Documenting Bakarwal Nomads’ perspectives on Climate Change

Proponent: Syed Mahmood Nasir Project implementation period: 12 months Project implementation dates: March 2010 – February 2011 Project location: Northern Punjab, North Western Frontier Province, Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas Description: Bakarwal nomads with their goat herds, mules and dogs travel throughout the year in search of pastures in northern parts of Pakistan. They travel approximately 1800 km on foot during their annual migrations and graze their herds in four distinct ecological zones. Traditional knowledge of the terrain and climate has been the key to survival of the entire groups and early or delayed snow season, delay in snow melting and floods along the migratory route could bring disaster to these migratory groups.

The Bakarwal nomads struggle with the changing seasons/ climate and to retain access to their traditional grazing grounds. Due to poorly defined land tenure they have no recognized legal rights and they continue to struggle to retain their traditional nomadic way of life.

This project shall focus on the local experiences of the nomads with climate change and its impacts. It shall in the initial phase document the emic (insiders) observations on climate specifically to know whether it is changing as projected. it shall also focus on understanding the impacts of climate change on the Bakarwal community and their livelihood. As mentioned above the factors that impact the livelihoods other than climate change shall also be analyzed and briefly described so as to remove sources of errors and biases.

The following shall be the project outputs:

• A detailed report on the traditional knowledge on climate and the changes observed by the communities in the recent past
• Adaptation to climate change undertaken by the communities if any 
• Photographs and video clippings