Transnational environmentalism and entanglements of sovereignty: The tiger campaign across the Himalayas

In the spring of 2006, Tibetans in China set fire to more than a million dollars worth of otter, leopard and tiger pelts. The numerous bonfires were a response to the 14th Dalai Lama's statement, made at the Kalachakra Initiation Ceremony in India, that Tibetans should cease wearing such pelts. The Chinese state interpreted this as an act of loyalty to the Dalai Lama and this evidence of multiple overlapping sovereignties as a threat to its exclusive territorial sovereignty. An effort to clarify this space invited a sovereign invocation of the exception, as salaried employees were forced to wear endangered animal pelts, violating Chinese national law. A conjunctural analysis of the Dalai Lama's speech and the subsequent burnings demonstrates that contrary to prevailing narratives, transnational environmental advocacy played a key role. The conjuncture in which these events took place was shaped by multiple competing entanglements of Chinese, Indian, and Tibetan sovereignties with nature protection and transnational activism. Two distinct assemblages, shaped by power relations and the politics of sovereignty, formed around protecting the tiger across the Himalayas, with dramatically different effects. The case shows that far from post-sovereign environmental governance, nature and sovereignty remain inextricably entangled, and illustrates how multiple modes to construct and defend state sovereignty come into conflict with each other.

► Sovereignty-transnational environmentalism entanglements produced the pelt burnings.
► Efforts to maintain absolute state territorial sovereignty produce contradictions.
► Environmental movement motivations and identities emerge contingently.
► Predicaments of state sovereignty have multiplied with transnational activism.