Matching Local Knowledge and Environmental Change with Policy Changes in Rangeland Tenure

Bai Peng-Peng,Mattia Mancini,Juan Du,Ruth Mace

doi:10.1007/s10745-021-00235-y

Bai Peng-Peng, Mattia Mancini + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-021-00235-y

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Abstract

Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons has often been cited as the rationale for the privatization of pastures throughout the world, yet rangeland degradation is still widespread. A significant body of ecological research has demonstrated negative impacts from limiting herd movement through fencing. The privatization of pastures has often followed heterogeneous patterns. We use a natural experiment in common grazing areas on the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau where land use was privatized beginning in 1999 following different land use division patterns. We measure the relationship between land use privatization paths and grassland quality using satellite data from 1989 to 2011 in five different villages, and compare how well herder environmental perceptions match satellite data. We find that rangeland degradation has significantly increased following privatization of land use, and that grassland in small individually managed fenced plots is deteriorating more significantly than in larger fenced areas with group herding. We further find that herders’ had accurate perceptions of the state of their pastures that closely match remotely sensed data.

Highlights

Introduction and Background to Pastureland ManagementCollective irrationality as a result of individual rational choices in the unregulated management of open access or communal pastures has been the subject of extensive scientific debate over the last five decades following the publication of the Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin (1968)
We focus on the yak herding systems of Maqu County (Gansu Province) in the east of the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau in China, where quasiprivatization was implemented in the late 1990s and subsequently produced a number of different response patterns from communities of herders in close proximity to each other
Our results show that the baseline average normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) value for the area covered by the five villages in the study area is 0.426

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and Background to Pastureland ManagementCollective irrationality as a result of individual rational choices in the unregulated management of open access or communal pastures has been the subject of extensive scientific debate over the last five decades following the publication of the Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin (1968). Based largely on Hardin’s rationale, land use privatization has been widely believed to be a way to improve the overall efficiency of economic systems, leading to improved productivity and living conditions in rural areas (Binswanger and Deininger 1999; De Soto 2000; Li et al 2019; North 1981). It is unclear whether communal grazing is always as destructive as sometimes assumed (Mace 1991), and local management systems may be in place that successfully manage open access resources (Ostrom 1990). Despite the large volume of literature that does not support Hardin’s views, his narrative persists and his arguments have underpinned many, often unsuccessful, rangeland development programs around the world.

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