Land Rights and Nomadic Populations: Indigenous People Perspectives

Spatial mobility implies a human movement towards resources, by contrast to the occidental-capitalist way of life in which resources are moved to and concentrated in the places where people are located. It is one of the ways that people respond to uncertain and changing environmental conditions. In some arid and highly variable environments there may be no fixed pattern to people’s movements, also known as nomadism. However, mobility takes many other forms, including regular seasonal movements or transhumance, and permanent or semi-permanent movements (‘migration’) [1]. Spatial mobility has long been a livelihood strategy for rangeland peoples, as it was for all the people in the world before agriculture was developed about 10,000 years ago. Although traditional nomadic ways of life are still strong in some areas, they tend to be in decline worldwide due to modernization, intensification of land use, and conflicts about land ownership and with wildlife conservation goals. However, in some cases, new transformed forms of mobility are on the rise.