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| Com um estilo de pastoreio tradicional na Mongólia que depende da mobilidade e não da forragem, é ainda mais difícil para os pastores prepararem-se adequadamente para um desastre que se aproxima. (Anand Tumurtogoo) |
A Mongólia acaba de ter outro inverno desastroso. No final de abril, o número de mortes de animais atingiu 7,1 milhões - mais de 10% de todo o rebanho. Poderá aumentar ainda mais, pois durante o ano "dzud" de frio extremo e neve intensa, os maiores danos são causados na primavera, quando uma combinação de exaustão e desnutrição atinge um ponto crítico.
No entanto, dzud não é um desenvolvimento novo. O equilíbrio ecológico tem se desenvolvido há séculos e só se tornou um problema recorrente nas últimas duas décadas, devido às alterações climáticas e outros fatores. Em muitos aspectos, o dzud é um problema ecológico contínuo, e não apenas um inverno frio e nevascas excessivas.
Muitas vezes o verão com pouca chuva leva ao inverno com neve excessiva, como é o caso do dzud deste ano. Os animais incapazes de armazenar reservas de gordura durante o verão tiveram que suportar o inverno, quando a neve pesada impossibilita o pastoreio. Além disso, com um estilo de pastoreio tradicional na Mongólia que depende da mobilidade e não da forragem, é ainda mais difícil para os pastores se prepararem adequadamente para um desastre que se avizinha.
Este ano, o problema foi antecipado, uma vez que acadẽmicos, ONG e funcionários do governo têm comunicado aos pastores já no verão passado. O dzud em curso foi o mais mortal desde 2009-2010, quando cerca de dez milhões de animais (23 por cento do rebanho) morreram.
Muitos relatórios abordaram o dzud deste ano e abordaram corretamente a questão como sendo um cataclismo climático. Embora o impacto das alterações climáticas na Mongólia seja muito real, há um outro lado da história que é mais importante - sobretudo, a introdução de forças de mercado quando a Mongólia fez a transição do socialismo de Estado para o capitalismo de livre mercado na década de 1990.
A transformação neoliberal da Mongólia
Numa perspectiva de longo prazo, a gestão das pastagens nas estepes da Mongólia manteve uma forma particular de organização coletiva desde os tempos feudais até ao período socialista. Este modelo incluía fatores de elevada mobilidade, organização coletiva e incorporação de novas tecnologias para apoiar a economia pastoril tradicional, especialmente durante a época socialista, quando a maior parte da atividade era altamente mecanizada. Tudo isto contribuiu para a continuidade das formas tradicionais de criação de animais.
A privatização da pecuária entre 1991 e 1993 e a dissolução das explorações agrícolas estatais foi (e ainda é) caracterizada pelos seus apoiadores como o retorno a um estado normal de existência após o interregno estatal-socialista. Foi, de fato, uma ruptura radical com as formas tradicionais de cuidado dos animais, uma conjuntura crítica que levou aos problemas atuais.
O aumento do número absoluto de animais de criação, de vinte e cinco milhões antes da privatização, para setenta milhões até 2023, é frequentemente aclamado como uma das conquistas da transição da década de 1990. Na verdade, este aumento não foi o resultado de uma maior eficiência e produtividade sob o novo regime de mercado, mas resultou antes da acumulação e da sobrepopulação de cabeças de animais devido à perda das indústrias de transformação da Mongólia. No seu auge durante a década de 1980, perto de 45 por cento do rebanho animal da Mongólia foi processado num único ano para produzir vários produtos agrícolas, com uma parte significativa exportada.
Em termos culturais, durante os anos pós-socialistas imediatos, existia uma noção romântica do nômada como uma figura curiosamente semelhante ao “nobre selvagem”, com várias formas de revivalismo cultural a acontecerem em segundo plano. Na realidade, muitos desses futuros nômadas errantes eram antigos funcionários de coletivos e explorações agrícolas estatais que tiveram de ir para o campo para sobreviver quando o gado e outros recursos estatais foram privatizados.
O número de pastores atingiu o pico em 1998, com 414.000, três vezes maior do que o número de 135.000 em 1989. Erik Reinert descreve este processo como "primitivização da economia", com toda a economia agrícola atomizada numa base familiar e muitas dessas famílias atomizadas transformando-se em unidades de produção primária. Isto significou abandonar o que tinha sido alcançado anteriormente durante o período socialista, quando havia uma elevada mobilidade através de uma combinação de transportes mecanizados e infra-estruturas, bem como de know-how cooperativo e de gestão.
Rural society in crisis
Many other demographic and social problems ensued, including challenges for education and health care. For the first time in many years, the problem of children dropping out from schools became rampant, in effect creating a generation of true nomads.
