Project Aims

Fundamental policy-driven changes are transforming China's rangelands in response to a perceived threat of environmental degradation. Having transferred livestock property from state to private ownership over the past two decades, government policy is now encouraging pastoralists to privatise parts of the natural resource, in the form of fenced enclosures. In other areas, the government has asserted its ultimate rights of land ownership and is excluding grazing entirely. These reforms are presented as packages that include incentives for pastoralists to fence pastures, cease moving their animals seasonally, build permanent settlements on the ranges, or emigrate to towns.

Underpinning these policies is the presumption that extensive mobile pastoralism based on communal pasture use is backward and inefficient, and has led to land degradation. Using a “Tragedy of the Commons” analysis, it is also argued that livestock-owners will take better care of the grazing land if it is privately controlled, or that pastures are so abused that grazing must be banned altogether.

Severe land degradation and desertification on the Tibetan Plateau has been widely noted by Chinese scientists, with overgrazing by livestock usually identified as the principal human factor causing degradation. Many millions of hectares are classified as desertified to varying degrees, with 20.5 million ha. in the Tibetan Autonomous Region alone categorised in this way.  Some Chinese and international scientists have nonetheless questioned the usefulness of enclosure and exclusion as remedies for degradation. This project examines both the consequences and reasons for the implementation of this land reform process on the Tibetan Plateau.

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