A comparative study of religious-environmental dynamics among Inner Asian and African dryland communities
This study investigates the relationship between religious change(s) and environmental change(s) in dryland areas of Inner Asia and Africa, specifically in the Mongolian steppe, Kenyan and Mozambican pastoral and farming systems.
Arid and semiarid areas, which cover about 41% of the world and sustain two billion people, are uniquely challenged under global environmental change. Shifts in land management, land tenure and land use, political instability, and climate change challenge dryland populations who are often mobile and rely on livestock. In parallel, drylands are undergoing rapid religious transformations, such as conversion to global religions, spiritual revitalization, and radicalization, which occur alongside cultural change, economic diversification, and political marginalization. This study explores relationships between religious transformations and environmental changes in dryland areas of Inner Asia and Africa by focusing on Kenyan and Mongolian pastoral systems and northern Mozambican farming systems. The MYNA project advances the scholarship on global environmental change by addressing the neglected dimension of religious change.
MYNA researcher Batbuyan Batjav was awarded an Academic Visitor fellowship at the Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Unit (Department of Social Anthropology) at the University of...
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During his research in India in March 2024, MYNA collaborator Prof. Lhagvademchig Jadamba paid a visit to H.H. the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala, the winter...
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MYNA collaborator, Professor Lhagvademchig Jadamba, gave a presentation at ISCTE on March 5, 2024, entitled “The Geopolitics of Reincarnation: US-China conflict over the next Dalai...
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For the 10th anniversary of the Centro de Estudos Internacionais (Conferência 10 Anos do CEI-ISCTE, October 12, 2023), Joana gave a speed talk featuring an...
Read More >Meet our dynamic multidisciplinary research team! Experts from diverse fields come together to tackle questions about religion and the environment
Principal Investigator
Environmental Anthropologist
(PhD, Colorado State University, 2009)
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
(ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Estudos Internacionais and Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University.
Co-Principal Investigator
Geographer
(PhD, University of Oxford, 2009)
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
(ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Estudos Internacionais
Team member
Anthropologist
(PhD, Wageningen University, 2015)
Earth and Life Institute, UCLouvain, Belgium
Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World, University of Padua, Italy
Consultant
Medical anthropologist
(PhD, Durham University (UK), 2013)
Qualitative Research Consultant, and Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology, Durham University
Collaborator
Cultural anthropologist
(PhD, University of Shiga Prefecture, Japan)
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology,
National University of Mongolia and Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
(ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Estudos Internacionais
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.
Funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology – Ref. PTDC/SOC ANT/2990/2020
Joana Roque de Pinho is an ecologist and environmental anthropologist whose research focuses on changing West and East African sub-humid and dryland social-ecological systems; and how members of rural natural-resource reliant communities experience and understand environmental changes. She is most passionate about collaborating directly with rural community members as collaborative researchers/visual ethnographers through participatory visual research methodologies. For the MYNA project, she explores the intersection of religious transformations with livelihoods, land tenure/use changes and climatic instability. She contributes a multi-sited Kenyan case-study that explores the neglected role of Christianity in Maasailand’s social-ecological dynamics, and participates in the Mongolia and Mozambique case studies.
Troy Sternberg Extensive travel led to Troy’s interest in desert regions, environments and people. Research focuses on extreme climate hazards (drought, dzud), environments (water, steppe vegetation, desertification) and social dynamics (pastoralists, social-environmental interaction, religion and environmental change, mining and communities).
Angela Kronenburg García is an anthropologist, whose work has focused on resource access and land-use change in African drylands. She contributes to the MYNA project with case-studies in Mozambique and Kenya. In northern Mozambique, she explores how the expansion of Christian commercial farming is changing land use in a region that is partly Muslim and where the local population largely depends on small-scale (subsistent) farming for a living. In Kenya, she studies how the re-start of individual land demarcation, the proliferation of Evangelical churches and changes in Maasai culture connect in Loita.
