Community-based rangeland management and social-ecological resilience of rural Mongolian communities

This research is an attempt to apply a resilience framework to understand how pastoral social-ecological systems respond to change, and the potential role of formal CBRM institutions in this process. The resilience principles of Folke, Colding & Berkes (2003): (1) learning to live with change and uncertainty, (2) nurturing diversity for reorganization and renewal, (3) combining different types of knowledge for learning and (4) creating opportunity for self-organization toward social-ecological sustainability were assessed in two pairs of adjacent herding communities with and without community-based rangeland management (CBRM) experience.

The social-ecological systems in both CBRM and non-CBRM herding communities demonstrated that their capacities to respond to crisis and disturbances are deeply embedded in local knowledge, practices, and social networks. Community-based rangeland management communities have shown potentials to facilitate adaptation and resilience building if such organizations are based on and further develop existing cooperation of customary neighborhoods. Community-based rangeland management offers structures that contemporary pastoral society needs to have in place to stimulate new learning for constructive change. As part resilience building for Mongolian pastoral social-ecological systems, I propose linking the resilience framework to the meaningful local nutag wisdom or framework to inform national and international stakeholders about locally appropriate or nutag appropriate strategies and approaches to natural resource management and rural development.