Troy Sternberg, Joana Roque de Pinho,
Batbuyan Batjav

ABSTRACT: The developing field of Mongolian International Studies offers a diverse range of research topics. A review of recent articles reflects an emphasis on geo-politics, particularly evolving relations with its superpower neighbours. Whilst state-to-state engagement with China and Russia predominates, regional countries (Japan, Korea) and the US and Europe are examined within the ‘Third Neighbour’ policy. Trade and economics are also studied, from Oyu Tolgoi and mining to the role of the IMF and international agencies. Currently lacking is a focus on human-driven engagement that reflects Mongolian livelihoods, spirituality and community environments. Such social and cultural dynamics are essential to both pastoral and rural livelihoods and to understanding the nation. In 2020-2022 international academic endeavours enabled Mongolian herder representatives to participate in a global drylands exchange network with dryland residents in thirteen countries. The process provided an exceptional opportunity to present Mongolian perspectives to pastoralists and academics from Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. This grounded Mongolian livelihoods and situated rural dynamics in a global context. Here we report key engagements and findings as Mongolian herders shared lives and practices in the context of this international pastoral/drylands project. Moving beyond the political/economic rubric, as this project did, delivers a more representative and complete comprehension of Mongolia to the global international studies community.

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Lhagvademchig Jadamba

Learn about the fascinating life of the former Head of Mongolian Buddhism through MYNA collaborator Professor Lhagvademchig Jadamba’s latest publication “The Ninth Jebtsundampa, Jampel Namdrol Chokyi Gyeltsen” published in The Treasury of Lives, a peer-reviewed biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalaya.

The Ninth Bogd Jebtsundampa Khutugtu, born in Tibet in 1932, was recognized as the reincarnation of the Bogd Khan, who was Mongolia’s theocratic ruler between 1911 and 1924. The Ninth Jebtsundampa’s life in exile and mission to promote Buddhist teachings spanned Mongolia’s transition to democracy, contributed to the revival of Mongolian Buddhism and placed Buddhism at the heart of diplomatic relations between China, India, Mongolia and Russia.

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Joana Roque de Pinho, Stanley Kutiti ole Neboo, Debra Seenoi, Angela Kronenburg García, Daniel Lepaiton Mayiani, Lenaai ole Mowuo, Matinkoi ole Mowuo, Nurit Hashimshony-Yaffe, Sabdio Wario Galgallo, Troy Sternberg, Batbuyan Batjav, Bolor-Erdene Battsengel, Enkhbayar Sainbayar, Andrea Pase

Based on first-hand accounts of pastoralist friends and collaborators, this chapter examines how Kenyan and Mongolian livestock keepers experienced and responded to early State-enforced lockdown measures (hereafter, ‘lockdown(s)’). We found that, like elsewhere, lockdowns have exacerbated existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities linked to gender, age, and structural power inequalities (Leach et al. 2021). But our case studies also suggest they promoted different kinds of mobility, collective action, pastoral knowledge transmission, and cultural revitalization, and created space for specific livelihood strategies to blossom.

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Stavi, I., Roque de Pinho, J., Paschalidou, A. K., Adamo, S. B., Galvin, K., de Sherbinin, A., Even, T., Heaviside, C., & van der Geest, K.

During the last decades, pastoralist, and agropastoralist populations of the world’s drylands have become exceedingly vulnerable to regional and global changes. Specifically, exacerbated stressors imposed on these populations have adversely affected their food security status, causing humanitarian emergencies and catastrophes. Of these stressors, climate variability and change, land-use and management practices, and dynamics of human demography are of a special importance. These factors affect all four pillars of food security, namely, food availability, access to food, food utilization, and food stability. The objective of this study was to critically review relevant literature to assess the complex web of interrelations and feedbacks that affect these factors. The increasing pressures on the world’s drylands necessitate a comprehensive analysis to advise policy makers regarding the complexity and linkages among factors, and to improve global action. The acquired insights may be the basis for alleviating food insecurity of vulnerable dryland populations.

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Troy Sternberg

Mega-Infrastructure Projects (MIPs) represent a central element of globalized development. MIPs like the Chinese driven `Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) include large-scale agrarian, road, rail, port and energy networks. They are complex ventures involving international capital and multiple stakeholders. Disenchanted Modernities presents 16 case studies showing that the promise of a sustainable modern development by MIPs leave many local users disenchanted: They don’t profit from the MIPs but lose access to their resources often held in common property and governed by local institutions. The book describes the strategies of states and companies leading to commons grabbing as well as local responses to MIPs in Asia, Africa, Americas and Europe. This book adds to the debate on the drama of the grabbed commons.

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Christopher McCarthy, Yuki Konagaya, Troy Sternberg, Erdenebuyan Enkhjargal, Buho Hoshino

A detailed study of the ancient caravan routes connecting Mongolia and Tibet has yet to be established. This paper describes the results of initial investigations on the identification of caravan traces through Mongolia from historical sources, fieldwork, and remote sensing reconnaissance. Recreating the Roerich Central Asian Expedition of 1927, we identify several artifacts and locations that support our belief that these routes contributed to the movement and exchange of people, ideas, and commerce across the desert landscapes of Inner Asia and helped shape cultural and religious identities that still exist to this day. Moreover, we argue the Mongolia to Tibet caravan routes were part of the greater network of ancient Silk Roads and should be considered as such: an important, intangible cultural heritage worthy of further exploration, preservation, and scholarly study.

