Google the phrase “environmental criticisms of pastoralism because of the climate emergency” and you get the AI-generated response (January 15 2025):
Environmental criticisms of pastoralism in the context of climate change primarily center around the potential for overgrazing, leading to land degradation, reduced biodiversity, and increased greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, especially when faced with changing weather patterns that can limit access to grazing land and water sources, making pastoralists more vulnerable to climate change impacts.
It is easy to find empirical evidence to counter this narrative. The AI-generated sweep itself goes on to support the well-known finding, e.g.: “Strong community-based management systems can help regulate grazing practices and protect fragile ecosystems.”
I draw attention, however, to what is missing, at least in my reading, from the crisis narrative and its versions but more clearly seen in the counternarratives: technologies.
I
Climate change–more correctly, climate emergency–is a set of threat scenarios increasingly important to the evolving genre variously called “useful fiction” or FICINT (fictional intelligence). While the terms are recent, much has been written about them and their deep roots in past literary developments.
The central idea is to combine very different media–visual as well as written (and written not only in the form of fictional passages with characters and plot, but also incorporating current statistical trends and scholarly findings)–so as to persuade readers that the scenarios portrayed are in fact existential threats and must be acted upon. Much of this genre has been developed in the areas of national security and extreme climate (see Sources below from which points have been extracted here).
For our thought experiment below, what is of special interest is that FICINT
has developed a framework of guidelines that center around the ‘no vaporware’ rule. Vaporware is technology that has been imagined, but is not yet created. To ensure that FicInt remains feasible and grounded in legitimate technology, all technology included in the story must be developed or in development. In addition, FicInt character behavior should be based on past real-world situations. Finally, FicInt should use appropriate facts and research to justify the narrative.
II
So, let’s say that important parts of pastoralist development are full of useful fictions. While some of the associated narratives are orthogonal to others (e.g., models of open-access grazing versus models of the managed commons), others appeal to varieties of different evidence and different trends to support their versions of realistic, near-term threat scenarios.
Focus on those cases where empirical uncertainties are high with respect pastoralist development in the midst of abrupt, extreme climate. For those cases, which narrative(s) to believe?
One answer is to focus on the curious asymmetry between the aforementioned dominant narrative and counternarratives when it comes to the role and presence of technologies in each. The primary technology in the dominant narrative and its versions is the cow, and here negatively as a methane producer and not positively as possessor of that rumen also able to make use of that lignin content in dryland grasses. This technology–and so too for other primary livestock–also move across grasslands and water points that however are, technologically speaking, either there or not.
In contrast and again in my reading, the counternarratives are much more populated by technologies and different socio-technical systems for their operation and management. Even the model of the managed commons can have fences. Cattle boreholes have to be operated and maintained. Livestock are transported by lorries, even airlifted for mountain pastures. Supply chains going out drylands and coming in are important. Agro-pastoralism adds even more technologies. Once again, add context and contingency, and counternarratives about socio-technical systems are inevitable.
So what, though?
III
Now take a hypothetically context-less technology called “rotational grazing” and insert it in each narrative, dominant or counter. Ask yourself: How can this insertion be rendered into a useful fiction?
Well, in some cases “rotational grazing” is already going on, even if the actual practice (e.g., use of a drift fence to separate grazing from crops, but open to grazing of the stubble after harvest) doesn’t look like the textbook ranch. In other cases, even if it doesn’t reduce overgrazing, the fiction of “rotational grazing” is kept so as to ensure claim to the land and its water point(s). Or in different instances, livestock are transported by lorry for fattening or supplemental feeding, even if it’s still useful to liken this to the “mobility” of old-time rotations between wet and dry season grazing in earlier or less extreme climate periods.
Which pastoralist development narratives, then, are likely to be found more credible by more people when it comes to (still arguably) realistic or near-term threat scenarios: those that center around a few technologies–cattle, water points and fences–or those narratives far more differentiated technologically for management purposes?
*******
Sources
Annick, A. (2021) “FicInt: Anticipating Tomorrow’s Conflict.” Accessed online at https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2021/march/ficint-anticipating-tomorrows-conflict
Di Feo, M. (2021) “Overcoming Complexity of (Cyber)War: The Logic of Useful
Fiction in Cyber Exercises Scenarios.” Accessed online at https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2940/paper32.pdf
Engberg-Pedersen, A. (2025). “The National Security Novel: ‘Useful Fiction,’ Persuasive Emotions, and the Securitization of Literature.” Critical Inquiry, 51(2) Winter.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 