- The Gurung people of Nepal’s Himalayas manage fragile alpine pastures through the ‘thiti’ system, which sets annual guidelines for rotational grazing, forest use and herb collection.
- Livestock owners pay small per-animal fees that finance habitat protection and support herders, ensuring resources are used fairly.
- Conservationists view thiti as a proven Indigenous approach to protecting high-altitude grasslands threatened by climate change.
- Out-migration, shrinking pasturelands, tourism growth and lack of legal recognition are weakening the tradition.
As the monsoon clouds recede in Nepal in late September, herders Karma Gurung and Dhana Raj Ghale, who have spent three summer months at an elevation of 4,044 meters (13,270 feet) above sea level, are returning to lower lands with their cattle herds.
In Nepal’s rugged Himalayan mountains, life follows the rhythm of the seasons. During the short summers, pastoralists move their livestock to high-elevation pastures where melted snow reveals fresh, nutritious grass and herbs, while in winter, they descend to lower valleys to escape the bitter cold.
“We have descended to an elevation of 3,100 meters [10,170 ft], and we will reach our village in Ghermu at 1,140 meters [3,740 ft] elevation by November 1,” Gurung tells Mongabay over the phone.
Their journey was planned in March, when around 300 households from Ghermu village in Marsyangdi Rural Municipality, Lamjung district, gathered on the edge of their alpine pastures. They were there for an annual age-old tradition: deciding how and where to allow livestock to graze for the year under the guidance of thiti, a Gurung community institution passed down through generations.
“This system has guided our community for generations,” says Ghanashyam Ghale, an elected ward chair of the municipality. “It allows us to live in this harsh environment while conserving our natural resources.”
As climate change threatens alpine grasslands, conservationists are pointing to the centuries-old thiti system, which combines rotational grazing, collective decision-making and community-managed conservation funds as a strategy to safeguard these key ecosystems. Without thiti, elders warn, hundreds of livestock would roam the hills unchecked, quickly degrading the fragile high-altitude pastures.
Within the Sanjapu Sayakuriya thiti based in Ghermu, there are about 900 cows and buffaloes, and roughly 6,000 goats and sheep. Like any other thiti, when the community members meet in March each year, they decide how to regulate grazing lands, forest use and the collection of precious Himalayan herbs. They also discuss how to move livestock such as cows, buffaloes, sheep and goats between the highlands and valley pastures according to the season. Owners contribute a small annual fee per animal, which goes into a community fund used for conservation activities and supporting shepherds in the highlands.
For example, Sanjapu Sayakuriya thiti collects 5 Nepali rupees (¢3.5) per goat or sheep, and 10 rupees (¢7) per cow or buffalo. The villagers also provide food grains to the shepherds who take care of the cattle in the pasturelands. When someone is poor or from a low-income household, they receive help from the thiti fund, for building houses and other such expenses.
Currently, Sanjapu Sayakuriya thiti has a fund of about 700,000 rupees ($5,000), which is used for community needs. Every year, the villagers choose a chairperson to lead the thiti.
With steep, rocky terrain and limited farmland, most families rely on animal husbandry as their main livelihood, growing only hardy crops like potatoes and millet. Tourism is creating new sources of income, but climate change is disrupting snowfall patterns and seasonal cycles, making traditional grazing and farming schedules increasingly unpredictable. Similarly, the alpine grasslands, also home to iconic wildlife such as snow leopards (Panthera uncia) and musk deer (Moschus chrysogaster), face the threat of encroachment of flora and fauna hitherto limited to lower elevations.
In such fragile areas, a lack of coordination and synchronization could spell doom for the ecosystem, as Gurung elders realized early on, says Man Bahadur Gurung from Naso village, Manang. “Without the thiti, there would be no proper system for grassland use or conservation,” he says. “If there were no thiti, people would take their animals to the forest and pastures whenever they wanted. This would cause overgrazing and a shortage of grass.” That’s why anyone who breaks the rules has to pay a penalty.
