Nomadism in Mongolia 蒙古的游牧

垭口

角度不同  值得一读    As Mongolia shows, nomadic pastoralism and private land just don't mix  如同蒙古证明的那样，游牧业无法与土地私有共存

Dec 19th 2002 | SUMBER, DORNOD | from the print edition
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IT IS what is underfoot that counts. Very roughly, between the Ural mountains in the west and the Amur river on the Sino-Russian border, and between the latitude s of Lake Baikal in the north and the Chang Tang plateau of Tibet to the south, lies a land too arid usually for forest or even field. Some of it is mountain and much is desert, but most of it is steppe: the vast grasslands of Inner Asia.
踩在脚下的就算数。非常笼统地说，西起乌拉尔山，东至中俄边境的黑龙江，北接贝加尔湖，南达茜臧的羌塘高原，所有这些地区都太干旱，不宜成为森林甚至耕地。这中间有些山脉，许多沙漠，但大多为广袤的草地：这就是内陆亚洲大草原。

The foot or so of soil below the steppe's deceptive surface holds tens of thousands of years' worth of fertility, the product of grasses' ability to turn to biomass the energy of the fierce but brief summer's sun. Squirrel-tail barley, needlegrass, a clutch of fescues, Tatary buckwheat, plains lovegrass and wild oats: the rooting networks of these grasses seek out and trap moisture and nutrients. Dead roots are broken down and added to the store of humus.
在草原令人迷惑的表面草层下是尺把深的土壤，其中富含了多少万年来肥沃的沉积，那是绿草运用短暂但却火热的夏季骄阳散发的能量，以光合作用转化生成的有机物。狗尾大麦、针茅草、各种羊毛草、鞑靼荞麦, 平原垂爱草与野燕麦：这些野草的根系四处伸展，找到水分与养料并把它们存积下来。死去的根分解，进一步增加了腐殖质储量。

Above ground, some grasses of the steppe, like needlegrass, are sod-forming: they put out surface runners that trap moisture and smother bare ground. Forbs—the non-grasses such as herbs and wildflowers—bring up nutrients from deeper down, or, if they are leguminous, fix in the soil essential nitrogen from the air. An ungrazed summer pasture is no monotony: it is a riot of rippling grasses and flowering gentian, cinquefoil, yellow-rattle, motherwort and Syrian rue.
在地面之上，草原上的有些野草，如针叶草，能形成草皮：它们靠伸展的藤蔓遮盖赤裸的土地保持湿气。野菜与野花一类非禾非草类植物或者从更深的土层中汲取养料，或者作为豆科植物从空气中吸收氮元素，在土壤中形成必要的氮肥。未经放牧的夏季牧场绝非孤寂之地，而是一片热闹非凡的景象：绿草之波随风飘动，龙胆植物、委陵菜、佛甲草、益母草和叙利亚芸香鲜花怒放。

In his history of grass, Graham Harvey describes the prairie, America's equivalent of the Asian steppe, before settler s waged war on it by overgrazing or ploughing it up: it was a “biological powerhouse, rich in wildlife and with a productivity no modern farming system could match.” Inner Asia's steppes may never have boasted the 60m bison that white settlers on the prairies estimated there to be in the 1860s, quickly slaughtered to near-extinction. But rock-carved reliefs 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) up on one mountain pass in the Altai mountains, near to the modern Mongolian border with Russia and China, depict a presumably Turkic race following great herds of wild animals on their migration—gazelles, argalli sheep, reindeer, wild horses—much as American-Indians followed the bison.
在他有关草的历史的著作中，格拉姆•哈维（Graham Harvey）描述了在西部开发者以过分放牧与开垦荒地对其宣战之前，与亚洲草原相当的美国大草原的景象：这里“生机盎然，触目之处都是野生动物，任何现代农场体系都无法与这样的生物繁殖场的繁殖能力相比。”内陆亚洲大草原或许从来就不像美国大草原那样富有北美野牛——据白人开发者19世纪60年代估计有6000万头，但却在无情的屠戮之下很快就濒临绝种。但在距今蒙古和中俄两国边境不远处的阿尔泰山脉中间，在一座11000英尺（3350米）的山峰上发现了浮雕岩画，上面描绘了可能是突厥种族的人们追随着庞大野兽群的迁徙，这些野兽包括小羚羊, 盘羊，馴鹿和野马，这与美洲印第安人追随野牛的迁徙十分相似。

