9 - Pastoralism, Environmental Infrastructures, and State–Local Society Relations in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Century

Summary

Chapter 9 depicts pastoral livelihood strategies in the 1990s and early 2000s. The altered savannah landscape with its far flung network of boreholes and its peculiar vegetation structure (mopane bush and annual species dominating over perennial species) is used by an enormous regional herd. Also the human population increases due to better health provisions and settlement patterns changed. Degradation of rangelands and attempts of herders to access new pastures, a demise of communal control over grazing lands, and subsequent attempts to recapture the commons are hallmarks of this period.