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This chapter attempts to critically examine the wildlife conservation discourse that argues for curtailing the livestock grazing inside the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary, situated on the India’s international borders with China in southeast Ladakh. The conventional conservation discourse points at the (supposed) greed of the Changpa pastoralists in accumulating an increasing number of pashmina goats as a primary environmental cause of wildlife loss in Changthang; however, there is a critical lack of insight into the political and historical mechanisms that lie within the dynamic interaction between resource access and socio-economic inequalities, critical for understanding Changpa pastoralism today.

Ethnographic inquiry into the Changpa economy before the closure of Ladakh–Tibet border trade in 1962, and afterwards, has highlighted the political and economic transformations in the area, as well as the cultural politics of market integration and increasing inabilities of the mobile Changpa pastoralists to access vital productive resources. Inequalities reflected in the contemporary livestock data, acquired from the pastoralists, underscore the processes of institutional bricolage, non-cooperative labour, exchange/wage herding and capital-dominated market networks, making pastoralism impossible for several of the households.

The chapter argues against making livestock withdrawal a major aim of conservation sciences. It calls instead for the recognition of state-provisioned commodified pashmina rearing, seen through the prism of changing abilities and shifting institutions, where unequal access to productive resources is a reflection of both historical dispossessions and also economic impoverishments of Changpa today.

This chapter presents a preliminary discussion of potential impacts of climate change on nomadic pastoralists on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP). Both climate model projections and observations suggest that (1) the QTP is becoming warmer and (2) precipitation is increasing. Evidence also suggests that (3) glaciers on the QTP are declining and (4) the permafrost is degrading. Nevertheless, little is known as to how climate change will affect nomadic pastoralists although environmental variability is likely to increase, which may again exacerbate production risks. Pastoral risk management strategies, such as mobility, may thus increase in importance. It is, however, difficult to translate changes in important climate measures like precipitation and temperature to effects on pastoralists and livestock since they mainly affect livestock indirectly via their effect on vegetation productivity. Consequently, to increase our understanding of climate change-related effects on pastoral adaptations, satellite-based measures directly linked to both vegetation characteristics and climatic variables should be utilized in future studies rather than, for example, overall changes in precipitation and temperature. Finally, official policies that constantly introduce reforms that reduce pastoral flexibility represent a far more significant threat for nomadic pastoralists on the QTP than climate change because they may result in the wholesale extinction of the pastoral culture.

Managing the inevitable conflicts that occur as humans and wildlife increasingly cross paths is a pressing concern for conservation in the Anthropocene. The focus of this chapter is on a high-profile case of wildlife persecution in rural Australia, which saw a farmhand successfully prosecuted for deliberately poisoning 420 wedge-tailed eagles he believed to be a threat to the newborn lambs on the property where he worked. The chapter illustrates how this crime emerged at the intersection of three trajectories: the legacy of environmental change and colonial oppression in Australia; the sustained resistance to rural exclusion exhibited by some species of Australia native wildlife as they have adapted their livelihoods to the altered agricultural landscapes; and conservation doctrine that seeks to reverse the historical treatment of Australian wildlife by issuing it blanket protection from human interference. The complexities and interdependencies that have been created as wildlife have forged a future in rural space cannot be easily unravelled. The chapter argues that, alongside protection, more active forms of reconciliation between the trajectories of Australian agriculture and the trajectories of rural wildlife are required. It is only through experimenting with ways that pastoralists and wildlife might resolve disputes fairly and openly that more inclusive rural places become possible.

This paper analyzes changes in property rights, land uses, and culturally based notions of ownership that have emerged following privatization of communal land in a Samburu pastoralist community in Northern Kenya. The research challenges the strict dichotomy between private and collective rights often found in property rights literature, which does not match empirical findings of overlapping and contested rights.

Part of a long-term ethnographic project investigating the process of land privatization and its outcomes, this paper draws on in-depth interviews and participant observation conducted by the author in Samburu County in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Interviews focused on how land is being used post-privatization as well as emerging social norms regulating its use.

Privatization privileges male household heads with powers including rental, sale, and bequeathal of land. However, informal rights to land extend to women and other household members. Exercise of legal rights is frequently limited due to knowledge and resource gaps. New rules regulating land use have emerged, some represent sharp divergences from past practice while others support shared access to land. These changes challenge Samburu cultural notions of individuality, reciprocity, and shared responsibility.

This research illuminates complex changes following legal shifts in property rights and demonstrates the interactions between formal laws and informal social norms and cultural beliefs about land. The result is that privatization does not have easily predictable outcomes as some theories of property would suggest.

Empirical investigation of the effects of legal changes enables fuller understanding of the implications of policy changes that many governments are pursuing privatization with limited understanding of the likely effects.

