Palden Tsering

• PhD
• Associate Professor at School of Ethnology and Sociology

Gaining access to land for grazing is less straightforward than before and the individualized plot system does not allow the flexibility to manage grazing effectively. As a result, hybrid systems of rangeland governance have evolved. Such systems are neither private, nor communal, nor completely open property arrangements: they emerge from a negoti...

འབྲོག་ལས།ངེས་མེད་འགྱུར་ལྡོག སླར་གསོ།

This paper argues that everyday politics are instrumental in negotiating development outcomes despite the pervasive influence of centralised state power. The paper highlights the fluidity and adaptability of Chinese policy formulation, emphasizing local learning and improvisation. This is especially important for pastoral communities in remote rang...

Resilience is a common concept in pastoralism scholarship and policy-making, especially in dryland environments where livelihoods are considered vulnerable to frequent shocks such as droughts, pests and epidemics, and conflicts. Resilience lends itself to pastoral studies due to its ability to capture uncertainty, complexity and dynamism: key chara...

In the contemporary era marked by heightened uncertainties, particularly attributable to climate change, insufficient attention has been directed towards rural pastoral China. Paradoxically, it is within these rural settings, notably those reliant on natural resources, that the palpable repercussion of extreme climate variations unfold. Pastoralist...

The governance of rangeland in Amdo, Tibet is characterised by constant negotiations and contestations, includ- ing resistance from below, and is shaped by various processes in the real-world context. Through the notion of assemblage, which involves bringing together an array of agents and objectives to intervene in social processes to produce desi...

Over millennia, pastoralists have learned to live with and from uncertainty. They have built sustainable livelihoods on marginal rangelands. Their products are vital for local communities and the wider nutrition of many. In the meantime, livestock also provide manure, draft power, transport, and more. Pastoralists do not destroy the planet, and in...

The conventional understanding of governance highlights the state's coercive and formal mechanisms. However, the everyday political control of the state is informal and ambiguous, and powerful civil societies strengthen resource governance through interactions between civil society, social organisations, and governments. In the case of pastoral Gol...

Hybrid land governance, mosaics, polycentrism have become ways to describe contemporary rangeland settings-ways of responding to uncertainties through flexible institutions, overlapping boundaries and an assembled, plural bricolage of practices. However, this is frequently thought to be recent, often arising from more formal, regulated systems, whe...

Insurance is often proposed as a way of offsetting risks and responding to disasters. Index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) has been offered to pastoralists in Borana zone in southern Ethiopia over the past few years. This aims to pay-out before the disaster strikes based on a predictive assessment of the season derived from satellite-based estima...

BOOK REVIEWS Jarmila Ptáčková Exile from the Grasslands: Tibetan Herders and Chinese Development Projects.

Focusing on pastoralism, this article reflects on five diverse cases across Africa, Asia and Europe and asks: how have COVID-19 disease control measures affected mobility and production practices, marketing opportunities, land control, labour relations, local community support and socio-political relations with the state and other settled agrarian...

This archive IDS Bulletin reflects on 50 years of research on pastoralism at IDS. Thirteen articles are introduced around six themes that have characterised IDS-linked research over this period. These are: pastoral livelihoods; institutions and common property resource management; climate change and ecological dynamics; food security, early warning...

Global warming and environmental deterioration have had an enormous impact on the Three Rivers Region. The rise of the monastic organizations in Tibet had its social-politic factors such as the international impacts on "Green Tibetan" movement, China's foreign non-governmental organizations (FNGO) policies, and the revitalization of Tibetan Buddhis...