Pastoral Livelihoods and Household Welfare
This work package will measure the differences in socio-economic conditions between pastoralist households engaged in each of the main forms of land use and livestock management at all the proposed field sites.
The objective of the work package is to test whether enclosure and associated pastoral sedentarisation generally leads to higher incomes, better social welfare and greater opportunities for improving livelihoods. Therefore, indicators of income, welfare and livelihood diversification will be compared between households across the spectrum of open range and mobile pastoralism to enclosed pasture use and settled residential patterns.
The work package will also consider how increased access to markets for livestock products, resulting from sedentarisation and enclosure, affects pastoral livelihoods. A key premise underpinning the research is that enclosures are more prevalent and attractive to pastoralists in locations with greater proximity to markets. The socio-economic conditions to be considered include studying the effects on welfare of noted disparities in access to education, health, gender roles and employment opportunities amongst pastoralists between field sites. Differences of income sources and levels will be measured through household surveys comparing pastoral household returns in cash and subsistence from livestock and other economic activities.
Results from this work package will be used to test correlations between income, market participation, and modes of livestock husbandry that do or do not use enclosures. It is expected that level of livestock wealth is a major determinant of differences in income as well as livelihood decisions and opportunities. Analysing the differences between households according to size of yak herd and flock size of sheep and goats will test this assumption.
It is also expected that pastoral household economic status will vary across the major ecological zones represented by the study areas, as the natural resource base – the different inherent productivity of the pastures – will have a major effect on quantity and type of livestock outputs. Therefore, the household survey analysis will focus primarily on observed income and livelihood differences between households within each study area, ensuring comparability of results. Results from work packages on vegetation and livestock condition respectively, will assist in assessing how economic variability within and between field sites is influenced by the underlying conditions of the ecology and livestock productivity.