There are no official records of the number of thiti groups nor the size of land they manage in Nepal. Arjun Gurung, chair of the Marsyangdi Rural Municipality, estimates that more than 200 groups are active in Manang and Lamjung districts.
The thiti practice and its impacts have also been documented through research. “Thiti is indeed a socio-cultural institution for sustainable management of resources in the Himalayas,” says researcher Jiban Poudel, who conducted >an ethnographic study spanning a decade in Nhāson Valley, located in the southeast of Manang district. In his study, Poudel found that, all households grow the same crops on designated fields: this not only regulates the village agro-economy but also supports crop diversification and reduces risks from domestic animals, wildlife or birds damaging fields. This system helps ensure fair use of limited resources in a short growing season and reflects the community’s long-standing cultural values and risk-averse strategy, Poudel says.
The thiti has also received informal recognition from the country’s officials. Dipak Prasad Pandit, from Lamjung’s District Forest Office, says that the knowledge of local people and their practices, such as thiti, has supported conservation work. “Wherever there are settlements of Gurung communities, thiti is still practiced, and it reflects their own Indigenous knowledge,” he says.
“As much as possible, we try to incorporate their traditional knowledge as guidelines in community forests. We have to conserve their traditional knowledge.”
The Himalayan Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs), the backbone of Nepal’s forest regeneration success, also adhere to thiti. Lalita Gurung, secretary of the Tal CFUG in Manang, says that her group complies with the thiti rules of the community.
Eak Rana, a researcher specializing in forest ecosystem services, says that traditional institutions function in every Nepali Indigenous community under different names. “Indigenous institutions are related to local community knowledge, and there’s their knowledge and system, which [are] very important for conservation at the local level of conservation and biodiversity,” he says.
Challenges to thiti
The thiti system faces several challenges today. One of the main issues is shrinking grazing lands. The expansion of community forestry and cash crop farming has reduced traditional pasture areas, making it difficult for herders to move livestock seasonally as before.
This has especially affected sheep and goat herding, which depends on wider mobility. Modern development, migration and the market economy are also changing lifestyles, reducing people’s interest in continuing age-old systems like thiti. Younger generations often seek alternative livelihoods such as tourism or foreign employment, leaving fewer people to maintain these institutions.
Meghdhan Gurung from Nache CFUG in Manang, says livestock has decreased dramatically in the last three decades due to population migration. However, for those who live in the village, the main income source is livestock. “Tourism is also a major money earner, but they haven’t given up husbandry,” he says. “Even tourists want to eat meat.”
Another challenge is the weakening of customary authority. In the past, this was strongly enforced by village councils, with penalties for violations ensuring fair use of resources. However, with the advent of municipal governments and formal governmental setup, the rules of the thiti can’t be legally enforced, officials tell Mongabay. Arjun Gurung, chair of Marsyangdi Rural Municipality, says that government rules have put Indigenous and traditional institutions in a struggle for survival. “The law does not recognize them, and we fear that Indigenous knowledge may disappear from our community,” he says. “Now, formal institutions such as community forests are active in the villages, but they are not able to meet the real needs of the locals.”
Similarly, imported goods are replacing traditional products like wool, reducing the value of livestock-based livelihoods. As a result, without policy recognition, grazing rights and external support, thiti as a community-based resource management system risks losing its role in sustaining both livelihoods and local ecology.
Popular Gentle, adjunct senior research fellow at Charles Sturt University, Australia, and a researcher on transhumant pastoralism in the context of socioeconomic and climate change, says that traditional and Indigenous practices such as the thiti have been built and refined over generations. The first step towards keeping them relevant is for the government as well as science to acknowledge and recognize them, he says.
He adds that government bodies should document Indigenous knowledge and learn from it for natural resource management. “If the state truly works for the people, then the government must recognize local institutions,” he says.
Cover image: A herder looks after his sheep in Manang. Image courtesy of Sita Ram Guragain.
Citation:
Poudel, J. M. (2020). Thiti as an institution for sustainable management of the resources in the Himalaya. Patan Pragya, 7(1), 173–185. doi:10.3126/pragya.v7i1.35209
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