Property rights and grassland degradation: A study of the Xilingol Pasture, Inner Mongolia, China (original) (raw)

Abstract

The semi-private property rights arrangement called the Household Production Responsibility System (HPRS) was started in the early 1980s in Xilingol pasture of Inner Mongolia (China), and stimulated the development of stockbreeding. The grassland has been degrading severely with increasing numbers of livestock. Based on a historical review of property rights regimes in Inner Mongolia and empirical surveys in Xilingol pasture during 2001–2003, this paper assesses the implementation of HPRS and its impacts on incomes of households as well as the environmental impact on the grassland. It was found that HPRS does not mitigate the “Tragedy of the Commons”, instead it has exacerbated the situation. It was also found that co-management of grassland and livestock among a few households presents a sustainable use of grassland to develop livestock breeding. We conclude with the recommendation that small-scale collective property rights systems should be encouraged in Xilingol pasture of Inner Mongolia.

Introduction

Xilingol League, one of the largest primary grasslands in the world, is located in the central east of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in the north of China. It borders the Republic of Mongolia to the north with a shared border of 1095

km and covers an area of 200,000

km2 with a total population of 906,000 in 1995 (the date of the last census). A majority of the inhabitants are of Mongolian ethnicity with 21 other ethnic minorities.

Since the early 1980s when the national rural reform was started, the private property rights arrangement called the Household Production Responsibility System (HPRS) has been implemented in Xilingol pasture of Inner Mongolia, and has stimulated the development of livestock breeding. HPRS was actually introduced in agricultural areas of China where it has been implemented since the end of the 1970s and proven to be successful in stimulating farmers’ incentives for increasing crop production efficiency. In the pasture areas, HPRS is also called the Double Contracts System which means that both the livestock and grassland are contracted to herder households by the government instead of only farmland in agricultural areas. Since the implementation of HPRS, the number of livestock increased quickly from 12.6 million in 1980 to 22.7 million in 1997 (Fig. 1). However, the grassland has been degrading severely. The available grassland per sheep unit decreased from 1.42

ha in 1980 to 1.05

ha in 1990 (Fig. 2). The degraded area accounts for 48.6% of the total Xilingol grassland (Qi, 2001), and the degraded grassland has exceeded 50% of the total area in half of the 12 sub-administrative areas under Xilingol League (Fig. 3).

Facing increasingly severe grassland degradation, both the central government and Xilingol local governments have been taking a series of counter measures to control this negative trend. Such measures include extending the HPRS contract expiration and adopting a policy of ‘Fencing Grassland, Forbidding Grazing and Moving Users’ in badly degraded areas. However, recent field research shows that all these methods are not entirely effective (Bijoor et al., 2006). This paper attempts to explore the root causes of this inefficiency. In recent years, some western scholars (Sneath, 2000; Williams, 2002; Banks, 2001) as well as local Mongolian experts (Dalintai, 2004) have challenged the rationality of HPRS, and pointed out that it might be contributing to grassland degradation. This paper seeks to first understand whether HPRS led to the grassland degradation, and second to seek ways to mediate the grassland degradation given the current property right arrangements.

Section snippets

Methodology

Considering the route-dependent characteristics of institutional arrangements, firstly we collected secondary data and reviewed publications to present briefly the evolving history of property rights in Inner Mongolia. Our case study site was selected based on this secondary data to provide the most representative sample. The purpose of our field study was to understand the relationship between the existing property rights regimes under HPRS and the grassland degradation in Xilingol pasture.

The evolution of property rights in Xilingol

Historically Xilingol pasture experienced two types of property right regimes: a private property regime before 1955 and a collective/state property regime between 1955 and 1979.

Before1206 when Genghis Khan united the whole Mongolia altiplano, the grassland in Inner Mongolia had been owned by the Khan of each tribe. The Khan allocated the grassland to his relatives and followers according to their contributions in wars fought on their land, and who then re-distributed the use rights to their

Discussion and conclusion

Most environmental concerns can be seen as problems of incomplete, inconsistent, or unenforced property rights. Without a solution to the property rights problem, the environmental problem will remain (Hanna et al., 1995). Historically, although the grassland was owned by a small number of nobles, for most general commons they shared their use rights within a relatively large area of grassland. Given these property settings, the Xilingol grassland was consistent with the definition of ‘common

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the help of our students, particularly Ganlin Huang and Neeta Bijoor in conducting fieldwork for this project. Financial supports for this research were provided by the National Nature Sciences Foundation of China (40271032) and a Henry Luce Foundation grant to the primary author that made the possibility of producing and improving the paper in the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, USA.

References (32)

• History of Mongolia Economic Development

(1999)

• Baland, J.-M., Platteau, J.-P., 1996. Halting Degradation of Natural Resources: Is There a Role for Rural Communities?...

• Property rights and the environment in pastoral China: evidence from the field

Development and Change

(2001)

• G.B. Bartels et al.

An examination of the carrying capacity concept

• R.H. Behnke et al.

Range Ecology at Disequilibrium: New Models of Natural Variability and Pastoral Adaptation in African Savannas

(1993)

• N. Bijoor et al.

Small-scale co-management for the sustainable use of Xilingol Biosphere Reserve, Inner Mongolia

AMBIO

(2006)

• D.W. Bromley

Making the Commons Work: Theory, Practice, and Policy

(1992)

• Annals of Xilingol League, vol. I

(1996)

• Exploitation of Inner Mongolia grassland: retrospect and reality

• N. Han et al.

Management of the Degraded Ecosystems in Xilingol Biosphere Reserve

(2002)

• S. Hanna et al.

Property rights and environmental resources

• G. Hardin

The tragedy of the commons

Science

(1968)

• P. Ho

Rangeland degradation in North China revisited? A preliminary statistical analysis to validate non-equilibrium range ecology

The Journal of Development Studies

(2001)

• C. Humphrey et al.

The End of Nomadism? Society, State and The Environment in Inner Asia

(1999)

• A.W. Illius et al.

On the relevance of nonequilibrium concepts to arid and semiarid grazing systems

Ecological Applications

(1999)

• R. Jeffery et al.

Conflict and Cooperation in Participatory Natural Resource Management

(2001)

Cited by (183)

View full text

Copyright © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.