H2020Individual fellowship2016–2018

NomadicN · Niche construction on the move: how nomadic pastoralists navigate across fast-changing social-ecological systems

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration: 2016-06-01 → 2018-05-31
EU contribution: €185,076
Participants: 1
Scheme: MSCA-IF

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Results in brief

Niche construction on the move: how nomadic pastoralists navigate across fast-changing social-ecological systems

Nomadic pastoral livelihoods feed a considerable portion of the world's population. They are able to maintain high productivity in environments where high variability and unpredictability of natural resources hamper development of other food production systems. They could thus make rich contributions to the global pursuit of sustainability and food security. Yet, throughout the world, they are increasingly threatened by fast-changing environments. Two major processes are key in this regard: the extension of agriculture, irrigated or not, and the fragmentation of landscapes, which directly affects the mobility and adaptive capacity of pastoralists. There is a lack of understanding of the complex impacts of these transformations on nomadic pastoralists’ livelihoods, and multiple questions remain open: Are irrigated areas gained for agriculture definitively lost for pastoralists, or do they constitute, on the contrary, suitable migration areas where all needs of pastoralists and their herds can be met? How do pastoralists manage to move with their herds across densely cultivated landscapes and secure access to privately-owned resources? More broadly, how do pastoral peoples adapt to these new social and ecological settings? Answering these questions is a key challenge, as an increasing number of communities are concerned by these dynamics throughout the world, including Europe. The aim of the NomadicN project was to address this research gap, through the precise study of the migration process at a local scale, with a methodology allowing analysis of the role of ecological and sociopolitical factors in shaping this process. We focused on one case, the Rabari nomadic shepherds from the Kachchh area, who migrate yearly with their sheep and goats across areas characterized by very different land-use patterns, in Gujarat (India).

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Mobile pastoral systems, despite being highly adaptive to harsh and unpredictable environments, are faced with increasing challenges worldwide, due – among other factors – to a fast extension of irrigated agriculture and a fragmentation of landscapes. Understanding how they react and adapt to these changes is a key contemporary issue, concerning almost every region in the world, including Europe. The aim of the NomadicN project is to increase our understanding of the complex processes at play when mobile pastoralists navigate across fast-changing densely-cultivated landscapes. For this, we will develop a new approach to the analysis of the pastoral movements, by integrating into a single framework data on ecological variations and data on the social interactions that are necessary to mediate access to privately-owned resources. The objectives of the project are a) to identify the key ecological and social processes that underlie the migration dynamic, b) to analyze how these two sets of drivers interact and influence the decision-making process along migration stages, and c) to study, at the landscape scale, how the intertwinement of these processes shapes – or not - the mobility patterns of transhumant groups and how it affects their resilience. By enabling mobility to an outstanding research centre, this fellowship will allow the applicant to benefit from a multidisciplinary range of expertises to successfully implement the envisioned research and receive high-level training in state-of-the-art methods. The foreseen stay will effectively strenghten his academic profile and foster the developpement of an independant academic career. The close and complementary interests and skills of the host and the applicant will set the ground for fruitful future collaborations and scientific exchanges.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS · ParisCoordinatorFrance

NomadicN · Niche construction on the move: how nomadic pastoralists navigate across fast-changing social-ecological systems

Results in brief

Niche construction on the move: how nomadic pastoralists navigate across fast-changing social-ecological systems

Project objective

Participants

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