Analysing mobile pastoralists’ activism, e.g. from Kenya

The article “The new politics of pastoralism: identity, justice and global activism” (2014) by Caroline Upton, published in Geoforum 54: 207–216 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.11.011), addresses the politics and practices of natural resource rights with a view to environmental justice. Struggles over identity politics at different geographical scales have become important mediators of claims for justice with respect to resource rights. Analyses of identity-based claims for environmental justice have usually focused on the indigenous peoples’ movement. This article focuses on the emerging global pastoralists’ movement. In recent years, mobile pastoralists have begun to carve out new global spaces, through which diverse groups have tried to negotiate common ground and forge common identities in their struggles for justice. They have become increasingly visible in nature conservation politics and in contests over land rights, claiming to be “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 the chains of accountability and legitimacy between global activists and local pastoralists.

Posted on 22 March 2019 in Pastoralism, Policy & Power