Governance systems of yarshagumba collection and trade in the border region of India, Nepal and China

Abstract

Worldwide, the commercial collection of non-timber forest products (NTFP) has increased, with growing demands on domestic and international markets. This provides income opportunities for local people and links usually remote rural areas, where the resources are collected, with global markets. At the same time, it also enforces dependencies, increases the risks of overexploitation and extinction of the resource and often leads to contestation between different actors for access to these lucrative resources. Thus, actors modify and adapt existing governance systems to secure or gain access to the resource and profit from it. Commercialisation of NTFP leads to both positive and negative developments in remote rural areas.First, I would like to thank my two supervisors Prof. Dr. Heiko Faust and Dr. Markus Keck for their motivation, often pragmatic advice, cheering me up and for answering sometimes the same questions several timesmost of the time patiently, sometimes not so patiently. Especially, I would like to thank Heiko and Markus for understanding my situation, accepting my request to supervise my PhD, for believing in me and for responding always immediately to my requests, which contributed that I can complete this work within a limited time frame. Also, I would like to thank my GIZ supervisors Manfred Seebauer and Kai Windhorst who have supported me in overcoming some administrative hurdles, allowed me to integrate the PhD into my regular job and provided me the freedom I needed to collect my data. In addition, many thanks to my colleagues from ICIMOD, especially Dr. Tashi Dorji, who supported me and convinced me to write a PhD, Dr. Rajan Kotru and Dr. Janita Gurung for hardly getting tired of listening to my yarshagumba stories, Dr. Vishwas Chitale for his support in preparing study maps, and thanks to many of the other KSLCDI team members. Also, many thanks to the KSLCDI partners in India, Nepal and China for their various support to the field trips, workshops, posters, manuals, translations and meetings related to yarshagumba. Especially, I would like to acknowledge the support of the members of ANCA and CHEA. I absolutely enjoyed the joint field trips to the Kailash Landscape, although it was sometimes freezing cold. These were very special and great experiences for me, which I will never forget.My special thanks go to Ashish Chaudary and Shankar Badal, who accompanied me and walked with me most of the time during the fieldwork. Ashish was never tired of answering my questions and of starting conversations with local people about yarshagumba; neither during steep exhausting climbs, during early breakfast or at late evening hours. Also many thanks to Ganshyam Pande and Nabin Bisht for their time and efforts to get a better picture of the yarshagumba phenomenon in the Indian part of the Landscape. Further, without the help of the porters Chandra, Dharmanand, Narad and Tekendra, who accompanied us, the trips to the collection sites would have not been possible and not so pleasant.