Andrei Dörre

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

This chapter has two objectives. The first one is to emphasize the important role of legal institutions for the emergence of natural resource-related social and ecological problems in Kyrgyzstan’s post-Soviet era. Second, it advocates for a participatory approach to the creation of institutional regulations regarding the management and utilization of resources. It is important to consider that grasslands have an economic importance from the macroeconomic national level down to the level of local households, as well as crucial ecological meanings. For these reasons, pastures are significant for the development processes of Kyrgyzstan’s whole society. The hypothesis to be explored here is that formal institutions, especially top-down-initiated legal rules implemented since 1991, are decisively contributing to the formation of socio-ecological pasture-related challenges. I argue that it could be misleading and insufficient to explain these problems through neo-Malthusian arguments. The causes are much more complex. Utilization practices applied by the actors can be understood as results of the interplay of economic necessities, weak legal institutions, legal uncertainty and a related lack of reliable planning opportunities. In this way, inappropriate and unstable legal arrangements are stimulating the processes of socio-economic stratification and disintegration of the society as well as those of pasture degradation. Based on findings obtained during field studies in the walnut-fruit forest region, this article advocates for the principles of an integrated sustainable development of Kyrgyzstan’s society in economic, social and ecological matters. Management responsibilities, access and utilization rights need to be matched to the specifics of local contexts and legitimized through participatory approaches. Including the local population in the institution-building process can make a decisive contribution to the development of Kyrgyzstan by balancing different interests.

Changing Systems, Changing Effects—Pasture Utilization in the Post-Soviet Transition

Abstract Kyrgyzstans 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 Kyrgyzstans 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.

Promises and realities of community-based pasture management approaches: 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.

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.

Changes in the Relationship Between Borders and Pastoral Mobility in Mountain Regions of Central Asia

For centuries, animal husbandry in Central Asian mountain regions has been characterised by seasonal mobility over considerable distances, bridging remarkable elevation differences and commuting between precolonial states and domains. During the Russian colonial rule and the socialist period, pastoral movements across the borders of the newly created colonial administrative units and the Soviet Republics were also not uncommon. In the course of the establishment of independent states in 1991, a break occurred that strongly restricted the transboundary mobility practices. Using examples from the Fergana Region, this chapter reconstructs historical demarcation patterns and the underlying interests of those in charge who advocated changes while also looking at the effects of those changes on mobility practices of the affected livestock owners. Finally, the paper compares the current border regimes and those from the historical examples and links to related socioecological challenges, which can represent serious threats to the fragile integrity of Central Asia’s post-Soviet societies.

Persistence and change in Soviet and Russian relations with Afghanistan

This paper examines persistence and change in the Soviet Unions and then Russias relations with Afghanistan with respect to development and security. First, a detailed analysis of the promise and reality of Soviet development assistance reveals conceptual shortcomings in their attempt to induce economic development in Afghanistan. The Soviet Unions heritage is then revealed in order to understand Russias current perception of post-Taliban Afghanistan as well as Russias emerging interests and commitment to Afghanistans economic development. This paper argues that Russia will most likely replicate standard industrialization development approaches in contributing to Afghanistans development. Therefore, Russia will probably run into problems similar to those that led to the failure of the Soviet modernization project, which consisted of large-scale development projects that were inappropriate to the countrys institutions and the lives of most Afghans. It is questionable whether such reiteration will induce economic development now, in the complex setting of a fragmented and fragile state with a multitude of external players looking out for their own interests.