Climate change, youth migration, tourism, development interventions, and biodiversity protection programs are putting pressure on herding livelihoods and increasing the vulnerability of pastoral communities across the Himalayan region. In this context, this paper offers an ethnographic insight into uncertainty of pastoralism in the Himalayas from the case study of two yak herding communities in Nepal. The opportunities and risks for the sustainability of pastoralism in the Himalaya have been examined through three interlocking variables: climate change, marketization, and governance. The data were collected through an ethnographic approach. The findings reveal that climate change, access to the market, and governance have been possessing both opportunities and risks to the sustainability of pastoralism in the Himalaya. Climate change gradually creating a threat to access to resources (water and grasses), and low altitude sickness to yak. Similarly, the plantation of cash crops, migration of youth abroad for work, and introduction of tourism have also threatened the pastoralism that will be rampant in the future. In the name of biodiversity conservation and development, the government also poses rules and regulations restricting livestock's free mobility in the Himalaya. Hence, climate change, marketization, and governance create uncertainty about pastoralism in the Himalayas, which is more than their livelihood.
