Imputing property values in pastoralist systems as a way of making more visible the tensions under the climate emergency

Major issues affecting the US housing market are the effect of the climate emergency on property values:

As climate disasters hit with greater intensity and frequency, the economic effects will be felt not only as the underlying assets are damaged or destroyed, . . .but also as those experiences, and expectations of similar ones to come, are “priced in” to the judgments of what homes in floodplains, on the storm-exposed coasts, and in the wildland-urban interface are worth. Those homes could become, in effect, economically worthless even before they are physically uninhabitable. This would then put pressure on areas that are, for the time being, environmentally stable, driving up property values to the benefit of some, while creating economic hardships for others. . . .They are left either stuck in place—with assets that are increasingly difficult to insure. . .and potentially financially underwater— or face a decline in the proceeds available to secure housing elsewhere, let alone to build wealth.

(accessed online at https://academic.oup.com/socpro/advance-article/doi/10.1093/socpro/spae074/7932449, my bolding)

So too you find declinist narratives about pastoralist areas rendered economically worthless under capitalism even before they are rendered physically uninhabitable by the climate emergency.

But of course drylands have noncalcuable use values for pastoralists, whatever is happening to calculated economic values. More, some of these asset values were evident in commercial transactions long before the advent of any capitalism. And in case it needs saying (also see the above link), property values have always been a social construction within and beyond markets and beyond the quantitative, a fact no less true for herders and their resources, including those drylands relied upon.

So too is the climate emergency bringing into better view not just the changes but also the reciprocal tensions when imputing property values, e.g.:

Overall, we show that reciprocal linkages between environmental change and migration clearly exist in the studied rural communities in Ethiopia, which are mediated by various factors occurring at the micro, meso, and macro level (Table 1). These factors cover biophysical, socioeconomic, and institutional aspects. Remarkably, although not surprisingly, our research revealed that most identified factors can act in opposite directions. Hence, they can trigger or accelerate changes, just as they can hamper or slow them down. For example, in northern Ethiopia, unfavorable environmental conditions for agriculture, including increased drought frequency, unreliable rainfall, and advanced land degradation, can increase migration needs and aspirations by undermining the viability of agricultural livelihoods. However, these conditions also tend to lower migration abilities by decreasing agricultural income and hence, financial resources required for migration. Conversely, favorable environmental conditions, such as relatively stable rainfall during the cropping season in “a good year,” can decrease migration needs and aspirations and enable migration via agricultural income (for more details, see below the description of pathways A and B). The precise impact mechanisms significantly depend on a variety of additional mediating factors at the macro, meso, and micro level. . .

(accessed online at https://ecologyandsociety.org/vol28/iss3/art15/)

I want to suggest that, in the case of pastoralist systems, focusing on property (noncalculable use and calculated exchange) values and the tensions their social constructions reveal, balance or evade is a better methodological strategy than appeals to “commodification” or “marketization,” as if the latter terms were differentiation enough.