Veranada area in the Andes mountain range: Malargüe Mendoza

Abstract

Rural sustainability policies often fail in territories shaped by ecological variability and mobile livelihoods, as they assume stability, fixed land use, and technical control. This article examines transhumant goat pastoralism in Malargüe, Argentine Andes, as a situated response to uncertainty and a source of insights for sustainability governance. Based on seven years of ethnographic research, we analyze how pastoralist families sustain livelihoods, manage common resources, and reproduce territorial relations through seasonal mobility, collective care, and vernacular commoning. Rather than treating mobility as a constraint, we show how transhumant practices constitute a decentralized form of ecological governance aligning production and resource management with environmental variability. Transhumant pastoralism operates as a sufficiency-oriented socio-ecological economy capable of inhabiting uncertainty without enclosure or stabilization. By foregrounding commoning and mobility as governance practices, the article contributes to sustainability transitions debates and offers transferable lessons for designing policies better suited to uncertain, climate-sensitive rural territories.