The Opportunity Costs of Conserving Pasture Resources for Mobile Pastoralists in the Greater Caucasus

Abstract

Ecological damage caused by unadjusted and raised stocking rates are persistent problems in grazed mountain areas in developing countries, including in post-Soviet Asia. An assessment of this degradation is difficult due to site heterogeneity and insufficient knowledge about the grazing systems. We present an integrated appraisal of the potential stocking rates of sites based on physical site properties. We combine these ecological and agrarian analyses with the economic calculation of opportunity costs in scenarios. We apply this approach to a high mountain region in the eastern Greater Caucasus in Azerbaijan, which provides valuable ecosystem services and is heavily used as summer pasture by mobile pastoralists. Hence, an impact assessment of reducing the legal prescriptions of stocking rates or the calculation of payments for ecosystem services is possible. Our results show that stocking rates on many pastures are spatially unadjusted and destocking measures need to be implemented in order to preserve ecosystem services. We also discuss different distribution possibilities of the opportunity costs.