Understanding Relations, Learning, and Transformation in Mongolian Herders’ Climate Change Adaptation

This study aims to elucidate implications for policies and intervention practices that aim to support communities in adapting to climate change. By centering on Mongolian nomadic herders’ perspectives and experiences in adaptation to climate change, this study investigates pastoralists’ adaptation and learning, relational factors that shape the processes, and the impact of learning on transformations toward sustainability. My conceptualization and analysis of relations and learning build on the complementary perspectives of social practice theory and infrastructure and infrastructuring. Social practice theory provides a lens for understanding relational factors that shape herders’ adaptation practices, while infrastructure and infrastructuring help me gain insights into how herders adapt within current infrastructural constraints while also challenging the infrastructure to support their adaptation. I draw on the extended notion of infrastructure, which argues that infrastructure encompasses more than just technical domains. This extended view understands infrastructure as a relational property and that something becomes infrastructure in relation to social practices (Star & Ruhleder, 1996). According to this view, infrastructure is not static but can be changed in social practices. Infrastructuring, a verb derived from the noun, refers to the process of how local community members shape and reshape the existing infrastructure in alignment with local contexts and their specific needs. To gain insights into herders’ adaptation practices, relational factors, and learning, this study employs ethnographic methods. I conducted field observations and semi-structured interviews in the countryside of central Mongolia in Arkhangai and Övörkhangai provinces. Twenty-five herder households and 52 adult herders participated in the interviews. All the interviews were recorded and later transcribed and translated. Through the constant comparison approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), I conducted two-phase qualitative coding, each of which involved inductive and deductive coding. Results show that herders often talk about more frequent and unpredictable weather events and their impact on pastureland health, livestock survival, herders’ livelihoods, and the preservation of traditional pastoralism. Herders adapt to these changes by caring for livestock, prioritizing quality over quantity, maintaining rotational grazing, adding value to livestock products, and engaging young people in herding. Intrapersonal, interpersonal, material, and institutional relations shape and are shaped by these adaptation practices. Intrapersonal relations manifest in herders bringing their sensemaking and lived experiences of climate change, as well as identity, values, and emotions, in deciding specific adaptation strategies. Interpersonal relations are evidenced by mutual support and collaboration within and across households in adapting to climate change. Material relations are shown when herders utilize natural resources and maintain respectful land and water use in their adaptation practices. Institutional relations refer to institutionalized structural contexts that influence the scope of herders’ adaptation to climate change. While herders’ adaptation practices are shaped by and shape the relations, conceptual, practical, relational, and normative learning occur. The impact of learning on transformations toward sustainability is expressed as infrastructuring. Herders’ infrastructuring occurs when they take up beneficial aspects of the infrastructure but resist problematic elements. It also happens when herders propose solutions to improve the infrastructure or fill the infrastructural gaps. These findings provide implications for designing policies and projects that aim to support communities in adapting to climate change. External intervention should be contextualized in local people’s lived realities, ways of knowing, and values; build on social structure and community norms instead of disrupting them; support new learning opportunities while respecting traditional knowledge and ways of knowing; and provide targeted support for different groups of people. Lastly, adaptation does not mean wholesale change. Therefore, external intervention should not erase traditions without seriously considering local people’s voices or concerns.