Integrated Migrant-Pasture Systems in Montane Agropastoralist Communities: Untangling Interactions of Environmental Change, Livestock, Remittances, and Left-Behind Children

Environmentally-driven migrants are estimated to increase to 200 million globally by 2050. As environmental changes disrupt livelihoods, families use labor migration as a human resilience strategy. Migrant remittances can affect family income and relations, children’s well-being, and pasture dynamics and soil quality, but we lack information on how this flow of people and resources affects the dynamics of integrated socio-environmental systems (SESs) in origin communities. This project contributes generalizable knowledge about how migration dynamics alter fragile SESs by focusing on Kyrgyzstan as a study case: its agropastoral livelihoods, labor migration, environmental and demographic changes characterize much of the developing world. We ask: (1) How do changes in soil quality and pasture productivity impact migration, given mediating factors such as remittances, household dynamics, and social networks in montane agropastoralist communities? (2) How are left-behind children impacted by migration and changes in pasture productivity? (3) How do left-behind children and migrants affect pasture productivity through remittances and livestock investment relative to community-based management? (4) How should livestock systems be designed to build resilient and sustainable SESs? System responses and uncertainties will be predicted under several socio-environmental scenarios. This project aims to be a model for exploring the 21st-century climate-driven migrations undertaken by rural communities across the globe and their consequences.