes the impacts of thermal insulation in Murgab, the main town in the Eastern Pamirs, where thermal insulation measures have been implemented in 159 households since 2008. Although clients are more interested in increased comfort than in fuel savings, according to quantitative data collected in 2010 and 2011, thermal insulation measures led to a 20 to 30% savings in heating energy on average. However, it is mainly better-off households that are aware of energy efficiency issues and willing to invest in thermal insulation. In contrast, poorer households are the main teresken users, but they rarely have their houses insulated due to a lack of awareness and a low ability to repay loans. Therefore, the approach to introducing thermal insulation has only had a small effect on teresken consumption until now.

Pasture use in the Kyrgyz Republic has changed significantly as a result of fundamental political, economic, and societal changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent changes in people's livelihoods. Government institutions criticize current land use patterns as unsustainable and the cause of degradation. But at the local level, pasture quality is rarely seen as a major problem. This article uses a qualitative approach to examine the tension between these views and addresses current land use practices and related narratives about pasture degradation in rural Kyrgyzstan. By focusing on meanings ascribed to pastures, it shows how people closely relate current practices to the experiences and value systems of the Soviet period and to changing identities emerging in the post-Soviet transformation process. It argues that proper understanding of resource degradation issues requires adequate consideration of the context of meaning constructed by local resource users when they make sense of their environment.

Kyrgyzstan's vast grasslands are mountain ecosystems that provide many ecological services (such as water cycling and filtration, nutrient cycling, and soil formation) as well as economic services (such as fodder supply). During the post-Soviet transformation, pasture-related challenges arose in new forms and intensities and came to endanger the continued provision of these services. Degradation leads to a worsening shortage of grassland resources, and pasture-related conflicts jeopardize Kyrgyzstan's social integrity. Socioecological problems vary in type and intensity and cannot be explained solely in terms of excessive use by local people. This study looks at the ways in which historical preconditions, current socioeconomic conditions, laws and regulations, and administrative and management practices influence current pasture problems. We analyzed the social and ecological characteristics of diverse pastures in the walnut fruit forest region in southwestern Kyrgyzstan. This study offers an interdisciplinary approach to the establishment of socially and ecologically sustainable pasture management systems, combining social and historical research with ecological vegetation analyses.

This paper deals with the relations between grazing practices, pasture potential, and property rights in the Eastern Pamirs of Tajikistan 10 years after the privatization of 1999. It provides an overview of the spatiotemporal variability of current pasture use and livestock numbers. Assumptions about pasture potential are reconsidered in relation to animals' forage needs in order to draw field-based conclusions regarding over- or underuse in particular areas. Data are derived from interdisciplinary research on post-Soviet pastoralism and associated human–environment interactions. We show that pastoralists in the Eastern Pamirs face several problems: As the land cover resources are meager and variable and hay meadows for winter fodder are rare, herd mobility or external forage inputs are necessary to compensate for weather-related shortages. The current multiseasonal pasture use—a change from the mono-seasonal use of Soviet state farms—discourages plant regeneration. Competition between pastoralist groups is exacerbated by unresolved questions about formal user rights. Conflicts seem inevitable, limiting the sustainable use of natural resources. Based on 2 telling examples, we show that pastures close to villages are used year round, particularly in winter, and are heavily overgrazed. There is less grazing pressure on summer pastures, but some distant and hardly accessible summer pastures show high livestock numbers in summer, contradicting former opinions about their underuse.

Transhumant agropastoralism is a major concern in debates about economic development and food security in Kyrgyzstan. Using the concept of the “agropastoral system,” this study emphasizes the diversity of existing family farming systems and agropastoral livelihoods at the regional level and their various economic perspectives in a constantly evolving environment. Qualitative and empirical research conducted in the eastern part of Chuy oblast led to establishment of a typology of household farming systems, based on their resources and strategies, showing the agro-economic logic in the increasing socioeconomic inequalities in rural areas. Four farming systems were identified: deprived households involved in kitchen gardening and daily farm labor, risky small crop farming systems that increasingly rely on off-farm jobs to secure their livelihoods, sustainable dairy farming systems, and dynamic meat producers. In the context of increasing demand for animal products in urban areas, the position of each farming system in dairy and beef marketing reveals its ability to seize economic opportunities in the agricultural sector and in competition with off-farm activities.

Drawing on a panel study of households established in 2002 and a revisit in 2008–2010 to a subsample, this paper explores the livelihood pathways of 24 households in 3 villages in Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan. It finds that most households were worse off than they were in 2001, although they experienced a brief period of relative prosperity based on the 1 market choice available, opium poppy. The paper draws attention to the corporate nature of villages and their variable capacity to support the provision of village-level public goods. This variability is influenced in part by the relative richness of the resource base of the village and the related degree of social differentiation. Where land inequalities are high and the elite are economically secure, they have few incentives to widen provision of public goods and can be immune from social sanctions. Where the elite are economically insecure, they are likely to have a shared interest in supporting village solidarity and a moral economy and may promote the provision of public goods. External interventions focusing on village governance need to pay much greater attention to village preconditions given the extent to which the effects of such interventions are often subject to the behavior of the elite and preexisting customary structures.

This article explores how physical remoteness influences the quality of life of people living in mountain communities in Afghanistan's Badakhshan Province. Basing its analysis on data obtained from a quality of life assessment carried out in Badakhshan, the article compares how quality of life indicators differed between villages that are more remote in terms of their access to markets, services, and transport, and those that are closer to small urban economic hubs. Indicators in a range of domains including the household economy, built environment, health, and education were poorer in remote villages. However, less tangible aspects of life such as trust between people, social cohesion, cultural life, and people's own perceptions of the quality of their lives were similar or better in these locations. Nevertheless, we argue that remoteness acts as an important barrier to improving many aspects of health and wellbeing in remote mountain villages. Market-led approaches by themselves are inadequate for helping to promote quality of life improvements in these communities. This research suggests that the holistic framework, mixed funding, and innovative approaches that the Aga Khan Development Network is pursuing as the main implementing partner of the National Solidarity Program in the province—including infrastructure development, strengthening local governance, and cross-border development programs with Tajikistan—stand a better chance of improving quality of life.

The University of Central Asia (UCA) is committed to addressing sustainable mountain development through the design and implementation of its academic programs and in its operations. In June 2011, UCA launched its first university-wide, interdisciplinary research center—the Mountain Societies Research Centre (MSRC).

This paper synthesizes research findings on contemporary mountain pastoralism in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, based on a longer review characterizing mountain agropastoralism in Central Asia. We focus here on the principal issues that have been emphasized over the past two decades in policy, programs, and projects regarding pastoralism in Central Asia's mountains. We conclude that this emphasis has largely been driven by two unproven orthodoxies about

The paper proposes that new research should critically assess these orthodoxies through more empirical and long-term field research. This will yield practical applications to improve conditions for Central Asian mountain pastoralists and their environment. Pursuing measures for addressing pasture degradation will require determinations of whether, where, how, and why degradation and desertification are occurring. Detailed field research is also called for on the processes and effects of decentralizing the power to allocate and manage pasture resources from national and regional state authorities to local communities, as well as on the long-term effects of privatizing pasture land.