Local Environment The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability ISSN: 1354-9839 (Print) 1469-6711 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cloe20 Governing the ungovernable? Reflections on informal gemstone mining in high-altitude borderlands of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Hugh Brown To cite this article: Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt & Hugh Brown (2017) Governing the ungovernable? Reflections on informal gemstone mining in high-altitude borderlands of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, Local Environment, 22:11, 1428-1443, DOI: 10.1080/13549839.2017.1357688 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2017.1357688 Published online: 30 Aug 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 248 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cloe20 LOCAL ENVIRONMENT, 2017 VOL. 22, NO. 11, 1428–1443 https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2017.1357688 Governing the ungovernable? Reflections on informal gemstone mining in high-altitude borderlands of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt a and Hugh Brownb aResource Environment & Development Program, Crawford School of Public Policy ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia; bIndependent Researcher and Photographer, Darlington, Western Australia, Australia ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The ethnically diverse high-altitude region of Gilgit-Baltistan, with its Received 8 November 2016 complex political history, remains relatively free from the controlling Accepted 30 June 2017 gaze of the central state apparatus of Pakistan. In these extraordinary KEYWORDS terrain, where local communities rule the region as the “State by proxy”, Informal mining; informal gemstone mining provides an important supplement to ungovernability; ASM; livelihoods. This paper shows that gemstone mining in Gilgit-Baltistan is Pakistan; gemstone mining characterised by customary rules and regulations that are based on collective responsibility, and members follow customary authorities because they are not external to the community. It argues that the very idea of centralised “governance” of mineral resources, used widely in contexts of resource extraction as the panacea, needs to be reconsidered when dealing with the particularities of the context. It draws on the concept of ungovernability to underline the fact that sometimes it may simply be impossible to administer informal mining in the conventional sense of the term. It suggests in conclusion that informal mining, which has a long history in Pakistan and has played an increasing role as a source of rural employment and revenue, needs to be accommodated within the legal framework of mining. More importantly, to govern informal mining of gemstones, the first task would be to consider how things are currently done, understanding and respecting customary laws, and build upon them to incorporate their elements into systems that acknowledge community rights and a more equitable sharing of benefits. Introduction: ungovernable spaces and livelihoods In resource management, the term “governance” has many connotations and various interpretations, but there has more or less been agreement among experts that governance should involve non-state actors (see Chambers 2010). This has marked a shift in the creation of more egalitarian and inclusive forms of governance in which tasks and responsibilities are more widely spread, and which recognise that the state alone cannot deal with the diversity, complexity, dynamics and differences in scale that characterise place-based resource-dependent livelihoods. However, these concerns invoke the concept of “governability”, that is, the possibilities (and the extent to which) a situation can at all be governed in the generally understood sense of the term. Janin (2007, p. 221) argues that “govern- ability”, defined as the quality or capability of being controlled or managed, is a concept that arose in modern industrial societies and the hard sciences. The concept was then extended to contemporary globalised spaces in poorer countries and became commonplace in the social sciences. Indeed, the CONTACT Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt [email protected] © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group LOCAL ENVIRONMENT 1429 concept of governability has now become pivotal to analysing power and domination, and how the state’s relationship with its citizens is mediated. The questions of governance assume greater significance in managing mineral resource extrac- tion, posing unique difficulties. Growing awareness of the finiteness of these resources, and the social, cultural and environmental destruction caused by their large-scale extraction, has led to the formulation of a plethora of guidelines, standards and toolkits by states, industries and non-state actors. However, no globally approved and acceptable standards and guidelines can be established to govern what is collectively described as informal, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). Conse- quently, informal mineral production – often carried out in ways similar to other trades in informal sectors of countries in the Global South – is persistently conflated with illegality. A wide range (and vast amount) of minerals, metals, gemstones and fossil fuels are produced by millions of people throughout mineral-rich tracts in poorer countries, contributing sizeably to global production of these commodities; yet, no clear records exist. Sometimes the illegality is caused by the lack of legal titles or clear property rights (as noted by Echavarria 2014), but a host of other factors (as noted by Lahiri-Dutt 2016) can also be involved. Therefore, arriving at a simple and clear consensus about their governance has presented insurmountable difficulties (Jønsson et al. 2013, Geenen and Ridley 2014, Maconachie and Hilson 2014, Spiegel 2016). How can one govern what is so dispersed, so poorly known, so ill recorded, and so much beyond the state’s purview? Consequently, informal mining is almost always presented as needing formalisation, meaning the imposition of regulation or even regularisation by accommodating it within the laws (Lungu 2007). Strangely, although informality is conflated with illegality, it is the informal sector that provides economic opportunities to millions of poor in these countries, yet remains little known and poorly governed. Informal mining is widely criminalised and marginalised by governments, inhibits local actors from accessing official support and reduces their agency (noted by Tschakert and Singha 2007). Despite such views, within broader debates on ASM, experts tend to recommend that such mining should be formalised to enable the state to earn more revenue, to prevent social ills and exploitation, and to protect the environment (Spiegel 2015, Damonte 2016). This is a classical situation where documentation aims to make informal mining activities legible and calculable.1 However, in view of the little that has been accomplished on this front, the question remains if it is at all possible to govern informal mining. This paper examines the question of governance of informal gemstone mining within Scott’s con- ceptualisation of “Zomia”. Gemstone mining is carried out by local communities in the Karakoram Ranges in Pakistan – a rugged terrain, geographically difficult to access, historically and ethnically complex, well outside the mainstream economy and intensively contested politically. The region is the quintessential “no go areas” for the state and its law enforcement machinery, a non-state space described by Scott (2009, p. 19). Scott (2009, p. 19) argues that the statelessness of Zomia differentiates it from the lowland areas as: the hills, unlike the valleys, have paid neither taxes to monarchs nor regular tithes to a permanent religious estab- lishment. They have constituted relatively free, stateless population … Further, by virtue of its location at the periphery of different states, Zomia represents a “novel object of study”, and “a new way to think” about statist governance (Scott 2009, p. 100). Indeed, thinking of governing a terrain that offers an opportunity to shape human livelihoods in certain ways may address the wider question of the role of terrain in determining a way of life within a local environ- ment. A not unrelated concept, presented by geographers, is “ungovernable spaces” (Watts 2004a, 2004b) – comprised of chieftainship, indigeneity and nationalism – to explain resource politics around petroleum exploitation in the Niger delta. Watts’ conceptualisation draws on Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose but underlines violence and conflicts over resources. Consequently, Watts’ ideas have been taken up widely to explain resource conflicts by geographers (for Melanesian context, see Allen 2013; for artisanal fishing, see Quist and Nygren 2015). In these formulations, certain spaces, comprised both in their physicality and as “fields of power of governmentality” (Allen 2013, p. 153), are presented as ungovernable in their particular configurations of resources, territory 1430 K. LAHIRI-DUTT AND H. BROWN and identity. In light of these works, one is encouraged to reframe questions of governance and ask: where the availability of resources is shaped by nature, does physical terrain limit the governability of informal mining-based livelihoods? The following