This massive yet curiously overlooked transformation shaped the lives of Mongolians today in multiple ways, both in the city and the countryside. In the capital Ulaanbaatar, every dzud has produced an influx of refugees into Mongolian-style “ger” districts, outnumbering those in apartments with heating and sewage systems by a ratio of three to one.
In the countryside, the degradation of pastureland and unsustainable economics for the herders has become the norm. Although the livestock population grew, the same patterns of inequality and precarity that were quickly established after the privatization in 1992 remain unchanged today. In 1998, by one estimate, two-thirds of all households had less than 150 animals, a bare minimum required to sustain a livelihood. By 2023, 86 percent of the herding households had less than two hundred animals.
These households are most prone to shocks like dzud and liable to become economic refugees in Ulaanbaatar. In addition, there has been further penetration of the market into the lifeworld of the herders, as they become accustomed to dependency on various consumer products, which might explain the massive debt generated over the years.
It is reported that around three-quarters of the herders have bank loans. With the chances of a dzud increasing every year, Mongolian herders are the most precarious and insecure group of all. This reality stands in curious contradiction with their symbolic prestige and representation in the “land of the nomads.”
Many other demographic and social problems ensued, including challenges for education and health care. For the first time in many years, the problem of children dropping out from schools became rampant, in effect creating a generation of true nomads.
This massive yet curiously overlooked transformation shaped the lives of Mongolians today in multiple ways, both in the city and the countryside. In the capital Ulaanbaatar, every dzud has produced an influx of refugees into Mongolian-style “ger” districts, outnumbering those in apartments with heating and sewage systems by a ratio of three to one.
In the countryside, the degradation of pastureland and unsustainable economics for the herders has become the norm. Although the livestock population grew, the same patterns of inequality and precarity that were quickly established after the privatization in 1992 remain unchanged today. In 1998, by one estimate, two-thirds of all households had less than 150 animals, a bare minimum required to sustain a livelihood. By 2023, 86 percent of the herding households had less than two hundred animals.
These households are most prone to shocks like dzud and liable to become economic refugees in Ulaanbaatar. In addition, there has been further penetration of the market into the lifeworld of the herders, as they become accustomed to dependency on various consumer products, which might explain the massive debt generated over the years.
It is reported that around three-quarters of the herders have bank loans. With the chances of a dzud increasing every year, Mongolian herders are the most precarious and insecure group of all. This reality stands in curious contradiction with their symbolic prestige and representation in the “land of the nomads.”
A tragic myth
In 1968, the US ecologist Garrett Hardin wrote an influential essay titled “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin presented a caricatural view of self-interested, irrational stakeholders in the form of herders exploiting the commons, rooted in the parables of game theory. The moral of the story was that the commons would prove to be unsustainable, leading to a Malthusian doom cycle as overpopulation and overgrazing end in tragedy.There have been many rebuttals of the picture that Hardin painted, most notably by Elinor Ostrom, reminding us of various types of “community management” schemes that Hardin conveniently overlooked. Yet the idea of the “tragedy of the commons” still remains a potent one, serving as a justification for neoliberal policies of austerity and privatization.
Discussions about pasture degradation in Mongolia often invoke the local version of this parable: “niitiin umchiin emgenel,” which is sometimes translated as “tragedy of public property.” As far as Mongolia is concerned, the notion of the “tragedy of the commons” is alive and well. It has been ever present as a form of neoliberal apologetics since Mongolia took up a textbook form of shock therapy in the 1990s to transition to a market economy.
This process created the present-day oligarchy and its kleptocratic regime, often sanitized in the international media as an “oasis of democracy.” The dominant ideology condemns all forms of state and public ownership, often with reference to real cases of corruption and embezzlement, and presents market rationalization as an essential tool to deliver the best outcomes.
The reality that Mongolian herders currently face somehow resembles the pattern of enclosure in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which is where Hardin originally drew inspiration for his parable. Ever since the privatization of livestock, market fundamentalists have argued that the process was incomplete since land should also be privatized. Land reform has been one of the most controversial issues in Mongolia, with pastureland remaining nominally public to this day.
In this context, we see the “tragedy of the commons” being invoked to condemn the supposedly unproductive and irrational herders. They are accused of striving for personal maximization by exploiting finite resources, resulting in the degradation of pastureland and the “tragedy” of the dzud crisis.
Yet as Mongolia has become more integrated into global capitalism, with greater exploitation of its mineral resources resulting in the label “Minegolia,” many former pasturelands have already been “enclosed” or are on the way toward it. As market forces encroach, what David Sneath calls a “proprietary regime” is being created.
While pastureland has not yet been formally privatized, it nevertheless functions as such in practice, with official certificates of ownership granted as herders slowly realize that they should claim the land as theirs before new encroachments and enclosures threaten their livelihood.
