ABSTRACT
Rangelands comprise roughly 40 percent of Earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface, but they are marginal to the political and economic power centers of the world. Neither forested, cultivated, nor urbanized, rangelands are almost always the least valuable territory, rendering them the target of all manner of schemes for extraction, development, “improvement,” and modernization. But their biophysical characteristics – low and erratic rainfall, climatic extremes, limited productivity, and vast extents – have stymied efforts by states, capitalists, and scientists. Recent scholarship has challenged and overturned the conventional wisdom about rangelands that prevailed from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Narratives of “desertification” and widespread degradation have been exposed as Eurocentric rationalizations for the dispossession of pastoralists and the consolidation of colonial power. Previous ecological ideas about carrying capacity, stable “climax” plant communities, and fire have been upended over the last three decades. And the knowledges and practices of long-time rangeland inhabitants, be they aborigines, pastoralists, or ranchers, are increasingly recognized as invaluable components of both social and ecological sustainability. To succeed, rangeland stewardship in the twenty-first century must engage and strengthen local institutions vis-à-vis outside forces whose ambitions, when not openly predatory, are often still suffused with flawed assumptions and wishful thinking.