Until as recently as the 1960s, Inner Mongolia, by then part of the People's Republic of China, still had the huge herds of gazelle and wild ass that so astounded European explorers-cum-hunters at the end of the 19th century. Even today, the rolling empty eastern steppe of Mongolia proper looks like the prairie ocean must have done when it caused American settlers, heading west in their prairie schooners, to gasp and wonder about carrying on. The range of gazelle has shrunk greatly in recent decades, but in this part of the country 1.5m of them still graze, in migratory herds that run right round the horizon. Such is the biological powerhouse of the steppe.
直到上世纪60年代，那时已是中华人民共和国一部分的内蒙古还存在着大群小羚羊与野驴，它们曾让19世纪末的欧洲探险家兼猎人们大为震惊。即使在今天，起伏空旷的蒙古东部内陆草原看上去也与美国大草原的无际海洋非常类似。这一海洋一定曾让美国开发者们有同样的感触：他们乘坐着草原大篷车挺进西疆，一路上目瞪口呆，考虑着要不要就地安家，不再西进。近几十年来，小羚羊的分布区域已经大为缩小，但在这个国家的这一部分还生存着150万头小羚羊，它们过着漂泊迁徙的群居生活，不曾消失在人类目所能及的地平线上。正是内陆草原的繁衍环境让它们尚能生存。

It is a powerhouse that humans have long tapped by raising livestock; indeed, it is on the steppe that the sheep, the goat, the camel and the horse were all first domesticated. The rest of the world soon got to hear about the horse-bound nomads' success at domestication, particularly after the invention of the compound bow made of horn, and of the stirrup, which allowed the mounted nomadic warrior to fire behind him and then escape—the deadly Parthian shot. Huns originating from modern-day Mongolia struck fear into the fifth-century Roman Empire. From the 13th century, the Mongols founded dynasties in China, Persia and India. Stirrings on the steppe sent ripples around the globe. Edward Gibbon, in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, writes that:
长期以来，人类在饲养家畜时就一直在开发利用这种繁衍环境；的确，绵羊、山羊、骆驼和马就都是在内陆亚洲草原上最先驯化成功的。世界上其他地方很快就得知骑马的游牧民族驯化动物成功的消息了，特别是在用动物的角做成的复合弓和马蹬发明以后他们知道得更快，因为这两项发明使得骑马的游牧民族战士可以回头射箭然后逃走——这就是致命的回马箭。起源于今天蒙古的匈奴让五世纪的罗马帝国惊惶万状；蒙古人从13世纪起在中国、波斯和印度建立了王朝。来自内陆草原的震荡在全世界掀起了波澜。爱德华•吉本（Edward Gibbon）在他的《罗马帝国衰亡史》（Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire）中写道：

In the year 1238 the inhabitants of Gothia (Sweden) and Frise were prevented by their fear of the Tartars from sending, as usual, their ships to the herring-fishery on the coast of England; and as there was no exportation, forty or fifty of these fish were sold for a shilling. It is whimsical enough that the orders of a Mogul khan, who reigned on the borders of China, should have lowered the price of herrings in the English market.
“由于惧怕鞑靼人，1238年，约特兰（Gothia）（瑞典）人和弗利兹（Frise）人无法像通常那样向英格兰沿海的鲱鱼渔场派遣运鱼船队。由于没有出口，四五十条鲱鱼在那里只能卖到1先令。令人难以置信的是，统治中国边境的一位蒙古可汉的命令竟能压低英格兰市场的鲱鱼价格。”

