Pastoralists, Patch Ecology and Perestroika: Understanding Potentials for Change in Mongolia

An alternative view of pastoral livelihood systems has begun to emerge in recent years that places much greater stress on the need to understand ecosystem dynamics. It draws particularly on empirical work in African drylands as well as theoretical debates around environmental change. One such influence is the notion of 'patch ecology', focusing attention on the strategic importance from a management point of view of high quality resource patches within the landscape. This view has important implications for pastoral development policy and practice. It acknowledges that indigenous resource management strategies with low external inputs are geared towards the incidence of 'ususual' stresses, rather than being adapted to some 'average' set of conditions. Here, Mearns considers the relevance of these ideas in the context of contemporary efforts to reform the Mongolian herding economy under perestroika.