The Roles of Overgrazing, Climate Change and Policy as Drivers of Degradation of China's Grasslands

Abstract

Climate change and overgrazing are believed by policy makers to have been the drivers of grassland degradation in China over the past thirty years. However, recent work has suggested that policies that have led to privatization of use rights and household enclosures are more important drivers of degradation. An analysis of available evidence from scientifi c publications and national survey data relating to climate change, livestock numbers, and management policy was undertaken to evaluate the case for each of these possible drivers of degradation. The analysis suggests that, to date, policy measures imposed to avoid the 'tragedy of the commons' have been more important than either climate change or overgrazing as a driver of degradation. The resulting fragmentation of the pastoral landscape has caused localized grazing pressure and spatial and temporal mismatches between grassland production and livestock access to forage. Grazing rights negotiated and allocated at a multiplehousehold level would allow greater productivity, better rangeland condition, possible advantages of scale and pooling of herder resources, and better potential to adapt to future climate change.

Adaptation to Climate Change in the Hindu Kush Himalaya: Stronger Action Urgently Needed

“…• In the Chinese context Li and Huntsinger (2011) observed how increasing land privatization and the institutionalization of rigid land tenure in the Inner Mongolia region have weakened traditional practices of pasture and herd management, and in the process reduced the resilience of pastoralists to cope with environmental crises like drought. The traditional common property regimes not only allowed for greater mobility over larger areas, which favoured the ecology of natural grasslands, but also offered the benefits of mutual aid and resource pooling (Cao et al 2013).…”

China’s grassland policies and the Inner Mongolian grassland system

“…al., 2016). These environmental policies and programs further prompted pastoralists to transform their traditional lifestyles, particularly developing the intensification of animal husbandry, in place of extensive, grazing practices (Cao et al, 2013b).…”

“…Northern China contains over 50% of China's grasslands, which are of China's grassland degradation during the last several decades, it is unanimous among herders, scholars and governments that the grasslands of China have experienced degradation, with significant regional variation (Harris, 2010;Waldron et al, 2010). An often-cited figure is that about 90% of China's grasslands were degraded to various extents by the 2000s (Unkovich and Nan, 2008;Waldron et al, 2010), and that degradation was increasing at a rate of two million hectares per year (Ren et al, 2007;Harris, 2010;Cao et al, 2013b). The grassland areas shrunk significantly by the beginning of the twenty-first century.…”

“…The grassland areas shrunk significantly by the beginning of the twenty-first century. In particular, the northern grassland boundary had moved about 200 km southward and the western boundary about 100 km eastward compared to the previous hundred years (Liu 2008;Cao et al, 2013b).…”

“…Overgrazing and unsuitable grassland reclamation for cultivation have been accepted as the principal reasons (Ho, 2001). It was indicated that the total number of livestock in China increased by 594 million from 1981 to 2006 (Cao et al, 2013b), and an estimated 67 million hectares of high-quality grasslands have been converted to the cultivation of grains since 1949 (Ho and Azadi, 2010). However, other scholars have suggested that overgrazing only exists and leads to degradation in specific areas, with little evidence from national data to suggest that overgrazing per se has been responsible for widespread grassland degradation across China's pastoral grazing areas (Cao et al, 2013b).…”