Laws, Institutions and Transboundary Pasture Management in the High Pamir and Pamir-Alai Mountain Ecosystem of Central Asia

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Author(s)
Lim, Michelle
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2012
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Enhanced rangeland governance is a priority for the governments of the post-Soviet Central Asian states of the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. Major transitional challenges confront the newly independent states of Central Asia. These challenges include the withdrawal of subsidies previously provided by the centralised Soviet government; moves towards privatisation and the conversion of administrative boundaries to international boundaries. In this context transboundary approaches to rangeland management are essential. This paper highlights the challenges for effective pasture management in the Pamir, Pamir-Alai ecosystem; ...
View more >Enhanced rangeland governance is a priority for the governments of the post-Soviet Central Asian states of the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. Major transitional challenges confront the newly independent states of Central Asia. These challenges include the withdrawal of subsidies previously provided by the centralised Soviet government; moves towards privatisation and the conversion of administrative boundaries to international boundaries. In this context transboundary approaches to rangeland management are essential. This paper highlights the challenges for effective pasture management in the Pamir, Pamir-Alai ecosystem; the inadequacies of pasture-related legal instruments and the absence of institutions for the implementation of these instruments. Transboundary management is hampered by the lack of agreements between the two countries and the differences between national level laws and institutions. Meaningful transboundary agreements and the harmonization of national level laws would be a significant step towards achieving sustainable transboundary pasture management. However, on their own these legal tools are insufficient. Long-term effective pasture management in the Pamir, Pamir-Alai ecosystem necessitates that the causes of degradation are addressed. Mountain communities would also need to be convinced of economic and other benefits before current resource-use practices could be expected to change. Institutional and capacity building and adequate funding are also fundamental to ensuring the effectiveness of any legal instruments that are developed and any strategies that are employed.
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View more >Enhanced rangeland governance is a priority for the governments of the post-Soviet Central Asian states of the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan. Major transitional challenges confront the newly independent states of Central Asia. These challenges include the withdrawal of subsidies previously provided by the centralised Soviet government; moves towards privatisation and the conversion of administrative boundaries to international boundaries. In this context transboundary approaches to rangeland management are essential. This paper highlights the challenges for effective pasture management in the Pamir, Pamir-Alai ecosystem; the inadequacies of pasture-related legal instruments and the absence of institutions for the implementation of these instruments. Transboundary management is hampered by the lack of agreements between the two countries and the differences between national level laws and institutions. Meaningful transboundary agreements and the harmonization of national level laws would be a significant step towards achieving sustainable transboundary pasture management. However, on their own these legal tools are insufficient. Long-term effective pasture management in the Pamir, Pamir-Alai ecosystem necessitates that the causes of degradation are addressed. Mountain communities would also need to be convinced of economic and other benefits before current resource-use practices could be expected to change. Institutional and capacity building and adequate funding are also fundamental to ensuring the effectiveness of any legal instruments that are developed and any strategies that are employed.
View less >
Journal Title
Law, Environment and Development Journal
Volume
8
Issue
1
Publisher URI
Copyright Statement
© 2012 The Authors. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 AU) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.
Subject
Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Law