In 1968, the US ecologist Garrett Hardin wrote an influential essay titled “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin presented a caricatural view of self-interested, irrational stakeholders in the form of herders exploiting the commons, rooted in the parables of game theory. The moral of the story was that the commons would prove to be unsustainable, leading to a Malthusian doom cycle as overpopulation and overgrazing end in tragedy.There have been many rebuttals of the picture that Hardin painted, most notably by Elinor Ostrom, reminding us of various types of “community management” schemes that Hardin conveniently overlooked. Yet the idea of the “tragedy of the commons” still remains a potent one, serving as a justification for neoliberal policies of austerity and privatization.
Discussions about pasture degradation in Mongolia often invoke the local version of this parable: “niitiin umchiin emgenel,” which is sometimes translated as “tragedy of public property.” As far as Mongolia is concerned, the notion of the “tragedy of the commons” is alive and well. It has been ever present as a form of neoliberal apologetics since Mongolia took up a textbook form of shock therapy in the 1990s to transition to a market economy.
This process created the present-day oligarchy and its kleptocratic regime, often sanitized in the international media as an “oasis of democracy.” The dominant ideology condemns all forms of state and public ownership, often with reference to real cases of corruption and embezzlement, and presents market rationalization as an essential tool to deliver the best outcomes.
The reality that Mongolian herders currently face somehow resembles the pattern of enclosure in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which is where Hardin originally drew inspiration for his parable. Ever since the privatization of livestock, market fundamentalists have argued that the process was incomplete since land should also be privatized. Land reform has been one of the most controversial issues in Mongolia, with pastureland remaining nominally public to this day.
In this context, we see the “tragedy of the commons” being invoked to condemn the supposedly unproductive and irrational herders. They are accused of striving for personal maximization by exploiting finite resources, resulting in the degradation of pastureland and the “tragedy” of the dzud crisis.
Yet as Mongolia has become more integrated into global capitalism, with greater exploitation of its mineral resources resulting in the label “Minegolia,” many former pasturelands have already been “enclosed” or are on the way toward it. As market forces encroach, what David Sneath calls a “proprietary regime” is being created.
While pastureland has not yet been formally privatized, it nevertheless functions as such in practice, with official certificates of ownership granted as herders slowly realize that they should claim the land as theirs before new encroachments and enclosures threaten their livelihood.
The end of nomadism?
In 1999, Sneath and Caroline Humphrey asked if we were seeing “the end of nomadism,” looking at three different experiences of rural economy in Buryatia (Russia), Inner Mongolia (China), and Mongolia. At the time, it was evident that Mongolia’s pastureland ecology put it in a better position than the other two regions, in view of its distinctive organizational features and institutional history.
A quarter of a century later, this might no longer be the case. Since privatization, the composition and quantity of Mongolia’s livestock has changed, with many more goats being raised for cashmere while pastureland is left nominally public. As the current situation exposes the unsustainable nature of Mongolia’s reorganized pastoral economy, the country finds itself facing another critical juncture.
Cooperative and collective solutions persist to this day among conservative traditionalists, who at best propose to continue the current pastoral allocation by assigning an extra burden to the herders in order to preserve the “nomadic civilization.” However, it would be difficult if not impossible to reverse the encroachment of market forces.
The process of enclosures is continuing today in various forms endorsed by the current government, with the prioritization of mining and (most recently) tourism when it comes to land resources. With a shrinking habitat, the herders are under pressure to act as rationalized actors if they are going to survive under market conditions. Is the end of nomadism finally arriving in Mongolia?
In 1999, Sneath and Caroline Humphrey asked if we were seeing “the end of nomadism,” looking at three different experiences of rural economy in Buryatia (Russia), Inner Mongolia (China), and Mongolia. At the time, it was evident that Mongolia’s pastureland ecology put it in a better position than the other two regions, in view of its distinctive organizational features and institutional history.
A quarter of a century later, this might no longer be the case. Since privatization, the composition and quantity of Mongolia’s livestock has changed, with many more goats being raised for cashmere while pastureland is left nominally public. As the current situation exposes the unsustainable nature of Mongolia’s reorganized pastoral economy, the country finds itself facing another critical juncture.
Cooperative and collective solutions persist to this day among conservative traditionalists, who at best propose to continue the current pastoral allocation by assigning an extra burden to the herders in order to preserve the “nomadic civilization.” However, it would be difficult if not impossible to reverse the encroachment of market forces.
The process of enclosures is continuing today in various forms endorsed by the current government, with the prioritization of mining and (most recently) tourism when it comes to land resources. With a shrinking habitat, the herders are under pressure to act as rationalized actors if they are going to survive under market conditions. Is the end of nomadism finally arriving in Mongolia?
Colaborador
Manlai Chonos é um cientista social radicado na Alemanha.
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