Governing the yarshagumba ‘gold rush’: A comparative study of governance systems in the Kailash Landscape in India and Nepal

Abstract

Under present conditions of economic globalization, social-ecological systems undergo rapid changes. In this context, internal and external forces put heavy pressure on the governance systems of commons to adapt effectively. While institutional learning has been identified as a key element for the adaptive governance of social-ecological systems, there is still limited knowledge of what roles communities and governmental actors play in these processes. In this study, we take the case of yarshagumba (English: caterpillar fungus), a formerly non-valued product in the Himalayas, which has recently been transformed into a highly valuable resource within a short time. We compare the governance systems in collection sites in the Kailash Landscape in India and Nepalby using an analytical framework developed by Pahl-Wostl. Our findings show that in these remote mountain areas, communities and community-led organizations are highly flexible in responding to immediate resource value changes by establishing communal management arrangements. At the same time, however, communities have difficulties to enforce their newly developed informal and formal arrangements. During the process of learning the link between the amendment of arrangements on community-level and the revision of formal policies and frames at the state or national level is only partly established. Against this background, we argue that in the context of rapid change, adaptive governance requires the concerted 456 Corinna Wallrapp et al.

A meta‐analysis of SES framework case studies: Identifying dyad and triad archetypes

“…This pattern is an important reminder that those rules determining how actors go about implementing governance and harvesting common‐pool resources (GS5) is embedded in a broader set of norms shaping community interactions (A5). This resonates well with those branches of CPR research addressing the role of reciprocity and community in collective action (Lobo et al., 2016; Partelow, 2020; Partelow & Nelson, 2018; Tadie & Fischer, 2017), showing how the same rules can perform differently in different communities (Carrillo et al., 2019; De Moura et al., 2021; Wallrapp et al., 2019).…”

Profiling, monitoring and conserving caterpillar fungus in the Himalayan region using anchored hybrid enrichment markers

“…Top-down policies continue to adapt and find the best practice of sustainable caterpillar fungus harvest in each region [21,22,[24][25][26][27]. However, local stakeholder and governing regimes would benefit from asserting their ownership of locally available natural resources, often found on community lands [28].…”

“…However, Himalayan collectors are at multiple economic disadvantages compared with collectors on the Tibetan Plateau that have long-established trade relations with mainland Chinese consumers. For example, strict state regulations for caterpillar fungus trade in India resulted in the annual transportation of $5–7.5 million worth of local products across the Nepalese border to be ‘legalized’ for export [ 13 , 21 , 22 ]. Moreover, a $10 million per annum export–import difference exists between the Chinese and Nepalese custom borders, suggesting the majority of ‘Nepalese’ caterpillar fungus does not clear local customs [ 23 ].…”

Distribution, Harvesting, and Trade of Yartsa Gunbu (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) in the Sikkim Himalaya, India

“…Rural households generate high environmental incomes (income generated by harvesting a diversity of resources from forests, wetlands, lakes, rivers, grasslands, etc; Angelsen et al 2014) in developing countries (Wunder et al 2014), accounting for 28-45% of the total household income (Angelsen et al 2014;Asfaw and Etefa 2017). Of this, medicinal plants and fungi alone contribute 3-58% of the total annual household income and 78% of the cash income to the Himalayan rural populace (Olsen and Larsen 2003;Rasul et al 2012;Timmermann and Smith-Hall 2019).…”