Genghis Khan's homeland is in modern-day Mongolia, a country the size of France and Spain combined that sits at the heart of Inner Asia, with perhaps the world's finest and most extensive remaining grasslands. Its pastoralists no longer strike fear near and far, but their household techniques for raising livestock would, in their essentials, be recognisable to a Mongol from the great conqueror's time. Pastoral nomads in Mongolia still use a felt tent with wooden frame, a ger, which keeps out the heat in summer and protects from the cold in winter—Mongolia's continental climate has the world's greatest extremes of temperature. A ger is perfectly round not only to create the greatest space out of the least material, but also to stand up to the fierce katabatic winds, which whistle round it rather than topple it over.
成吉思汗的家乡在现在的蒙古，它坐落在亚洲内陆的中心，大小与法国与西班牙加起来相当，拥有的草原或许以其肥美与广阔称雄当世。蒙古牧民已不再让远近四方胆寒，但人们普遍认为，从本质上说，他们饲养家畜的家庭技艺一脉相承于那位伟大征服者时代的蒙古人。蒙古的游牧者还在使用一种木框架毡质帐篷，俗称蒙古包，用它阻挡夏季的炎热与冬季的酷寒。蒙古的大陆性气候具有世界上最极端的温差。蒙古包是浑圆的，这不仅可以用最少的材料获得最大的空间，而且也可以抵挡狂暴的下行疾风，让它只能在蒙古包四周怒号，却无法吹翻毡包。

The social divisions of the ger—left as you enter for the guests, opposite the door for the family head, right for the rest of the family—are unchanged, and so are the divisions of labour. Men are responsible for the raising of livestock: their herding, castrating and slaughter, and (a job that the younger men relish) the breaking-in of horses. Women oversee the household, the raising of children, the milking and the making of dairy products: yogurt, butter, hard cheese, milk-vodka and the noble airag, fermented mare 's milk.
蒙古包内的社会划分一直未变：家里客人们的位置在进门左首，正对着门的是家长的位置，右边是家中其他成员的地方。同样未变的是劳动分工。男人负责畜养牲畜：放牧、阉割、宰杀；还有训练马匹，这是小伙子们特别爱干的活。妇女负责照管家务、养鸡、挤奶、制作奶制品：酸奶、奶油、干奶酪、牛奶伏特加和高贵的airag，即发酵的马奶。

The 27m livestock in Mongolia—the cow has been added to the mix, with yaks on higher pastures—outnumber the population tenfold. Nomadic pastoralists care for the bulk of these animals. Indeed, nowhere is the economy so tied to nomadic pastoralism as in Mongolia. And never have so many Mongolians—a third of the population, nearly double the number a decade ago—practised it as today.
蒙古拥有2700万牲畜，是它人口数的十倍。这些牲畜主要由游牧牧民们照管，其中奶牛分散在各处牧场，而牦牛则在海拔较高的牧场放牧。确实，世界上没有哪个地方的经济像蒙古这样与游牧业紧密相关，也从来没有今天这样多的蒙古人——全国人口的三分之一——从事这一行业。

It is tempting to regard nomads as the medieval Europeans and Chinese did: fierce, free and independent of a constraining, higher authority. Such an impression is reinforced by the sight of any Mongolian herder at sunset galloping back to his camp, in full song; by the Mongolian marriage ceremony, which is a ritualised form of abduction; or by the sight of two young lovers' horses by a cave or concealing rock, the man's urgaa (his pole- lassoo) stuck in the ground to demand privacy but presumably also to boast of sexual conquest.
人们会很容易地像中世纪的欧洲人和中国人那样看待游牧牧民：凶猛、自由自在、犭虫立于专制的高层当局。当你看到任何一个蒙古牧民在落日的余辉照耀下引吭高歌，拍马飞驰返回帐篷的时候；当你看到以仪式化的抢亲形式举行的蒙古婚礼的时候；或者当你看到，两个年轻情人的马匹在一座岩洞外或遮掩他们的大石旁，男子汉的套马圈（urgaa）插在地上以示隐私，但可能也是在夸耀性征服的时候，这种印象会进一步加强。


A giant steppe for a man; a small steppe for a horde Alamy
这座草原对一个牧民来说很大，对成群的牧民来说很小

