Governing the ungovernable? Reflections on informal gemstone mining in high-altitude borderlands of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan

ABSTRACT

The ethnically diverse high-altitude region of Gilgit-Baltistan, with its complex political history, remains relatively free from the controlling gaze of the central state apparatus of Pakistan. In these extraordinary terrain, where local communities rule the region as the “State by proxy”, informal gemstone mining provides an important supplement to livelihoods. This paper shows that gemstone mining in Gilgit-Baltistan is characterised by customary rules and regulations that are based on collective responsibility, and members follow customary authorities because they are not external to the community. It argues that the very idea of centralised “governance” of mineral resources, used widely in contexts of resource extraction as the panacea, needs to be reconsidered when dealing with the particularities of the context. It draws on the concept of ungovernability to underline the fact that sometimes it may simply be impossible to administer informal mining in the conventional sense of the term. It suggests in conclusion that informal mining, which has a long history in Pakistan and has played an increasing role as a source of rural employment and revenue, needs to be accommodated within the legal framework of mining. More importantly, to govern informal mining of gemstones, the first task would be to consider how things are currently done, understanding and respecting customary laws, and build upon them to incorporate their elements into systems that acknowledge community rights and a more equitable sharing of benefits.

KEYWORDS:

• Informal mining
• ungovernability
• ASM
• Pakistan
• gemstone mining

Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude to the local communities who housed, fed and assisted the second author during his field trip, and acknowledge Ms Joyce Das’s research assistance. We also thank Prof Saleem Ali, Director of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, University of Queensland in Australia; Professor David Butz, Department of Geography, Brock University in Canada, Dr Keith Barney of ANU; Mr Aly Ercelan, Senior Fellow, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, Dr Yaqoob Khan Bangash, Director, Centre for Governance and Policy in the Information Technologyu University of Lahore, and Mr Ch. Usman Ali of Pakistan; for reading through earlier drafts of the paper, and providing incisive comments that helped us to sharpen the arguments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1336-1422

Notes

1 Moreover, some “ASM” scholars see formalisation as either a route out of illegality or conflate the two (see Verbrugge 2015), or consider formalisation as the ultimate goal (Fold et al. 2014).

2 For more on this, see Makki et al. (2015).