Shifting Strategies between Generations in Sami Reindeer Husbandry: the Challenges of Maintaining Traditions while Adapt
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Shifting Strategies between Generations in Sami Reindeer Husbandry: the Challenges of Maintaining Traditions while Adapting to a Changing Context Weronika Axelsson-Linkowski 1 & Anna-Maria Fjellström 2 & Camilla Sandström 3 & Anna Westin 1 & Lars Östlund 4 & Jon Moen 5 Published online: 18 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Many traditional pastoralist systems are greatly impacted by cumulative encroachments of other land users and by climate change. Understanding land degradation and the adaptive capacity of people who are dependent on the rangelands is an urgent priority for many areas in the world. In this research we explore how changing environmental conditions affect herding strategies on winter pastures and the role of indigenous and local traditional knowledge (ILK) in Sami reindeer husbandry. Our results indicate that traditional Sami reindeer herding strategies are still practiced, but that rapidly changing environmental circumstances are forcing herders into uncharted territories where these traditional strategies and the transmission of knowledge between generations may be of limited use. For example, rotational grazing is no longer possible as all pastures are being used, and changes in climate result in unpredictable weather patterns unknown to earlier generations. Keywords Strategies . Encroachments . Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) . Knowledge transmission . Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) . Climate change . Rangelands . Sami reindeer herding . Sweden
Introduction Rangelands extend over larger areas than any other land type, and are important for food production in general and to pastoral societies in particular. Globally, interacting climate, landuse, political, and economic changes threaten the sustainability of rangelands, the pastoral cultures they support, and the ecosystem services they provide (Reid et al. 2014; IPBES 2018). A particular concern to many of these traditional pastoralist systems relates to multiple cumulative encroachments * Jon Moen [email protected] 1
Swedish Biodiversity Centre (CBM), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SE-75007 Uppsala, Sweden
2
Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden
3
Department of Political Science, Umeå University, SE-90187 Umeå, Sweden
4
Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SE-90183 Umeå, Sweden
5
Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, SE-90187 Umeå, Sweden
by other land users (Galvin 2009; Dong et al. 2011; López-iGelats et al. 2016). A recent Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) states that this leads to fragmentation of earlier open, large-scale landscapes and a decline in forage resources, which are major concerns as pastoral systems are dependent on animal movements over long distances or migrations to sustain the herds over the seasons (Naess 2013; Horstkotte et al. 2014; IPBES 20
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