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Unks, R., M. J. Goldman, F. Mialhe, and J. Roque de Pinho

Categorically distinct instrumental values and non-instrumental “cultural” values of “nature” are central to ecosystem services assessments and many wildlife conservation interventions alike. However, this approach to understanding the value of nature is at odds with social scientific understandings that see value as produced through social-ecological relations and processes. With a case study of Ilkisongo Maasai land users living in group ranches surrounding Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya, we apply a relational values approach to highlight the processes of valuation that shape how different people within Maasai society come to have different shared values of wildlife and collectively titled land. First, we detail how wildlife conservation efforts in Amboseli have affected social relations through uneven conservation decision-making processes and unequal distribution of benefits from conservation. Second, we detail how conservation practices have directly influenced changing relationships between people and wildlife. Neglect of elders’ common stances on how relations “ought” to be maintained (both human-human and human-nonhuman relations), and many Maasai residents’ views of the “ownership” of wildlife by a minority have both fueled resentment. We show that an ironic, unintended outcome is that conservation projects, which are intended to increase the “value” of wildlife for local people as a way to foster “coexistence” of people and wildlife on collectively titled lands, are instead contributing to an increased desire by some Maasai for wildlife to be spatially separated from people and livestock. Simultaneously, current conservation projects do not build upon practices that in Maasai views, enabled historical sharing of land with wildlife. Inequality and lack of participation have been highlighted as key limitations of many community-based conservation and human-wildlife conflict mitigation initiatives. We instead focus on how wildlife conservation interventions have contributed to changing human-human and human-nonhuman relations and have in turn impacted long-term Maasai perceptions of wildlife. We argue that an expanded consideration of relational values that emphasizes the inseparability of culture and nature, but also includes a central consideration of power dynamics, might overcome some limitations of previous valuation approaches.

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Francesca Fiaschetti and Lkhagvademchig Jadamba

The chapter offers some preliminary data and a survey of methodological questions for the study of religion and religiosity among Mongolian diaspora communities in Europe. Mongolian migration to Europe is a relatively recent phenomenon, and the presence of diaspora communities in several European countries is linked to the history of Mongolia’s diplomatic relations. Similarly, the chapter looks at religious developments within Mongolia in the last decades to map religious tendencies among Mongolian migrant communities within Europe. By looking at Buddhism, shamanism, and popular religion, the chapter thus investigates the role of religiosities in relation to Mongolian identity and the connection of diaspora communities with the homeland.

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Kronenburg García, Angela; Meyfroidt, Patrick; Abeygunawardane, Dilini; Sitoe, Almeida A.

The literature on land-use frontiers has overwhelmingly focused on active frontiers of expansion. We focus on an emerging
frontier. We studied the decisions, narratives, and practices of the actors driving land-use change in Niassa, Mozambique. Based on
ethnographic research carried out between early 2017 and late 2018 among investors engaged in commercial agriculture and plantation forestry, we show how successive waves of actors with different backgrounds, motives, and business practices arrived in Niassa and attempted to establish farms or plantations yet repeatedly failed and left, or remained but continued to struggle. We show how even though waves come and go, they do leave sediments behind, legacies that over time add up to overcome the various constraints that investors face and gradually form the conditions for a frontier to emerge. We argue that the build-up of these legacies, particularly after the end of the civil war in 1992, has given rise to a new wave, which is qualitatively different from the previous ones in the sense that the actors did not arrive from elsewhere but were already present in Niassa. This wave thus emerges from within the region, building on the legacies of previous waves, indicating that over time endogenous processes may replace externally driven waves. We contribute to frontier theory by arguing that waves and legacies shape emerging frontiers through their dynamic interaction.

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Troy Sternberg, Jerome R. Mayaud and Ariell Ahearn

Global drylands host more than USD 1 trillion in resource extraction investments, which serve to reconfigure communities and landscapes. In Mongolia’s Gobi Desert mega-mining brings social challenges and environmental changes that question if nomadic herding and mining can co-exist. Whilst company and community conflict are common, nascent frameworks and mediation models suggest alternate ways to resolve the mining–community conundrum. Here we investigate environmental transformations that herders encounter in the presence of the Oyu Tolgoi mega-mine in Mongolia’s Khanbogd soum (district). Using socio-economic and physical data collected through interviews, field studies and climate records, we assessed local engagement and adaptation to large-scale mining. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods enabled us to examine the implications of mining for herder lives and lands in an integrated way. This study presents a holistic assessment of the roles of herders, governments and mines in reshaping pastoralism. In our chosen case study, we find that—contrary to common narratives—mining and herding can, and do, coexist in Khanbogd soum, though ongoing challenges exist which deserve critical attention.

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