Plantations and Pastoralists: Afforestation Activities Make Pastoralists in the Indian Himalaya Vulnerable
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Copyright © 2020 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance. Ramprasad, V., A. Joglekar, and F. Fleischman. 2020. Plantations and pastoralists: afforestation activities make pastoralists in the Indian Himalaya vulnerable. Ecology and Society 25(4):1. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11810-250401 Research Plantations and pastoralists: afforestation activities make pastoralists in the Indian Himalaya vulnerable Vijay Ramprasad 1,2, Abha Joglekar 2 and Forrest Fleischman 3 ABSTRACT. Global policies to mitigate climate change and protect forests are increasingly incentivizing the large-scale planting of trees. Yet tree planting poses a potential threat to the well-being of migratory pastoralists who depend on fodder across landscapes. With this research we seek to understand the impact of decades of afforestation activities in Himachal Pradesh, India, on the livelihoods of Gaddi pastoralists who have herded sheep and goats in the Himalayas for generations. Based on interviews with Gaddi herders, community leaders, and government officials, and case studies in three villages with large Gaddi populations in Kangra district, we find that plantations increase vulnerability. We show that plantations have decreased the availability of fodder, contributed to increased incidence of invasive species, disrupted migratory routes, and changed access to land. We develop a generalizable integrated vulnerability framework that focuses on pastoral livelihoods, and helps make a distinction between the vulnerability of livelihood activities and the vulnerability of individual people. Our framework anchors the causal pathway from plantation activity to livelihood vulnerability and the push toward more secure, but nonpastoral livelihoods. Plantation-driven challenges add to pre-existing stressors and accelerate declines in the number of pastoral households and size of migratory herds. However, many Gaddi households remain prosperous because they are able to diversify into alternative livelihoods. We underline the fact that the ability to adapt to alternative livelihoods and income streams differentiates vulnerable Gaddi herders from those who are not. In addition to increasing forest cover, plantations have an opportunity to serve a larger purpose of increasing resilience of vulnerable livelihoods; but they must be designed differently than they have been in the past in order to achieve this goal. They present an easier solution to sustain pastoralism compared to other important, but recalcitrant drivers of livelihood change. Key Words: access; afforestation; institutions; resilience; transhumance INTRODUCTION literature on livelihood change among pastoralists in India, and Pastoralists are at risk from an increasing array of social and Gaddis in particular, has focused on how changing property rights biophysical stressors (Sayre et al. 2013, Reid et al. 2014, Robinson have negatively influenced pastoral livelihoods (Chakravarty- 2019, Unks et al. 2019). One potential threat that has not been Kaul 1998, Saberwal 1999, Axelby 2007). Although this is widely studied is afforestation activities that displace grazing important as a driver of change, it misses two important dynamics lands (Joshi et al. 2018, Bond et al. 2019). We develop a that our framework highlights. First, beyond changes in de facto generalizable integrated vulnerability framework and apply it to and de jure property rights, pastoralists are also influenced by three cases of Gaddi pastoralists in the winter grazing areas of long-term changes in land cover driven by government the western Himalayas in India, a landscape that has been heavily afforestation plantations, which we focus on in this paper. Second, impacted by tree plantation activity for at least the last five although pastoral livelihoods are undoubtedly under threat, the decades and provides a view of what many places in the world well-being of pastoralists is influenced not only by their pastoral may look like in a future of large-scale forest restoration. We make livelihoods, but also by their ability to shift to alternative the distinction between the vulnerability of livelihood activities livelihoods, an ability that explains the continuing prosperity of and the vulnerability of individual people, highlighting the many Gaddi households in our study area in the face of cultural, political, and economic conditions that permit challenging conditions for pastoral work. individual Gaddi herders to adapt to the increased vulnerability Our framework places livestock-based pastoral livelihoods at the of pastoral livelihoods, which is the result of a constellation of center. These livelihoods are influenced by changing