Mongolia's political history certainly seems to support a romantic notion of their independence. Mongolia owes its political existence to a struggle by a pastoral society against the encroachments of an agrarian one, as David Sneath, a pastoral specialist at Cambridge University, points out. In the late 19th century, pastoralists in Inner Mongolia failed to stop the appropriation of the best land by Chinese agriculturalists; that failure prompted an armed struggle—led by many who had fled from Inner Mongolia—for the independence of Outer Mongolia. After over two centuries of subjugation by China's Manchu rulers, and the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Outer Mongolia declared independence. A revolutionary Communist state, the second ever, was created in 1924, under Soviet tutelage; it set about the destruction of feudal and monastic seats of power.
从蒙古的政治史来看，他们对犭虫立的浪漫见解当然是有道理的。正如剑桥大学的牧业专家大卫•斯尼斯（David Sneath）指出的那样，蒙古得以在政治上存在，靠的是游牧社会反抗农耕社会侵入的斗争。19世纪末，内蒙古游牧主义者未能阻止中国农耕主义者占有最好的土地；这次失败引发了一次由许多内蒙古流亡者领导的争取外蒙古犭虫立的武装斗争。在中国的满洲统治者征服蒙古二百多年后，清政府于1911年寿终正寝，此后外蒙古宣布犭虫立。世界上第二个共产党革命政权在苏联指导下于1924年成立；这一政权接着便着手摧毁封建与神权统治。

With the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago, Mongolians embraced liberal democracy with gusto (albeit declaring the illiberal Genghis Khan as their refound hero). The Russians, whose stooges instigated genocidal purges in Mongolia of Buddhist lamas, intellectuals and rich herders in the 1930s, have largely been forgiven; the distrust of Chinese intentions remains as visceral as ever.
随着苏联十年前的解体，蒙古由衷地接受了自由民主，尽管它宣布，专制的成吉思汗是他们归来的英雄。虽然俄国人的傀儡在19世纪30年代曾对蒙古的佛教喇嘛、知识分子和富裕牧民采取了种族灭绝式的清洗，但蒙古人大体上谅解了俄国人；但蒙古对中国的不信任还和以前一样根深蒂固。

Today, the state and its citizens, even townspeople, still identify with nomadism and the horse. Witness the minister and the ambassador who, besuited, jumped up on horseback for a gallop after lunch with this correspondent just outside the capital, Ulan Bator, before heading back to the office. The official Mongolian tourism website, which lists ten reasons for visiting the country, says it all. Reason number six is “No fences”. You can still ride the 3,000 kilometres (1,900 miles) from west to east without encountering a single man-made impediment. Mongolia is a strange thing: a free-market economy with public ownership of land. But how long can the two continue to co-exist?
今天的蒙古，从国家到公民，甚至城市居民，都还与游牧和马紧密相关。可以看看这一例证：身穿西装的部长与大使在首都乌兰巴托城外与本记者共进午餐，然后跳上马背，疾驰一番之后才回办公室。列举了访问该国十大原因的官方蒙古旅游网站把这一问题阐述得很好。原因之六是“没有围墙”。你仍旧可以从西向东骑马横驰3000公里（1900英里），却完全不会碰到一处人工障碍物。蒙古是一个奇怪的国度：它拥有自由市场经济，但土地归国家所有。但这两者还会共存多久呢？

The call of the wild 自然的召唤

To understand how land ownership touches nomadic life, however, it is important to unpack the exaggerated notion of the nomads' freedom from higher authority. For pastoralism has always depended upon a political authority to regulate access to pastures. As William of Rubreck, a 13th-century Franciscan monk, put it:
然而，为了弄清土地所有是怎样影响游牧生活的，重要的一点是分析一个言过其实的说法，即游牧牧民不受高层当局管辖，因为游牧业一直都需要依赖某个政权机构来确立牧场的准入规则。13世纪的天主教方济会修士，茹伯列克的威廉姆（William of Rubreck）是这样说的：

