Everyone who comes to Inner Mongolia, Chinese or Western, old or
young, tourist or worker, eventually ends up with a trip to one of
the magnificent grasslands. The geography of Inner Mongolia, from
desert to grassland – truly reflects a land of enchantment. Every
summer the Nadam Festival, with its lively Mongolian horse racing,
passionate wrestling and exotic food, takes place on vast green
steppes, drawing thousands of Chinese and foreigners alike. Inner
Mongolia offers a unique experience to tourists: they may not only
enjoy an urban holiday, visiting Buddhist monasteries or wandering
around quaint ethnic neighborhoods but also one may choose to enjoy
a stunning natural vacation. Here in Inner Mongolia guests can
gallop along endless green pastures. Later, at night, under
thousands of stars, guests will watch traditional Mongolian dancers
and finally retire to sleep in a Meng Gu Bao, a
comfortable, round, Mongolian style tent. For some travelers, an
off the beaten track itinerary might even include a one-day trip to
the great Gobi desert. But no one who visits Inner Mongolia should
miss experiencing the splendor of the steppe.
Inner Mongolia constitutes a quarter of China's total
grasslands. For centuries nomadic Mongolian herdsmen roamed freely
on these areas, grazing goats, sheep, yak and camels. Today the
grasslands are no longer open range. They are no longer as vast and
endless as before. Both the human and animal population has
swelled, putting pressure on the fragile ecological system.
Degradation of the grasslands, caused from farmers encroaching on
the steppe and from herdsmen crowding too many animals into one
place, has created serious environmental issues. Unfortunately both
private and communal use and management of the grassland have led
to overgrazing, increasing erosion, sandstorms, and in the worst
cases, desertification. In the early 1980s overgrazing became a
serious problem in Inner Mongolia when the Chinese government
introduced "Grassland User Rights" – the right to utilize private
grazing property.
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Sandstorms, erosion, and weather fluctuations are the result of
upsetting the delicate balance of nature in the grasslands. Some
scientists have linked degradation and specifically soil erosion
with changing political economic processes. Scientists apply the
term "tragedy of the commons" to the phenomenon that is taking
place on the Inner Mongolian grasslands. The English phrase
signifies a conflict for resources between individual interests and
the common good that took place in England in the 18th century.
During that time English herders began abusing the common lands as
private land ownership reduced the amount of open range.
Inner Mongolia has experienced similar problems. From the 1950s
to the 1970s the vast grasslands were collectivized and made into
People's Communes. The government set up a three tiered management
arrangement. Grassland ownership (primary resource) was under the
commune (the rural township); livestock ownership (secondary
resource) was under the production brigade (administrative
village), and implement ownership was under the production team
(natural village); they were also responsible for herding. The
system did not work well because no one cared to manage or maintain
the commons as well as they did under traditional kinship
practices. The attitude that the pasture belongs to no one has
prevailed until the early 1980s with the introduction of the
household contract responsibility system which became User Rights
in 1997. Despite the change of status and introduction of User
Rights, pastures are still seen as "eating from the big rice pot"
so there is little or no community responsibility in place for
sustaining this valuable natural resource. Furthermore User Right
legislative policies were transferred wholesale from farmed land to
the grasslands with little or no consideration for the fact that
livestock move about, while crops do not. In short, they are very
different systems and require different modes of regulation.
One Australian scientific study (2002-2006) examined the effects
of the User Rights legislation and initially argued that it was the
larger, rich Mongolian herders who should be targeted for
assistance as they had the most impact on the grasslands. They were
most likely to cause environmental degradation because they had the
most animals. These richer households had priority to receive
assistance in the form of loans, fencing materials, improved
genetic material, and so on. But in fact the grassland boundaries
are still highly contested and unequally shared. Ignoring the
plight of the poorest herdsmen would create greater, not lesser,
resource exploitation. The Australian project eventually concluded
that User Rights privatization might ensure some degree of
environmental protection, but it was not the ultimate answer.
Safeguarding the rights of current and future generations is
everyone's responsibility; sustainable pasturelands, in theory,
should be protected and enjoyed equally by all resource-users.
Herdsmen, like everyone else, want prosperity. For a herder his
wealth is counted in the amount of animals he owns; they are a sort
of walking bank. But with the increase in population, the reduction
of open range and increased agriculture inside of Inner Mongolia,
these pastoralists are feeling greater economic pressure.?
Herders, whether on open range or private property, wish to make
more money so they allow too many animals to graze too long on
pastures. The idea that fenced, private land will be cared for more
than common land and that it will have less erosion and damage has
not yet been proved successful. In fact, enclosing the grasslands
under User Rights has been found to hasten disparities between
households. It has led not just to abuse of the grassland but also
to serious social problems and community fragmentation.
Many scientific studies in northern Inner Mongolia grasslands
have clearly displayed the importance of the socio-cultural and
geo-political context of herding and non-herding communities living
in this region. Ignoring these contexts led to frequently tense and
occasionally violent community and administrative boundary disputes
among family members and neighbors. Once common resources, the
locals now viewed these same lands as belonging to individual
households. The larger herders put up fences demarcating their
individual allocations. Those with good land and enough water felt
satisfied with their lot; others obviously were not so pleased but
grimly accepted the new legislation as their fate. And for both the
implementation of User Rights was naively expected to solve the
problem of degraded public land. The government assumed that rich
herders with more animals would take better care of the grassland
and its resources than the poor, smaller herders. This did not turn
out to be the case.
In fact, the logic of pastoral household economics seeks to
increase numbers and sell fewer when prices were not high enough to
meet domestic demands. Rich herders hoarded their stock animals;
they reluctantly sold them when prices were low. Poor herders had
less choice; they sold and became poorer. This is the opposite of
what the Chinese economists wanted.
Sadly, the User Right system is now so widely instituted it
would be hard to establish common property regimes under the sole
control of local communities. Many government workers are starting
to consider that the responsibility of management and control of
the commons should now be vested in local collectives, instead of
relying just on government policy and laws, such as User Rights.
Scientists are re-evaluating local knowledge that has enabled
communities for generations to respond to subtle environmental cues
of the grassland environment.?Many reports state that
Mongolian herdsmen need longer-term and community-agreed commitment
and responsibility toward natural resource management rather than
official dictates from Beijing.
Consequently, the Chinese government has set up scientific
studies and projects in cooperation with many Western nations,
particularly Canada and Australia, to insure the survival of this
important ecosystem. These studies argue that the political change:
from communal open grasslands to restricted, fenced private
grasslands, as well as cultural constructions on environment,
identity and ethno-ecological knowledge, are all factors in the
degradation of Inner Mongolian grasslands. The power of
microeconomic policy, and the complexity of the political
relationships engendered from enclosing the land through User
Rights must be studied. Mongolian cultural and kinship practices,
and grazing pressures must be understood and balanced in order to
have prosperous, successful herdsmen who will cherish and maintain
the grasslands.
All About
Inner Mongolia
Grasslands
Livestocks
(China.org.cn by Valerie Sartor, September 12, 2007)
