Book Review of "Pastoralism and Common Pool Resources: rangeland co-management, property rights and access in Mongolia" by S. Undargaa, New York, Routledge, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-138-84748-4
Addison, Jane (2017) Book Review of "Pastoralism and Common Pool Resources: rangeland co-management, property rights and access in Mongolia" by S. Undargaa, New York, Routledge, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-138-84748-4. Pastoralism, 7 (30).
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Abstract
[Extract] In the newly published book, Pastoralism and common pool resources - rangeland co-management, property rights and access in Mongolia, author Undargaa ‘puts property in its place’. Using Mongolia as a case study, Undargaa highlights the inability of contemporary institutional theories to adequately recognize other production components of the mobile pastoral economy, such as labour and livestock. In doing so, she brings a fresh perspective to the Mongolian literature in this space and, perhaps more importantly, maps out potential institutional avenues for resolving the symptomatic issues of elite capture, conflict and lost production opportunities. The book is strong in its in-depth and with breadth examination of the current governance issues plaguing Mongolia’s pastoral economy, and the diagnostic insights that Undargaa brings to the issue. Her critique of the ability of community-based natural resource management (NRM) to resolve the sector’s ‘wicked problems’ in the absence of other types of institutional reform in the production system is particularly pertinent. As such, Pastoralism and common pool resources - rangeland co-management, property rights and access in Mongolia should be of interest to both scholars of access theory and institutions for natural resource management, as well as development agencies and those crafting policy in Mongolia and other areas with significant mobile pastoral economies.