Search results

ABSTRACTDespite well‐founded concerns over the proliferation of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes, critical geographers have begun to challenge the 'milieu of apprehension' associated with PES (Jackson and Palmer, 2014: 122). There is a growing call for more nuanced analyses of ways in which the ecosystem services paradigm and PES may, in particular circumstances, encompass and make legible diverse ways of being in/knowing nature and provide opportunities for local/indigenous actors to advance their own needs and values. Adopting a 'radical pragmatist' approach, the author of this article worked with Mongolian herder groups to develop a locally‐grounded manifestation of PES, with specific attention to the incorporation of diverse socio‐ecological relations, beliefs and values. The article argues that such co‐produced iterations of PES, with due attention to tripartite dimensions of environmental justice, can facilitate local stewardship, whilst eschewing enclosure of commons and crowding out of non‐market values and motives for conservation, albeit shaped and constrained by diverse manifestations of power.

Concerns with the politics and practices of resource rights and access are integral to contemporary debates over environmental justice. Struggles over identity politics, especially the strategic articulation and deployment of particular identities at diverse geographical scales, have recently emerged as important mediators of justice claims in respect of resources rights, but also of recognition and procedural justice. To date, critical, multi-scalar analyses of identity-based claims for environmental justice have focused largely on the indigenous peoples' movement. In doing so, they have failed to embrace an emergent dimension of identity-based, trans-scalar justice, namely the fledgling global pastoralists' movement, the empirical focus for this paper. In the early years of the 21st century mobile pastoralists have begun to carve out new global spaces, through which diverse groups have attempted to negotiate common ground and forge common identities in their struggles for justice. In particular, mobile pastoralists have become increasingly visible in conservation politics and contests over land rights as they lay claim to both discursive and material ground as 'custodians of the commons' in an era of global climatic change. This paper draws on empirical work amongst pastoralists, NGOs and activists from Kenya, Mongolia and Spain to explore these identities, their implications for resource rights and access and the multi-scalar chains of accountability and legitimacy between global activists and their local constituents. ; Peer-reviewed ; Post-print

Mongolia's new resource politics, central to the country's geopolitical considerations and ambitions in the twenty-first century, must be understood in relation to their complex, multi-scalar socio-cultural, historical and environmental dimensions. This paper draws on the author's participatory research activities with key informants in Ulaanbaatar and amongst rural herding communities to illuminate key aspects, contexts and implications of the new resource politics. Specifically, the paper presents an empirically informed analysis of pertinent social and institutional forms, environmental and cultural values and aspects of resource governance, with particular reference to land issues, pastoralism, mining and resistance. Conceptually, it draws on recent work, especially in geography and political ecology, on activism, conservation and particularly on emerging discourses and framings of natural resources as 'ecosystem services'. Through attention to these concepts, it highlights contested dimensions of environmental values and valuation, of critical contemporary importance in Mongolia's new resource politics.

Includes bibliographical references. ; Presented at the Building resilience of Mongolian rangelands: a trans-disciplinary research conference held on June 9-10, 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; Mongolia's socio-ecological rangeland systems face a number of critical, contemporary challenges. Climatic change, persistent poverty and growing land use conflicts, especially around mining, pose complex problems both for herders and policy-makers. Furthermore, there is renewed emphasis on meeting Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Aichi targets, following the publication of Mongolia's 5th National CBD report in March 2014, and the development of a new National Biodiversity Strategic Action Plan. (E)valuation of the contributions of rangeland ecosystem services (ES) to biodiversity and livelihoods/wellbeing are highlighted as priorities for future planning therein. ES thinking, valuation and commodification are becoming increasingly influential in other contemporary policy initiatives, not least through the development of the national REDD+ roadmap, Business and Biodiversity offset programmes and Government commitments to the 'Green Economy'. Nonetheless critical questions remain about the ES paradigm itself, values/ valuation of ES and how these may be enacted and supported through policy. Here we report on a three year Darwin-Initiative funded project, which aimed to 'generate policy and practice relevant knowledge of values of ecosystem services (ES) in Mongolia, and test the efficacy of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes, in order to enhance biodiversity and livelihoods'. Aims were realised through i) participatory mapping and analysis of ES, including cultural ES, with 300 herder households across four case study sites, and the development of innovative methods for non-economic valuation; ii) co-development and implementation of a novel rangeland payment for ES (PES) scheme at the four sites, through the Plan Vivo standard; iii) analysis of the impacts ES and of the PES scheme on biodiversity and livelihoods. Methods used included deliberative valuation approaches, mapping, ranking and choice modelling to examine group and individual values and trade-offs between ES across ecologically contrasting areas. We also applied the SOLVES (Social Values of ES) GIS model to highlight spatial, place-specific dimensions of ES values, as part of a series of wider biodiversity, livelihoods and ES assessments. Results highlight spatial and temporal diversities in ES values, importance of cultural ES for wellbeing, and the potential of carefully designed PES schemes to contribute to more resilient socio-ecological rangeland systems in the future.