• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

MOBILE HERDERS AND SUSTAINING LIFE ON OUR PLANET Dawn Chatty Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford Email: [email protected] I recently watched Sir David Attenborough’s ‘witness statement’ on the state of our dying planet as it globally heats up through climate change partially, if not totally, resulting from man’s activity on the planet. My husband, who is not an academic, watched it with me and found it to be truly moving with a sense of finality on the climate emergency. Time was ticking away, he felt Attenborough was saying, and we were sitting passively on our sofas watching when we could be doing something about it. I, however, found myself quietly disturbed not so much by the ‘dying of the planet at our own hands’ but by Attenborough’s lack of any interest in those who make every effort to live sustainably on this planet. I was thinking of mobile herders and other ‘traditional peoples’ from whom we can learn much about protecting our precious planet. Yet mobile herders’ lives con- tinue to be disrupted throughout the globe and threatened by Western ‘modern’ development efforts. These herders are dispossessed of the lands they occupy in favour of large-scale ‘modernisation’ projects for agricultural production (e.g. palm oil plantations), commercial livestock raising (e.g. large scale cattle and sheep ranching) and fortress conservation initiatives that remove them from their traditional lands to try to create Western notions of pristine landscapes. These development efforts compromise previously sustainable livelihoods and knowl- edgeable stewardship of such territories. So, to me, not only was the planet dying through human impact on climate, but the earth’s biodiversity was also dying – flora, fauna, and human society. Sir David Attenborough has visited every continent on the globe and ex- plored the ‘wilds of our planet earth’ to find the forests and the seas already emptying! These regions are dramatically photogenic, unlike the low-resource and less striking landscapes of semi-arid lands occupied by mobile herders. Could this be why such territories are ignored in his witness statement. He is explicit over the need to stop the fossil fuel-based and environmentally- blind mainstream model of ‘modernisation’ of food systems (crops, livestock and fisheries). Yet he makes no mention of the way that these same processes have played a major role in the displacement and dispossession of mobile herding societies around the globe. Post the 1987 Brundtland Report, called Our Common Future, the nations of the world agreed to meet the target of setting aside twenty per cent of the earth’s surface as protected areas and nature reserves. Originally conceived as a way for development to promote NOMADIC PEOPLES 25 (2021): 110–111 doi: 10.3197/np.2021.250108 © 2021 Commission for Nomadic? Peoples = username $REMOTE_ASSR = IP address Mon, 27 Sep 2021 15:10:53 = Date & Time A Life on Our Planet: Mobile Herders and Sustaining Life sustainability now and for our future generations, it has largely been actioned by discriminating against mobile herders and forcing them off their traditional lands for no other purpose than to create conservation zones devoid of people. In the process, international institutions formally dedicated to eliminating pov- erty or promoting food security have done the reverse by pushing herders who once lived harmoniously on lands of low resources into crowded backwaters where sustainable livelihoods become impossible and poverty inescapable. Nearly twenty years ago a group of policymakers, conservationists and academics came together in Wadi Dana, Jordan, concerned with the growing efforts to dispossess herding societies for fortress conservation. The disrup- tion of the sustainable livelihoods of mobile herders, and the disregard for their knowledge of the lands they occupied was recognised as lamentable. That meeting resulted in the issuing of a joint statement, the Dana Declaration (http://danadeclaration.org, 2002). It was a ‘compromise document’. It did not reprimand the conservationists and policymakers for the continual, base- less blaming of pastoral herders for overgrazing and environmental damage. Rather it turned to promoting the inclusion of mobile pastoralists in conserva- tion and efforts to save our planet. Above all it recognised their knowledge and stewardship of the environment. Had David Attenborough made some men- tion of the damage being done to mobile herders and their deep knowledge and attachment to their traditional lands as an example of how we can live sustainably on our planet earth, I would have been delighted with his ‘witness statement’. Perhaps we, as academics, need to take on a more public role and become spokespeople for mobile herders, not only in academic journals such as Nomadic Peoples, but in general, non-academic magazines and newspapers, and, yes, even in social media. Nomadic Peoples 25 No.1 (2021) 111 ? = username $REMOTE_ASSR = IP address Mon, 27 Sep 2021 15:10:53 = Date & Time.

Load more

  2

Copy Link