Sustainable management of Chinese grasslands—issues and knowledge

Kemp, David; Han, Guodong; Hou, Fujiang; Hou, Xiangyang; Li, Zhiguo; Sun, Yi; Wang, Zhongwu; Wu, Jianping; Zhang, Xiaoqing; Zhang, Yingjun; Gong, Xuyin

doi:10.15302/j-fase-2018204

Cited by 25 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The 400 million hectares of grasslands in China are a significant part of the Eurasian grasslands and support more than 40 million low income herders (Suttie et al 2005;Kemp et al 2018). Since the mid-1980s livestock numbers have doubled and, with the traditional practice of year-round grazing, this doubling has led to grassland degradation and gradual desertification, with 90% of grasslands now degraded (Akiyama and Kawamura 2007;Briske et al 2015;Kemp et al 2018). This degradation has had significant ecological and socioeconomic consequences at both regional and national scales (Liu and Diamond 2005;Akiyama and Kawamura 2007), and for herders dependent upon grasslands, this has contributed to declining herder productivity and profitability (Briske et al 2015;Kemp et al 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the mid-1980s livestock numbers have doubled and, with the traditional practice of year-round grazing, this doubling has led to grassland degradation and gradual desertification, with 90% of grasslands now degraded (Akiyama and Kawamura 2007;Briske et al 2015;Kemp et al 2018). This degradation has had significant ecological and socioeconomic consequences at both regional and national scales (Liu and Diamond 2005;Akiyama and Kawamura 2007), and for herders dependent upon grasslands, this has contributed to declining herder productivity and profitability (Briske et al 2015;Kemp et al 2018). The incidence of dust storms has increased, and the air quality in populated urban areas across northern Asia has been reduced (Liu et al 2004;Shao and Dong 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The incidence of dust storms has increased, and the air quality in populated urban areas across northern Asia has been reduced (Liu et al 2004;Shao and Dong 2006). To remain globally competitive and sustain or improve their livelihoods, Chinese herders will need to improve grassland resources, increase productivity and economic performance and, at the same time, meet the demands of evolving markets for their products (Kemp et al 2013(Kemp et al , 2018(Kemp et al , 2020aBehrendt et al 2016b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Decisions need to consider the interactions between grassland ecology, the use of technology to improve and manage the resource, environmental externalities, utilisation of the resource by grazing animals, and the short and longrun profitability of the whole farming system (MacLeod and McIvor 2008;Scott et al 2013;Behrendt et al 2016a;Kemp et al 2020a). In China, the identification of pathways to improve both grassland condition and the livelihoods of herders that depend on them, including the development of pragmatic criteria used to improve the management of grasslands, have been substantially researched (Kemp et al 2013(Kemp et al , 2018(Kemp et al , 2020Badgery et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modelling Chinese grassland systems to improve herder livelihoods and grassland sustainability

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Recent degradation of Chinese grasslands has contributed to declining herder productivity and profitability, increased incidence of dust storms and regionally reduced air quality. Overgrazing due to a doubling of stocking rates since the mid-1980s has been identified as a key contributing factor. Several pathways and strategies exist to improve grassland management; however, there remains uncertainty around the long-term sustainability of alternative systems. Nineteen years of grasslands research in China has produced a suite of models designed to improve understanding of grassland systems and investigate options for change. The StageTHREE Sustainable Grasslands Model was used to evaluate the ability of selected strategies to meet economic, production and environmental objectives. Sets of strategies that focussed on flock size, lambing and selling times, supplementary feeding rules and grazing management were simulated for a typical herder located in the desert steppe of Siziwang Banner, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. The results from the risk efficiency analysis indicated that no single strategy set clearly dominates across all objectives. Although the current practice of herders was found to be risk-efficient, it did not achieve the highest rate of grassland recovery, minimise soil erosion or minimise the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity for sheepmeat production. Targeting further improvements in these attributes could be at the detriment of herder livelihoods. The analysis indicated that if herders adopted biomass-based grazing management and improved supplementary feeding they would be able to improve grassland resilience and maintain positive long-term economic performance under reduced flock sizes. Individual decision-making units, however, would still need to trade off the importance of different attributes to identify the strategy set, or system, that best meets their objectives and attitude to risk.

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