The pasture has no address

Priya Rajput, Priyank Goswami

cuswpriya@gmail.com, priyank.policy@gmail.com

Jammu and Kashmir's transhumant communities provide nearly Rs. 6000 crore worth of ecosystem services annually, and survive the brunt of a warming Himalaya. Policy responses have continued to be shaped largely through sedentary frameworks, with limited attention to the everyday realities and mobility needs of nomadic pastoralists.

Every April, thousands of Gujjar and Bakarwal families begin an upward journey that has shaped life in the western Himalaya for centuries. Their livestock move from the winter plains of Jammu through the Pir Panjal and Banihal passes to alpine meadows in Kashmir, returning only when the first signs of autumn appear. The on-foot journey, often spanning between 30-45 days and nearly 600 kilometres, is not merely a remnant of earlier times or a romantic alpine tradition preserved for tourists. It remains one of the most resilient ways to manage fragile mountain ecosystems and sustain pastoral livelihoods in a region where no single altitude can support livestock year-round.

Even though, their contribution to the economic, ecological and cultural preservation of Jammu and Kashmir is noteworthy, these communities are gradually being pushed to the margins of climate governance. Anthropogenic climate change is making their traditional routes and grazing cycles more unpredictable. At the same time, the institutions meant to support them are failing because they are built around a simple assumption that people stay in one place.

For Gujjars and Bakarwals, the crisis is not just a story of environmental change, it is also a story of governance systems struggling to accommodate mobility.

The stakes are significant. The 2011 Census recorded 9.81 lakh Gujjars and 1.13 lakh Bakarwals in the erstwhile state, accounting for nearly three-quarters of Jammu and Kashmir's Scheduled Tribe population. Their pastoral economy contributes substantially to regional livelihoods, and Jammu and Kashmir produces 22.88 per cent of India's wool output, second only to Rajasthan. Beyond economics, pastoral communities perform an ecological function that often goes unrecognised. A recent policy assessment estimated that the ecosystem services generated by pastoral landscapes contribute around Rs 6,000 crore annually. However, this value rarely appears in public debates on development, conservation or climate adaptation.

The environmental foundations of pastoralism of life are now under unprecedented stress. The Himalayan region is warming faster than the global average. Declining snowfall, erratic precipitation and changing seasonal patterns are disrupting migration calendars that have evolved over generations. The Kolahoi Glacier, one of Kashmir's most important freshwater sources, has retreated by 23.6 per cent since 1962. During the winter of 2025-26, Jammu and Kashmir recorded only 100.6 mm of precipitation against a normal of 284.9 mm, marking another year of severe moisture deficit.

For nomadic pastoralists, climate change is not an abstract future threat. It is already affecting herd structures, grazing cycles and livestock health, and productivity. Our recent study based on pastoral communities in Rajouri documented declining herd sizes, rising livestock mortality and growing uncertainty among younger generations about continuing pastoral occupations. In 2024, many Bakarwal families reported abandoning wool shearing because market prices had collapsed from more than Rs 100 per kilogram to less than Rs 20 approximately, with no effective procurement mechanism to cushion the shock.

Yet climate change alone does not explain their vulnerability. Multiple studies have documented the climate vulnerabilities, mobility challenges, and ecological significance of Gujjar and Bakarwal pastoralists, suggesting that the issue today is no longer a lack of evidence, but a continued delay in translating evidence into policy action. The deeper problem lies in how public policy understands citizenship and welfare for nomadic pastoralists.

Most government programmes are designed around sedentary bias. Benefits are linked to permanent residential addresses, institutions are organised around accessible villages, and administrative procedures assume that beneficiaries can be located in one place at a given time. Pastoral communities do not fit neatly into this model.

A Bakarwal family that migrates through the Pir Panjal mountain range may spend part of the year in Rajouri, several months in highland pastures of Kashmir and Ladakh and weeks walking between the two. This transhumance is not an obstacle to their livelihood; it is the livelihood and adaptive feature in itself. When governance systems demand fixed residence, static documentation or continuous physical presence, mobility becomes a disadvantage rather than an asset.

This contradiction is perhaps most visible in the implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA). which came into effect in J&K following the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. The legislation explicitly recognises traditional seasonal access rights of nomadic and pastoral communities. However, in Jammu and Kashmir, implementation tells a different story. As of May 2025, 46,090 claims had been filed under the Act, but only 6,020 titles had been granted, while nearly 40,000 claims were rejected. The resulting rejection rate of around 86 per cent is far above the national average.

The problem is not the absence of policy. It is that nearly every policy assumes its beneficiaries stay put.

The Jammu and Kashmir Budget 2024-25 allocated Rs 358.52 crore for Social and Tribal Welfare and announced transit accommodations along migration corridors. PM-JANMAN, launched nationally with an outlay exceeding Rs 24,000 crore, seeks to improve outcomes for vulnerable tribal communities. These initiatives reflect genuine intent but they remain rooted in a sedentary administrative imagination. A welfare system organised around fixed addresses struggles to reach people whose lives are organised around movement.

The consequences extend beyond welfare delivery. Permanent pastures in Jammu and Kashmir declined from roughly 128,000 hectares in 2009 to about 106,000 hectares in 2022. A previous audit had already highlighted substantial transfers of pastureland to private use. As grazing spaces shrink and climatic pressures intensify, pastoral mobility itself is becoming more difficult to sustain.

This is not an argument against development. It is an argument for development that recognises mobility and seasonal mobile livelihoods. The good news is that meaningful reforms do not require sweeping legislative change. They require a shift in administrative imagination.

First, Jammu and Kashmir should formally recognise and protect the traditional migration corridors, grazing routes, and seasonal halting sites identified in the 2021 Nomadic Tribal Census. In January 2025, Himachal Pradesh notified 1,637 pastoral locations and immediately directed officials to ensure that these sites remain available for migratory communities. Jammu and Kashmir could adopt a similar approach and move beyond mere identification towards effective protection.

Second, implementation guidelines under the Forest Rights Act must be adapted to pastoral realities. Community verification and traditional route-based evidence can often provide more meaningful proof of rights than conventional residence documents.

Third, future revisions of the State Action Plan on Climate Change should explicitly mainstream pastoral adaptation. Despite being among the communities most exposed to climate risks including loss and damage, Gujjars and Bakarwals remain largely absent from the operational design of climate adaptation programmes.

Finally, the disappearing wool economy requires direct intervention. If neighbouring Himachal Pradesh can introduce a minimum support mechanism for wool producers, there is little reason why Jammu and Kashmir, which contributes a majority of India's wool production, should not do the same.

At its heart, this debate is about more than considering Gujjars and Bakarwals just under tribal welfare or as symbols of folkloric preservation. It concerns how the state understands them as nomadic pastoralists as well whose lives are largely organised around movement rather than settlement. Modern governance systems have become exceptionally skilled to map territories, track transactions and identify households but they continue to struggle with citizens who do not fit neatly within sedentary categories.

For centuries, Gujjars and Bakarwals have adapted to the ecological realities of the Himalaya through transhumance. What appears to be movement is, in fact, a sophisticated form of environmental stewardship. As climate change accelerates, protecting pastoralism is not an act of charity, it is an investment in ecological resilience, cultural continuity and sustainable mountain development.

The pasture has no address. Public policy must learn to find it anyway.

(Dr. Priya Rajput is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Centre for Pastoralism, New Delhi and Dr. Priyank Goswami is an Assistant Professor at Pandit Deendayal Energy University, Gandhinagar, Gujarat.)