Precarious work and environmental uncertainty in the Central Asian walnut trade

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I will research experiences of economic and environmental uncertainty amongst the walnut pickers and tradersassociated with the walnut forest in the Jalal-Abad region of Kyrgyzstan. These livelihoods are economically precarious:walnut pickers have been impoverished by the loss of waged work that accompanied the breakup of the Soviet Union,and now rely mainly on selling walnuts for their incomes, the yields of which vary annually. To compound this precarity,climate change is damaging walnut trees and rendering their yields more unpredictable. These uncertain working livesare also configured by political-economic dynamics specific to Central Asia. In order to frame the interaction betweeneconomic conditions and environmental change in this geographical setting, I will consider the literature on precariouswork and on Central Asian political-economic transformations, and will bring these bodies of work into conversation withtheoretical approaches which emphasise the agency of forests and landscapes. My fieldwork will be multi-sited, followingthe journey of the walnut and its traders so as to reflect the fluidity of Central Asia and traders' experiences ofinterconnectedness. This will also enable me to investigate the ways in which the agency of environmental changetravels through space. The fieldwork will involve participation in the walnut harvest, as well as carrying out interviews withwalnut pickers and mobile traders along the walnut commodity chain.