Coexisting with uncertainty
New research from our Himalayan Regenerative Fashion Living Lab partners Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) explores how Changpa herders think about resilience and adaptation.
The Changpa have historically practiced nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralism on the Changthang plateau in eastern Ladakh, within a complex web of human, animal and landscape relationships. Climate change and livelihood diversification are rapidly reshaping land use, rangeland ecology, patterns of mobility and local adaptation responses.
Surveys and ethnographic fieldwork last year in Changthang aimed to find out how Changpa herders think about and implement resilience and everyday adaptation. Results show that resilience is not merely understood as absorbing shock and recovering – but as a place-based and dynamic process of living with uncertainty.
“Rather than a spectacular response to crisis, resilience here is the slow work of everyday life.
Modernity and tradition, hardship and hope, change and care get woven together as communities adapt and respond, and as livelihoods diversify into new domains. Many forms of knowledge and ways of being coexist and inform pastoral life in Changthang. Herders continue to move, to renegotiate obligations, to remain in relation because there is, quite simply, no alternative to doing so. Transience is an essential condition of life here, as ubiquitous as the landscape itself. Flocks will continue to thin and grow, younger generations will leave and maybe, return, monasteries will call new gatherings for rain and the language people use to understand climate and change will continue to evolve.”
Researcher Sidak Kaur
A key finding from the research is the critical gap between on the ground, relational practices and external interventions. Co-produced, place-based adaptation pathways should be used that build on, rather than displace existing pastoral capacities and knowledge systems. The NCF team continues to build on this work, and the research provides clear ongoing directions for the CBA Living Lab.
The research was presented at the “Pastoralism in India: Changes and Continuity” Conference held in IIT Hyderabad in May 2026, and a book chapter and academic paper is forthcoming.