Every captain, according to whether he has more or fewer men under him, knows the limit of his pastorage and where to feed his flocks in winter, summer, spring and autumn.
“根据他手下人手的多寡，每一个头人都知道他的牧养限度，知道冬、夏、春、秋各季要在哪里喂养他的牲畜。”

Under the Manchus, Mongolia was split into 83 districts called hoshuu, (meaning banner), within which herdsmen were assigned to smaller units, sum (arrow), and sub-units, bag. As Mr Sneath says:
在满清政权统治下，蒙古被划分为83个称为“旗”的地区，旗内的牧民又被指定属于小一些的单位“箭”和更小的单位“袋”，如斯尼斯所述：

The territory of the hoshuu generally contained a number of different areas of pasture used in winter, spring, summer and autumn. These seasonal pastures were divided between various sums and bags, and within these areas the individual households had customary use-rights to particular pastures. In effect this meant that each family owned no land as such but had a recognised area of pasture that it used in the different seasons, and of these the rights to the exclusive use of winter pasture (ovoljoo) tended to be the most strictly enforced.
“旗的范围内通常包括一定数量的不同牧区，可以分别在冬、春、夏、秋季使用。这些季节性牧场分配给各个箭和袋，而在这些区域内，各个家庭按习惯拥有对某些牧场的使用权。这就实际上意味着每个家庭都不拥有土地，但却有一个大家承认的牧区，用于不同季节的放牧。在这些牧场中，对专门用于冬季的牧场（蒙语ovoljoo）的权利实施一般是最严格的。”

It was not such a great leap from the Manchu system to the pastoral collectives under socialism, called negdel, that were set up in the late 1940s and 1950s. In feudal days, most herders looked after animals belonging either to aristocratic or to monastic masters, while raising livestock for private consumption. Under collectivisation, the state was the master; a number of private livestock were still allowed. The shift from collectivisation to a market economy, Mr Sneath argues, was in many ways a far more wrenching change, one that undermined or destroyed institutions that had long sustained nomadic pastoralism, particularly ones that spread risk and reaped economies of scale.
上世纪的40年代末与50年代，满洲的体系在社会主义制度下的牧业合作社（蒙语negdel）建立时并没有发生重大改变。在封建制度下，大部分牧民照顾的牲畜属于贵族或喇嘛院，但也饲养供个人享用的家畜。在合作社制度下，国家是牲畜的主人，同时也允许拥有一定数量的自留牲畜。斯尼斯认为，在许多方面，由合作社经济向市场经济的转化是一个痛苦得多的变化，是一个会危及甚至摧毁长期以来令游牧制度得以保持的习俗的变化，而遭受打击尤为惨重的，是那些通过分散风险而取得规模经济效益的习俗。

With democracy, the 300-odd negdel were, at their members' insistence, disbanded and turned into marketing companies. Herds were privatised and the two-dozen huge state farms dissolved. Prices were freed. The western development specialists who flooded in predicted that market signals would allocate resources more efficiently, allowing dynamic enterprise—including in pastoralism—to break free from moribund old structures.
通过民主议决，大约300个牧业合作社在其成员坚持下解散，转而成为营运公司。畜群私有化了，二十多个庞大的国有牧场也解散了。价格放开了。蜂拥而入的西方发展专家预测，市场信号将会更为有效地分配资源，使包括牧业在内的有活力的企业得以摆脱陈规旧则的束缚。

It did not happen that way. Real income per head in Mongolia fell by half between 1990 and 1992, according to the World Bank, and by another third the next year. By 1998, a third of Mongolians were living below the poverty line, compared with none, at least officially, in socialist days. In part, the decline was down to the collapse of trade with the Soviet block: new trade with China filled only part of the hole. It was also due to the loss of Soviet aid, which supplied perhaps a third of GDP. Western donors made up much of the aid gap (Mongolians get among the highest number of aid dollars per head in the world), but to dismayingly small effect.
以后的情况并非如此。根据世界银行统计，从1990到1992年，蒙古的人均实际收入下降了一半，下一年再次下降三分之一。至1998年，三分之一的蒙古人生活在贫困线之下，而在社会主义时期，至少根据官方数字，没有人生活在贫困线之下。收入下降的部分原因是与苏联集团的贸易瓦解，而与中国的新贸易填补了这一缺口的一部分。失去了苏联的援助也是一个原因，这一援助或许相当于GDP的三分之一。在援助方面，西方施主填补了很大的缺口；但尽管蒙古人均获援美元数居世界前列，但其收益却小得可怜。