Megan Wainwright has a BA in Anthropology (McGill University) and MSc and PhD in Medical Anthropology (Durham University). She has worked as an independent research consultant since 2018 and lives in rural Portugal. She is passionate about research methods and the contribution anthropological and qualitative research approaches can make beyond disciplinary boundaries. She has expertise in qualitative evidence synthesis and is working with members of the MYNA team on a systematic review of the relationship(s) between environmental change(s) and religious change(s) in drylands. She also produces podcasts and provides methodological support to the project.
Batbuyan Batjav is a social-economic geographer who has worked on nomadic pastoral issues in Mongolia for two decades. A former Director of the Mongolian Institute of Geography, he has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Oxford, Colorado State University, University of Arizona and Cambridge University. He is dedicated to strengthening pastoralism as a viable contemporary livelihood.
Stanley ole Neboo, 36 years old, married with two children, is a livestock keeper in the Maasai Mara, Narok County, Kenya. Stanley studied business management, tourism, and conservation. He currently works as a freelance safari guide and is the Chairman of the Talek River User Association (Talek WRUA). He is one of the filmmakers in the award-winning participatory documentary “Maasai Voices on Climate Change (and other changes, too)” (2013; Jean Rouch Award for Collaborative Filmmaking). He contributes to the Maasai Mara case study with research on the role and position of Evangelical churches vis-à-vis rapid changes occurring on the land (fencing, climatic instability, land selling, conservation) and in family life.
Lenaai ole Mowuo is a Loita Maasai from Kenya, and belongs to the Ilmeshuki age-group and the Ilaiser clan. He keeps cattle, sheep, goats and bees; grows beans, maize and potatoes; and is also a boda-boda (motorbike taxi) rider. Lenaai has worked as a research assistant and a co-researcher in several research projects since 2007, and features in the film All Eyez on Me! (2021). In the MYNA project, he contributes to the Loita case-study that explores the links between land demarcation, the expansion of new churches and cultural change.
Zaira Tas graduated from her BA Liberal Arts and Sciences: Global Challenges in 2022 and has focused her studies on environmental sustainability and development. She has a particular interest in how the environment and human society interact and affect one another. She joined the MYNA team as a consultant, working on a systematic literature review examining the relationship between religious changes and environmental changes in dryland areas. She also accompanied team members on a recent field trip to Kenya, where she assisted with project management and interviews.
Lhagvademchig Jadamba
Dr. Lhagvademchig Jadamba, in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, National University of Mongolia, is a cultural anthropologist specialized in Buddhist studies. His interests include religion in post-socialist Mongolia, religious diplomacy, Tibeto-Mongolian Buddhism and Buddhist art and literature. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Center for International Studies (CEI), University Institute of Lisbon (ISCTE) and lives in Portugal with his family. He is also an advisor to the National Security Council of Mongolia.
Amadu Djaló is a PhD student in African Studies at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) supervised by Joana Roque de Pinho. His thesis focuses on alternative models of development in a remote island community of Guinea-Bissau. For the MYNA project he is assisting with a systematic review on religious change(s) and environmental change(s) in drylands.
Richard ole Supeet is a Kisonko Maasai pastoralist living in Loitokitok, Isinet, Kajiado County, Kenya. He is from the Ilaiserr clan, Iloodokishu subclan. He is of the IIkidotu age-set, and also farms. By profession, he is a teacher. He owns a local private school through which he aims to lift the standard of education in his community. Richard is also an experienced research assistant who has worked on multiple research projects. Richard and Joana Roque de Pinho worked closely together from 2000 to 2004, and again in 2009 when he took part in the documentary “Through our eyes: a Maasai photograhic journey” (2010) by Lindsay Simpson & Joana Roque de Pinho
Batbuyan Batjav is a social-economic geographer who has worked on nomadic pastoral issues in Mongolia for two decades. A former Director of the Mongolian Institute of Geography, he has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Oxford, Colorado State University, University of Arizona and Cambridge University. He is dedicated to strengthening pastoralism as a viable contemporary livelihood.