dynamics threats, including heavy afforestation. The framework anchors and institutional relationships with pastoral ecosystems: pastures, the causal pathway from plantation activity to livelihood forests, village common lands, and private land where herds graze vulnerability in four land uses that change species composition, (right-hand side of figure). The focus of past literature has been force route changes, and reshape access mechanisms that together on how a variety of changes, the government control of forest increase livelihood vulnerability and push pastoralists toward land, the privatization of village commons, and the intensification nonpastoral livelihoods that sometimes are more secure. of agriculture on private lands, have decreased the availability of FRAMEWORK grazing from these ecosystems (Saberwal 1999, Axelby 2007, Our framework (see Fig. 1) is innovative in integrating the Wagner 2013; Chakravarty-Kaul 1996, unpublished manuscript). property rights and land uses that pastoralists have in pastoral Plantations also decrease the availability of fodder because they ecosystems (right-hand side of figure), with the complex rely on fencing areas of forest, pasture, or common land, replace livelihood choices of pastoralists (left-hand side of figure). Past palatable grass and brush with unpalatable trees, and are reported to facilitate the spread of invasive ground covers. At the same 1Centre for Ecology, Development and Research (CEDAR), 2Kangra Integrated Sciences and Adaptation Network (KISAN), 3University of Minnesota Ecology and Society 25(4): 1 https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol25/iss4/art1/ Fig. 1. An integrated framework of pastoral vulnerability. time, on the left-hand side of the figure we see that pastoralism or take advantage of alternate opportunities. This distinction also itself is influenced by a broad array of other drivers that pull helps clearly separate the risks to individuals from the risks to pastoralists away from herding and toward other livelihoods that their livelihood activities. The risks to people from changes in the are either less difficult, more culturally appropriate in a changing livelihood activities depend on their ability to diversify income society, or more remunerative. Some of these broader drivers are sources. This ability to shift between livelihoods depends in part identified as human land use change determined by growth of on the assets, entitlements, and access at the disposal of population, increasing consumption, capitalism, spread of households, which are well identified in existing vulnerability markets, and commodification of ecosystem services; land frameworks (Blaikie et al. 1994, Turner et al. 2003, Füssel and fragmentation; shift in cropping patterns; and impacts of climate Klein 2006, Ribot 2014, Ramprasad 2019), but it also depends change (Robinson and Berkes 2010, Reid et al. 2014, Unks et al. on the opportunities available (or not) in the broader social and 2019). The availability of alternative livelihoods is in turn political-economic context. Although most literature on the influenced by trends in the regional economy. Together these vulnerability of pastoral livelihoods has ignored this distinction, factors interact resulting in an overall decline in livestock-based recent scholarship is beginning to pay attention to abilities and pastoral livelihoods in our study region, but continuing prosperity livelihood shifts in several pastoral systems worldwide (Galvin of many Gaddi households who are able to diversify into 2009, Reid et al. 2014, Mattalia et al. 2018, Unks et al. 2019). If alternative livelihoods. pastoralists do not have any other livelihood options, a decline in pastoral livelihoods would mean increasing vulnerability of both Vulnerability analysis is broadly based on two approaches: the pastoralists and pastoral livelihoods. However, research on risk-hazard and social constructivist (Füssel and Klein 2006, livelihoods throughout the world demonstrates that most people O'Brien et al. 2007, Ribot 2014). Although the former examines earn income from multiple income streams and that the ability to the linear relationship between a specific biophysical risk and diversify income sources is a key strategy to reduce vulnerability multiple outcomes of the risk, the latter traces the multiple (Chambers and Conway 1992, Ellis 2000, Marschke and Berkes underlying social and political-economic causes of a single 2006). Among Gaddis, this ability is common. As a result, outcome of vulnerability. The primary limitation of both although pastoral livelihoods are declining, many pastoralists are approaches is that they fail to grapple with the underlying social thriving, primarily because they have diversified into nonpastoral structural causes of vulnerability together with biophysical risks, livelihoods. Although