In the pastoral sector, the services that the negdel provided for herders under socialism—the regulation of access to pastures, the upkeep of wells for watering animals, the provision of winter hay, a collective truck for transport to fresh seasonal pastures, and much more—collapsed, and little replaced them. Herding became more atomised. People increasingly took up subsistence herding to escape joblessness in the towns. Traditional rights of use to certain pastures were eroded, as Robin Mearns of the World Bank puts it, by a spirit of free-for-all.
在社会主义时期，畜牧业内合作社向牧民提供了一系列服务：规划牧场准入、维修牲畜饮水用水井、提供冬季干牧草、提供向新鲜的季节性牧场转运人畜的合作社卡车、等等等等不胜枚举。但这些服务顷刻瓦解，替代服务又很少。放牧进一步分散经营。为避免失业，越来越多的城里人从事生计牧养。用世界银行的罗宾•米恩斯（Robin Mearns）的话来说，某些牧场的传统使用权被一种“人人有份且免费”的精神所侵蚀。

Without decent transport on Mongolia's roadless steppe, a ready market for livestock and processed goods was no longer assured, particularly for remote herders. The result was great hardship. The herders' response was to fall back on small, uneconomic networks of family or friends, to breed ever more animals with less regard to their quality (numbers rose to a record 34m in 1999), and to move closer to towns. This concentration has caused pastures near to the towns to be overgrazed, and more distant ones to be under-used. There is a desperate need, says Mr Mearns, to restore mobility.
在没有道路的蒙古大草原上，没有像样的运输就意味着再也无法保证牲畜和成品的现成市场，对偏远地区的牧民来说尤其如此。艰难岁月由此而来。牧民们对此的应对措施是：退而组织亲友间低经济效益的小型网络，增加牲畜的饲养头数但不考虑质量（蒙古的牲畜总数于1999年达到创纪录的3400万头），并迁往距离城镇较近的地区。这种集中经营使靠近城镇的牧场放牧过度，而偏远些的地区的牧场却放牧不足。米恩斯认为，蒙古亟需恢复流动性。

great swathes of Mongolia were hit by drought, and by different types of zud, winter phenomena that prevent animals feeding either because of ice crusts or heavy snow. Some 7m animals died, wiping out many families' entire herds and so their livelihood. Under collectivisation, with fewer beasts, greater mobility and the state delivery of supplementary feed, such a disaster would not have happened.
史无前例的一系列天灾发生在1999年夏到2002年初：蒙古大片地区遭到干旱和各种雪灾（蒙古语zud，即冬季发生的冰霜或者大雪，导致牲畜无食的现象）袭击。大约700万头牲畜死亡，许多家庭丧失了全部牲畜，也就是一切生计。在集体化的时代，牲畜较少，流动性较高，又有国家发送补充食物，这样的灾祸是不会发生的。

The pastoral disappointments of the 1990s have led to a couple of alarming responses. The first is to dismiss pastoralism as a backward pursuit, an embarrassment to notions of modernisation rather than a proven response to a harsh environment. The governor of Dornod, the easternmost province, says that herders “get in the way” of his ambitious plans for resource extraction. These include not just mining, but also inviting Chinese agriculturalists to farm great swathes of steppe.
上世纪90年代令人失望的畜牧业导致两种令人不安的对策。第一种视放牧业为落后的经济手段，是对现代化理念的障碍，而不认为它是对当地严酷环境久经事实证明的对策。蒙古最东部的东方省（Dornod）的省长认为，畜牧业“阻挡了”他开采资源的宏伟计划。这里不单指的是采矿，还包括邀请中国农业专家在大片草原地区发展农耕。