This paper considers whether the term patrimonialism can be applied to one racially bifurcated aspect of Australian history: the relations between ‘squatters’ and those with competing civil and property claims. From the perspective of white settlers, the power of pastoralists who acquired use rights over vast stretches of land in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries represented a challenge to rural settlement, economic development, the right to vote, workers’ rights and parliamentary democracy.

From the perspective of Aboriginal peoples who held traditional ownership of pastoral lands, squattocracy began with armed conflict and ended with practices aimed at detailed government of their everyday life. More generally, as white settlers consolidated property rights to land, they expropriated Indigenous peoples’ capacity to govern themselves.

The paper concludes that there have been two distinct histories of patrimonialism in Australia. The Australian colonies were among the pioneers of ‘universal’ male and later female franchise in the nineteenth century; Aborigines gained (de jure) full citizenship only in the late 1960s. While the squatter’s patrimonial rule over white settlers was short-lived, that over some groups of Aboriginal people persisted for more than a century.

There is a growing recognition that social norms play a key role in perpetuating gender- and age-based violence, and that tackling social norms must be an integral component of prevention and response interventions to ensure meaningful progress towards the ambitious targets of eliminating gender-based violence (Sustainable Development Goal [SDG] Target 5.2) and violence against children (SDG 16.2) by 2030. However, existing research often fails to adequately capture life-course and context-specific complexities. To explore these challenges, this chapter focuses on adolescents’ vulnerabilities to violence in Afar, one of the Ethiopia’s most disadvantaged regions. Drawing on findings from the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) mixed-methods 2018 baseline research, and using a socio-ecological framework, the chapter highlights that while the patterning of violence experienced by adolescent girls and boys is shifting across generations at the micro-level, gender- and age-related social norms remain deeply entrenched in both migrating and settled pastoralist communities. At the meso-level, institutional barriers to addressing adolescents’ experiences of violence include a lack of basic infrastructure, a dearth of confidential reporting spaces, limited adolescent- and gender-friendly personnel within the police and justice sectors, and poor coordination. At the macro-level, the chapter underscores the significant disconnect between Ethiopia’s progressive national policies and adolescents’ experiences of violence, reflected in the availability and quality of prevention and response services. The chapter concludes that to adequately tailor services to local realities and tackle adolescents’ specific vulnerabilities, a fine-grained analysis of the gendered and generational experiences of violence in its diverse forms is critical.

This paper explores the emerging articulations between microfinance and livestock production cycles among Mongolian pastoralists in contexts plagued by disaster and commodity market fluctuations. Ethnographic investigations of household production and vulnerability in two rural districts of eastern and western Mongolia demonstrates that both poor and wealthy households have become ensnared in a cashmere-debt cycle but that the bifurcation of livestock asset trajectories between large and small herds has also fostered diverse financial and herd management strategies that further exacerbate existing inequalities.

Purpose – This chapter aims to provide a cross-section of some social, political, cultural, and economic factors that contribute to the conditions of illness, specifically malaria, in an area of Tanzania where both land and population have been marginalized to varying degrees over time. It also suggests the relevance of such considerations in the planning and implementation of public health interventions in the region.

Methodology/approach – This chapter elaborates upon a case study conducted by the author in the Ngorongoro District in Tanzania in 2006. A political ecology framework is used to guide the discussion.

Findings – Malaria in the Ngorongoro Maasai community can be more fully understood by incorporating critical social science perspectives into health-related analyses, by allowing for a greater appreciation of the complex history behind current configurations of infrastructure and sociopolitical interactions in the region. Assuming that equity is of concern, this appreciation can contribute to ensuring that all populations in the country have the opportunity to benefit from the public health momentum in Tanzania.

Contribution to the field – Much attention is justifiably directed toward the social and economic consequences of infectious diseases in developing countries. Tanzania alone accounts for a large proportion of malaria cases and deaths worldwide. This chapter recognizes that malaria is one of the many elements in an ecological system continually integrating cues from nature and society, and uses that framework to demonstrate the importance of qualitative analysis in view of the copious international funding and assistance for control measures.

Northwest Nigeria is mostly populated by the Hausa and Fulani ethnic groups. Social inclusions and gender equality are listed among the fundamental rights. They are essential for human being to put up their best efforts in resolving all difficulties without restraint. Nonetheless, these rights are frequently withheld in many nations within the African continent, owing to ignorance, religion and custom fanaticism. In spite of these constraints, the northern Nigeria is faced with security issues such as persistent cattle rustling which ultimately evolved into armed banditry, which have exacerbated some lingering issues that revolves around children and women. This study attempts to examine the nature of the crisis that may relates to gender-based issues in Zamfara state. The article relied mostly on secondary literature. Evidences proved that security difficulties have worsened the living circumstances of women and girls in the understudied state, thereby espousing women and girls to dangerous attacks and hard living.