Abstract

This article draws upon comparative case studies of pastoral societies in East Africa and Central Asia to operationalise the theory of socio-ecological resilience. We first derive a local and subjective definition of resilience based on focus group discussions with pastoralists in Borana, Ethiopia and Altay, Xinjiang, China. Pastoralists generally believe that pastoral resilience means the maintenance of decent household welfare, i.e. a viable number of livestock and freedom for livelihood diversification. Hence, three surrogate indicators for pastoral resilience are proposed, which are livestock mobility, land use patterns and livelihood diversification. We further explore the challenges to pastoral resilience in the two contexts, including environmental stresses and external development interventions. By investigating ‘resilience of what’ and ‘resilience to what’, we show that the operationalisation of pastoral resilience must be context specific. In addition, we argue that careful balance between livestock herding and livelihood diversification is necessary to enhance socio-ecological resilience in the pastoral context.