The second response, more sympathetic to herding but as disturbing in its potential consequences, is promoted by, among others, the Asian Development Bank. This argues that market reforms in pastoralism cannot work without the private ownership of land. Who can argue with that? Without ownership, herders have no incentive to protect land from degradation and to invest in land improvements. The theory of the tragedy of the commons is well-known: it is in the interests of any individual to add to his stock of animals on common land, even if that leads to further degradation.
倡导第二项对策的包括亚洲发展银行；他们对畜牧业持更为同情的态度，但这一对策会带来的后果同样令人不安。持此观点的人认为，如果私人没有土地所有权，畜牧业的市场改革便无法奏效。谁能反驳这一点？没有所有权，牧民就没有保护土地不使退化、并投资改良土地的积极性。公地悲剧的理论人尽皆知：在公有土地上增加个人牲畜的数量对任何个人都有利，哪怕让地力进一步衰减也在所不惜。

Enter the free-market fundamentalists
引入自由市场的基本要义

Already, a 1995 land law, only recently being implemented, allows herders to apply for the rights to use certain winter shelters. Many interpret this as entailing the rights to winter pastures around those shelters too. Rich herders have rushed to stake their claims, leaving poorer ones at a loss. A new land law, passed in mid-2002, sensibly gives Mongolians the right to own urban plots of land. But many see such ownership eventually being applied to pastures, and are laying claim now to the best ones. “Traditional unwritten law is not working any more,” says Batbuyan, a specialist in pastoralism at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences. “Younger herders don't really know the traditions. They want things written down.”
在1995年即已存在，但只在最近方始实施的一项土地法已经允许牧民申请某些冬季保护地的使用权。许多人将之解释为同时包括保护地周围的冬季牧场的使用权。富裕牧民争先恐后前往申请，贫苦些的牧民只能徒呼无奈。2002年中期通过的一项新土地法合理地允许蒙古人拥有小块乡间土地的所有权。但许多人认为这种所有权最终会适用于牧场，因此正在申请获得最好的牧场的所有权。“传统的非成文法已经不再有用了，”蒙古科学院的一位畜牧业专家巴特布彦（Batbuyan）说，“年轻些的牧民其实并不知道那些传统是什么样子。他们要的是白纸黑字写下来的东西。”


Alamy 牧靴

Yet privatisation, say pastoral experts (though not most economists), would be a disaster, undermining centuries of institutional best practice. Inner Mongolia offers a cautionary tale. From the 1980s, pasture was, in effect, privatised through contracting-out. One justification was the threat of a tragedy of the commons. Fencing has gone up to delineate the private land. As a result, Inner Mongolia and Mongolia are distinguishable from the air: up to 40% of Inner Mongolia's steppe is reckoned to be degraded; less than 10% is in Mongolia.
但畜牧业专家（尽管不是大部分经济学家）认为，土地私有有害于千百年来最好的传统操作，将是一场灾难。内蒙古的先例让人谨慎。从20世纪80年代起，内蒙古的牧场实际上就通过包产到户私有化了。对此的一种辩解基于公地悲剧的威胁。人们筑起围墙，标志土地的私有。结果，从飞机上就可以看出内外蒙古间的差别：40%的内蒙古内陆草原退化，而外蒙古只有10%。

Pastoral households, or even small groups of connected households, called khotail, form too small a unit to cope with the unpredictable weather and pasture conditions that characterise nomadic life. Proper mobility (sometimes the ability to move over 100 kilometres to a new pasture), and flexible access, are crucial to avoiding livestock losses and ensuring healthy herds. Private herds might one day gain the scale of former collective or feudal herds, but that is a long way off. Of some 275,000 households that own livestock, fewer than 1,000 have more than 1,000 animals. In the meantime, ways need to be found to make herding more co-operative.
人们把游牧家庭或几个有亲戚关系的家庭组成的小组称为khotail，这样的单位太小，无法应付无从预测的气候和牧场情况，而这种情况正是游牧生活的特点。要防止牲畜的损失并保证牲畜健康，适当的流动能力（有时需要迁移100公里以上前往新牧场）与灵活的牧场准入是关键。或许有一天，私人畜群的规模可与过去的合作社甚至封建领主的畜群比美，但这一天为时尚远。现在共有27万5千个家庭拥有牲畜，但存栏数超过1000头的不到1000家。必须在扩大私人畜群的同时找出加强牧民合作的方法。

