IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/oxdevs/v31y2003i4p441-459.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Land use, the environment and development in post-socialist Mongolia

Author

Listed:
  • David Sneath

Abstract

This paper describes the economic policies that have transformed the pastoral sector in post-socialist Mongolia, and their impact on pastoral land use. These policies reflect the influence of development economists from the Asian Development Bank who have been advising the Mongolian government, and their conviction that exclusive private rights to land are a necessary precondition of an efficient rural market economy. These assumptions stand in marked contrast to indigenous Mongolian conceptions of rights over land, and the policy debate reflects the contested nature of knowledge of the Mongolian environment. However, far from preventing damage to the resource base, evidence suggests that these policies of land allocations may actually be exacerbating problems of pasture degradation. This paper argues that policies of this kind reveal a misunderstanding of the nature of Mongolian pastoralism and the conditions that have made it viable in the past. Although international development agencies lionize a romanticized notion of Mongolian “traditions” as reflecting a “respect for nature”, there is little appreciation of the actual institutions that successfully conducted pastoralism until recently, the concrete embodiment of Mongolian pastoral knowledge. Environmentalist agendas reflect a familiar western interest in promoting western conservationist ideology and establishing and expanding protected areas to harbour wildlife and biodiversity. Mongolian practices tend to be cast as “traditions” to be utilized for the greater goal of conservation as conceived of in western terms, rather than seen as part of wider social and political institutions of land use.

Suggested Citation

  • David Sneath, 2003. "Land use, the environment and development in post-socialist Mongolia," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(4), pages 441-459.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:oxdevs:v:31:y:2003:i:4:p:441-459
    DOI: 10.1080/1360081032000146627
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1360081032000146627
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/1360081032000146627?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Upton, Caroline, 2009. ""Custom" and Contestation: Land Reform in Post-Socialist Mongolia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1400-1410, August.
    2. Nick Middleton, 2018. "Rangeland management and climate hazards in drylands: dust storms, desertification and the overgrazing debate," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 92(1), pages 57-70, November.
    3. Allison Hahn, 2018. "Complexity of Mongolian stakeholders’ dzud preparation and response," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 92(1), pages 127-143, November.
    4. Allington, Ginger R.H. & Fernández-Giménez, María E. & Reid, Robin & Ulambayar, Tungalag & Angerer, Jay & Jamsranjav, Chantsallkham & Baival, Batkhishig & Batjav, Batbuyan, 2024. "Context matters: Rethinking resource governance theories for Mongolian pastoral systems," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    5. Amartuvshin, Amarjargal & Chen, Jiquan & John, Ranjeet & Zhang, Yaoqi & Lkhagvaa, Dansranbavuu, 2021. "How does mining policy affect rural migration of Mongolia?," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    6. Undargaa, Sandagsuren & McCarthy, John F., 2016. "Beyond Property: Co-Management and Pastoral Resource Access in Mongolia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 367-379.
    7. Changqing Sun & Yulong Bao & Battsengel Vandansambuu & Yuhai Bao, 2022. "Simulation and Prediction of Land Use/Cover Changes Based on CLUE-S and CA-Markov Models: A Case Study of a Typical Pastoral Area in Mongolia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-21, November.
    8. Grigorios L. Kyriakopoulos, 2023. "Land Use Planning and Green Environment Services: The Contribution of Trail Paths to Sustainable Development," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-25, May.
    9. Ariell Ahearn, 2018. "Herders and hazards: covariate dzud risk and the cost of risk management strategies in a Mongolian subdistrict," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 92(1), pages 165-181, November.
    10. Visser Oane & Schoenmaker Lotte, 2011. "Institutional Transformation in the Agricultural Sector of the former Soviet Bloc," Eastern European Countryside, Sciendo, vol. 17(2011), pages 21-53, January.
    11. Fernández-Giménez, María E. & Batkhishig, Baival & Batbuyan, Batjav & Ulambayar, Tungalag, 2015. "Lessons from the Dzud: Community-Based Rangeland Management Increases the Adaptive Capacity of Mongolian Herders to Winter Disasters," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 48-65.
    12. Tilman, Andrew R. & Krueger, Elisabeth H. & McManus, Lisa C. & Watson, James R., 2024. "Maintaining human wellbeing as socio-environmental systems undergo regime shifts," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    13. Andrew R. Tilman & Elisabeth H. Krueger & Lisa C. McManus & James R. Watson, 2023. "Maintaining human wellbeing as socio-environmental systems undergo regime shifts," Papers 2309.04578, arXiv.org.
    14. Lander, Jennifer & Hatcher, Pascale & Humphreys Bebbington, Denise & Bebbington, Anthony & Banks, Glenn, 2021. "Troubling the idealised pageantry of extractive conflicts: Comparative insights on authority and claim-making from Papua New Guinea, Mongolia and El Salvador," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    15. Okayasu, Tomoo & Okuro, Toshiya & Jamsran, Undarmaa & Takeuchi, Kazuhiko, 2010. "An intrinsic mechanism for the co-existence of different survival strategies within mobile pastoralist communities," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 103(4), pages 180-186, May.
    16. Chifumi Ono & Mamoru Ishikawa, 2020. "Pastoralists’ Herding Strategies and Camp Selection in the Local Commons—A Case Study of Pastoral Societies in Mongolia," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-19, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:oxdevs:v:31:y:2003:i:4:p:441-459. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CODS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.