China's Grassland Contract Policy and its Impacts on Herder Ability to Benefit in Inner Mongolia: Tragic Feedbacks

Li, Wenjun; Huntsinger, Lynn

doi:10.5751/es-03969-160201

Cited by 173 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…A strong government that is willing to adapt to the needs of the target system could organize and mobilize resources more efficiently than the local community, and this could result in more effective and efficient resource management. For example, during the collective period, it was the responsibility of the communes and of the banner governments to organize and help herders to conduct otor when natural disasters occurred, which greatly reduced animal losses (Xie andHuntsinger 2011). Other studies have also shown that governments can play active roles in natural resource management by mediating conflicts that extend beyond the community level (Sanginga et al 2007), by solving the problems of resource capture by certain elites (Sanginga et al 2007), and by remedying inadequate informal sanctions (Bowles and Gintis 2002) within communities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Managing Rangeland as a Complex System: How Government Interventions Decouple Social Systems from Ecological Systems

Li¹,

Li²

2012

E&S

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ABSTRACT. The complexity of natural resource management is increasingly recognized and requires adaptive governance at multiple levels. It is particularly significant to explore the impacts of government interventions on the management practices of local communities and on target social-ecological systems. The Inner Mongolian rangeland was traditionally managed by indigenous people using their own institutions that were adapted to the highly variable local climate and were able to maintain the resilience of the social-ecological system for more than 1000 years. However, external interventions have significantly affected the rangeland social-ecological system in recent decades. In this paper, using livestock breed improvement as an example, we track government interventions from the traditional era through the collective period to the present market economy period based on a review of historical documents and case studies. Using the concept of social-ecological system resilience, we diagnose the impacts of interventions on livestock breed management in the rangeland social-ecological system, and discuss how these interventions occur. We found that government interventions in livestock breeding have gradually decoupled the pastoral society from its supporting ecological system. During this process, external powers have increasingly displaced the local community in defining the nature of rangeland management. Power asymmetry and discourse have contributed to this displacement.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Immediate relocation to a new area (otor) was the most basic strategy used to defend against adverse climate during the traditional period (Xie andHuntsinger 2011). In addition, wolf attacks and diseases threatened livestock.…”

Section: Pastoral Society and Livestock Breed Management During The Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Rangeland as a Complex System: How Government Interventions Decouple Social Systems from Ecological Systems

Li¹,

Li²

2012

E&S

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“…Some national governments encourage sedentarization because it permits better control and taxation, while also eliminating cross-border migrations (Scott 1998). Government-imposed sedentarization may jeopardize important cultural aspects of the nomadic society and lead to dependence on governmental subsidies (Ptackova 2011;Li and Huntsinger 2011). Scoones (1994) noted that some of these policies are nothing more than Western ranching models that have failed in pastoral areas with different ecological and social backgrounds, such as East Africa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of Nomad Sedentarization on Social and Ecological Systems at Multiple Scales in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China

Fan

Zhang

et al. 2013

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China's government is now promoting the Nomad Sedentarization Project (NSP) in large areas of grassland as a solution for ecological restoration and poverty alleviation. To examine the effects of this policy, we conducted in-depth interviews at two of the project's sites and examined the social and ecological systems at village, county, and catchment scales in Jinghe County of Xinjiang. We found that (1) the NSP in one village greatly improved the household standard of living and changed their resource utilization modes; (2) the success in this village can be attributed to resources imported from the social and ecological systems at larger scales, and could not be repeated in a second nearby village with different constraints; and (3) the NSP is poorly adapted to local ecosystem characteristics, and may therefore have negative impacts at larger scales. To avoid these problems, holistic assessments are necessary to judge the NSP's impacts on social and ecological systems at multiple scales, and the program must be implemented cautiously to account for the potential risks in ecologically vulnerable areas.

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“…Nevertheless, while contracts specifying the area of different seasonal pastures available to individual households have been issued, in practice this has not resulted in the delineation of household boundaries and previously established group tenure arrangements have largely persisted (individual tenure occurs primarily in hayfields and croplands, see Banks 2003see Banks : 2133. Nevertheless, use of rangelands has been privatized to some degree and the fact that contracts, whether they are issued to individuals or groups of individual, creates fixed boundaries that are difficult to change (see also Li and Huntsinger 2011).…”

Section: Common Pastures and Fragmentation: Privatization Reconsideredmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change, risk management and the end ofNomadicpastoralism

Næss

2013

International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ec

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China's Grassland Contract Policy and its Impacts on Herder Ability to Benefit in Inner Mongolia: Tragic Feedbacks

Cited by 173 publications

References 25 publications

Managing Rangeland as a Complex System: How Government Interventions Decouple Social Systems from Ecological Systems

Managing Rangeland as a Complex System: How Government Interventions Decouple Social Systems from Ecological Systems

Impacts of Nomad Sedentarization on Social and Ecological Systems at Multiple Scales in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China

Climate change, risk management and the end ofNomadicpastoralism

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