One priority is to improve access. Outside Choibalsan, Dornod's capital, one herder, Ovgii, said he moved a year ago from the better pastures around Sumber, 300 kilometres to the east, because he can get more for his livestock: 40,000 tugrugs ($39) for a cow in Choibalsan, compared with 26,000 tugrugs in Sumber. Improved roads would lessen the discrepancy, and encourage more of the private co-operatives that are only now starting to take off, with groups of herders pooling resources for marketing and transport. Better roads would also improve distant herders' terms of trade, by lowering the price of flour, tea and Chinese consumer goods. Already, better information about market prices of produce such as cashmere, broadcast by radio, improves herders' bargaining power when traders come to buy wool.
一项当务之急是改善交通。在东方省首府乔巴山市外的一位牧民奥菲（Ovgii）说，他是一年前从东面300公里外苏木贝尔（Sumber）附近一处更好些的牧场搬过来的，因为他的牲畜在这里可以卖出更高的价格：在乔巴山，一头母牛值4万图格里克（tugrugs）（39美元），而在苏木贝尔只值2万6千图格里克。道路的改善可以减少这种差异，并鼓励更多地进行一种刚刚起步的私人合作，即几组牧民共享资源，共同营销与运输。更好的道路会降低面粉、茶叶和中国消费品的价格，能让偏远牧民们在交易时处于更有利的地位。收音机已经在广播羊绒一类产品的市场价格，这就让牧民们有了更可靠的消息来源，从而在商人们前来购买羊毛时更有效地讨价还价。

Meanwhile, says the World Bank's Mr Mearns, herders need to share better the risks that collectives used to bear. Partly, this involves organising fodder provision, water supplies and pasture management. It also means spreading financial risk. One idea being developed with World Bank support is livestock insurance, with pay-outs calculated from data on a district's livestock mortality, weather and (using satellite imagery) vegetation growth. If growth failed, pay-outs to herders would be based on their livestock holdings.
世界银行的米恩斯认为，牧民们同时需要更好地分担过去由牧业合作社承担的风险。这跟组织饲料和水的供给和牧场管理有一定关系。这也意味着分散金融风险。世界银行支持的一个想法是为牲畜投保，赔付金额通过一个地区的牲畜死亡率、气候和通过卫星图像测知的牧草生长情况计算。如果牧草失收，对牧民的赔付金额将取决于他们的牲畜存栏数。

Gankhuayg, a young former soum governor from Khentii province, argues for sweeping administrative changes, reshaping the artificial boundaries of the 300 soum set up under socialism, or even doing away with many of them; in effect, recreating hoshuu, the banners of old. That, advocates say, would better reflect the way herding is more intensive nearer the towns. It would also allow for more traditional roaming in remoter areas, including reciprocal access, for something approaching the large herds of former times. “The people who remain in those remote places,” says a Mongolian specialist in pastoralism, “will be Mongolia's toughest.”
肯特省（Khentii）一位年轻的前地区长官甘克华伊（Gankhuayg）支持全面行政改革、重新规划社会主义制度下建立的300个“箭”的人为边界，甚至取消其中许多箭；这将在实际上恢复旧有的“旗”。倡导这一政策的人们认为，这将更好地反映城镇周围游牧业更为集中这一实际情况。这也会让人们在更偏远的地区采取更为传统的游牧方式，包括牧场的相互准入，从而逐步产生过去时代的那种大型畜群。一位蒙古畜牧业专家说：“始终留在偏远地区的牧民将成为蒙古民族最坚实的脊梁。”
     来源  http://www.ecocn.org/thread-65102-1-1.html