Resilience Thinking in Reindeer Husbandry

Abstract

Resilience expresses the capacity of a social-ecological system to adapt to, absorb, or withstand perturbations and other stressors so that the system remains. Reindeer nomadic husbandry is a coupled social-ecological system that sustains resilience by interacting with the animals and environment: either the herders adjust their actions to animal behavior or change this behavior in ways that suit the herd and pastures. Stressors and shocks affecting Sámi reindeer husbandry are, for instance, sudden warm air temperatures with subsequent snow melting and freezing in winter, bad grazing conditions, loss of grazing lands, and even socio-economic reforms. All these are sudden, unprepared, or forced changes. Climate change resilience includes using reindeer herders’ Indigenous knowledge of selective breeding by maintaining different phenotypes of reindeer such as non-productive and castrated animals in the herd. Nevertheless, in Sámi reindeer husbandry in Norway today, low numbers of male reindeer and the absence of castrated animals challenge the herders’ resilience coping strategies. This chapter discusses factors that constrain resilience in herding societies, contribute to the transformation of reindeer husbandry and the erosion of resilience in the herding society.