When beliefs help in conservation

At the UN Biodiversity talks held in Nairobi in June 2022, one critical issue raised was the need to prioritise indigenous peoples and their role in biodiversity conservation. The crucial influence of the tribals in maintaining the ecosystem services is important as they hold close to one-quarter of the world’s rich, biodiverse land and have been playing an outsized role in its preservation.

In India, over 8.6 per cent of the population is indigenous. Each community exhibits unique practices passed on over generations sustaining long-standing relationships with the land and wildlife surrounding them. Authors of a recent study found that one agro-pastoral indigenous community in the village of Kibber in the Spiti Valley, in Himachal Pradesh, despite having inequities related to caste and gender, represented a well-functioning, complex, democratic and inclusive governance system. Here every household is involved in the decision-making related to the pastures.

The paper by Ranjini Murali and others, published in Ecosystem and Ecology, found that for millennia, the locals in Kibber have been governing pastures, and sharing space with wildlife.

“Robust systems of information sharing, monitoring, conflict resolution and self-organisation played a key role in sustaining the governance of ecosystem services. We uncovered that for the grazing pastures, decision-making involves all the households, and herders take turns grazing the livestock communally. All the pastures are also accessible to all the households, and everyone has the right to use these pastures,” explains lead author Ranjini Murali, a conservation scientist working with the Seattle-based Snow Leopard Trust.

Adaptation to modern needs

The community members rely on livestock rearing and crop production for their livelihood. With 80 households and most income coming from the sale of green pea, they depend on snowmelt reaching their fields through long irrigation channels. The community rears livestock such as sheep, donkeys, yak, cattle and horses on pastures over 70-100 km² where rearing and collection rights in the pastures are traditional.

Management of every ecosystem service in the village is divided among all the households. Key factors essential for maintaining these systems were sharing information among families and the community, monitoring, conflict resolution, and self-organisation. “We especially found that institutional memory, i.e. the influence of the past (and memory of the past), plays a key role in the present-day rules, norms, and strategies the community uses. Interestingly, this was sustained by the crucial role of the Oracle (the local deity),” adds Ranjini.

For example, right from the demarcation of the summer and the winter pastures, the areas that herders select for herding and the selection of the herding households daily are based on institutional memory. Even conflicts are resolved based on institutional memory. The same goes for the belief in the Oracle.

Unlike in modern society where capitalism and its globalisation agenda are predominantly driven by individualism, these indigenous people work together for the whole community based on adaptive governing systems.

Kibber is a popular destination for photographers visiting to see snow leopards. “The community collectively decides on guides and animals rented for treks, so everyone benefits,” says Kalzang Gurmet, one of the study’s co-authors and a community member. Additionally, the community makes decisions to manage some impacts of tourism — from initiating a camping fee to preventing specific sacred spaces from being accessed by tourists.

The community has been sharing space with wildlife in the area for decades. Over the years, the interactions have been both positive and negative. According to Ranjini, the locals react to such situations depending on the types of interactions. “If a snow leopard is sighted in a pasture by a herder, or if there is a kill, the herders will share this information with the others so they might avoid the areas.”

Climate change solutions

There is growing evidence of the critical role of institutional memory’s effectiveness in times of crisis. For example, when Covid-19 hit, the tribes in Arunachal Pradesh, particularly the Galo, Adi and Nyishi revived their traditional quarantine practices as a ritual and adopted self-resilient strategies to cope with the pandemic, further reducing the spread of the virus.

Similarly, in cases of climate change threats, in places like Kibber which faces a significant impact of retreating glaciers and reduced snowfall, the locals resort to traditional management practices.

Gurmet explains, “This year when we sought the Oracle’s advice, he told us to prepare for a difficult year due to acute water shortage. This was corroborated by the officials of the irrigation department, who warned us of the water crisis this winter. We face climate change with our well-established governing systems that are adaptive and handed down through generations, constantly guided by the vassal of God, the Oracle.”

The land continues to be under immense pressure from degradation, fragmentation, and developmental projects impacting humans and wildlife, further accelerating climate change. The authors stress the need for formal recognition of local rights and inclusion of indigenous practices in the ongoing climate solution debate.

“Indigenous governance systems are often based on place-based experience, knowledge, and worldviews. While these may be locally relevant and impossible to scale, they offer alternatives to centralised management. It is important that spaces are created for the recognition and perpetuation of indigenous governance such as through the formal recognition of local rights, and inclusion of indigenous worldviews and practices, even if they might differ from the mainstream,” concludes Ranjini.