Lebd-e Bala

Lebd-e Bala (Upper Lebd)
Location: Char-Mahal and Bakhtiari Province, Bazoft region

Main characteristics:

  • 500 ha 150 sgp;
  • Bakhtiari Tribal Confederacy, Farrokhvand Tribe, Lori indigenous peoples
  • The area is part of the ancestral domain territory of the Farrokhvand Tribe, the whole of which is considered to be a customary ICCA. Lebd-e Bala is the spring and autumn grounds, consisting of wild rangelands as well as managed agroforestry. The Tribe has decided to restore the wild rangeland parts of the territory by applying their customary laws and indigenous knowledge, including the use of traditional tribal rangers;
  • The FRWO has decided to support these community efforts by guaranteeing the territorial integrity of this part of the ICCA, to be extended to the strengthening and restoration of the full territorial ICCA, and the consolidation of tribal control and governance rights over the entire territory. FRWO is also to formally recognise the community rangers by awarding them badges, and by accepting a “territory-based range management programme” for the conservation, sustainable use and restoration of the ancestral domain territory ICCA.
  • Customary laws and management of Farrokhvand sub-tribe, but under nominal control of FRWO because of the nationalisation decree of rangelands in 1963;
  • Livelihood and spiritual and cultural values;
  • Inverted tulip, mountain celery, mountain shallot, wild garlic, others;
  • De jure [1] owned by government but is a part of customary territory of Farrokhvand tribe [Moussavi-Nejad, 2003];
  • Rangelands
Courtesy Siavash Rostami

References and notes

CENESTA. 2012. Restoring Traditional Inverted Tulip ICCA in the Midpoint Resting Grounds of the Bakhtiari Tribal Confederation, Farrokhvand Tribe. CENESTA, UNDP-GEF-SGP and Council of Elders, Sustainable Livelihood Fund of Bakhtiari Tribal Confederacy, Tehran.

Moussavi-Nejad, E. 2003. Censuses of Pastoral Nomads and Some General Remarks about the Census of Nomadic Tribes of Iran in 1998. Nomadic Peoples, Volume 7, Issue 2.

[1] The legal basis for this claim seems now to have shaky grounds, since what was by common mistake thought of as a ‘Law’ of Nationalisation of Natural Resources has now been discovered to have been no more than a Decree by the Council of Ministers, which, in Iranian jurisprudence, cannot alienate property rights from either individuals or communities.
This Decree was forced through the Council of Minister in 1963 by the ex-Shah of Iran who was determined to sedentarise, control and eliminate the roughly 100 nomadic tribal confederacies and 600 independent tribes.
In 1963, Iran’s population was registered by the National Commission for UNESCO to be some 21 million, of which close to 10% was estimated to have been indigenous nomadic peoples – down from an estimate of over 25% about 40 years earlier, when the Shah’s father embarked on an all-out military campaign to forcibly sedentarise and eliminate these peoples.
In 1976 researchers estimated the nomadic tribal population of the country to be some 2.4 million – i.e. 7.1% of the population (Moussavi-Nejad 2003). More recently, despite 20 years of enormous pressure through the national Five-Year Development Plans and systematic attempts at induced sedentarisation, whereby the migrating nomadic population was to have been reduced from about 200,000 tentholds to zero, the actively migrating indigenous nomadic population of the country had increased in 2011 to 220,000 tentholds, an increase of 10% (Statistical Centre 2008).

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