Jeremy Swift’s scientific contributions

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, and livelihood vulnerability; pastoral marketing; and conflict and governance. Across these themes, IDS research has challenged mainstream development thinking and practice, highlighting the importance of mobility and living with uncertainty. This introductory article concludes with some reflections on research gaps and new challenges, including: the effects of climate change; new forms of pastoral mobility and livelihood; increasing patterns of commoditisation and social differentiation; and changing conflict dynamics. Although massively changed over 50 years, and despite repeated proclamations of crisis and collapse, pastoralism remains, we argue, an important, resilient source of livelihood in marginal rangeland areas across the world, from which others can learn.

The central aim of this paper is to review the current understanding of how institutional arrangements can either encourage or discourage the pursuit of sustainable livelihoods. It explores the relationship between resources and capital, examining the nature of property rights and regimes, looking at the ways in which social exclusion affects the pursuit of sustainable livelihoods, and critiquing Common Pool Resource (CPR) theory. It concludes that socially shared rules can encourage sustainable livelihoods provided the rate at which individuals extract benefits from the resource base remains relatively low, and distribution of benefits remains wide. However, when such rules reinforce more narrow distributional patterns, livelihoods can be profoundly unsustainable, irrespective of the physical state of the resource base.