Abstract
China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is experiencing high levels of grassland degradation partially as a result of government policies to sedentarize nomadic pastoralists and privatize collective grasslands. Previous research suggests that these policies have reduced Mongolian pastoralists' ability to effectively manage grasslands and cope with negative climatic events. Herders in New Barag Right Banner (n = 50) representing both sedentary and mobile livestock management strategies were asked to respond to a scaled survey regarding their attitudes towards the effectiveness of their current grassland management strategies and their perceptions regarding the future of pastoralism in Inner Mongolia. Inter-rater reliability and MannWhitney U Tests were utilized to compare the attitudes towards grassland management and the future viability of livestock production and to test whether or not sedentary and mobile herders share the same attitudes towards these facets of their pastoral way of life. There is both high intra and inter-group agreement on the survey variables across settlement categories, indicating that sedentary and mobile herders share the same attitudinal orientations regardless of their settlement patterns. The implications of these results for future grassland policy and sustainable livestock production are also discussed.Keywords: pastoralism, China, Inner Mongolia, grassland policy, privatization, marketization
Highlights
The grasslands of northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are currently one of the epicenters of global desertification, even as the Chinese government is attempting to create policies to curb degradation of its grasslands
Previous research suggests that one major contributing factor to grassland degradation in Inner Mongolia is China's Grassland Contracting Policy and the Household Responsibility System, which have encouraged the privatization of livestock production and the integration of the Inner Mongolian pastoral economy with global markets for livestock products (Ho 1996; Humphrey and Sneath 1996a; Taylor 2012)
The high levels of agreement indicated by the results of the inter-rater reliability analysis lead the author to reject the hypothesis that herders representing different settlement patterns would not share the same attitudes towards the survey variables pertaining to grassland management and the future of pastoralism in NBR. These findings could be a result of a homogenizing effect on herder attitudes due to current policy that is leading them to share the same attitudes towards grassland management and the future economic viability of pastoralism, regardless of their different settlement patterns
Summary
The grasslands of northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are currently one of the epicenters of global desertification, even as the Chinese government is attempting to create policies to curb degradation of its grasslands. Previous research suggests that one major contributing factor to grassland degradation in Inner Mongolia is China's Grassland Contracting Policy and the Household Responsibility System, which have encouraged the privatization of livestock production and the integration of the Inner Mongolian pastoral economy with global markets for livestock products (Ho 1996; Humphrey and Sneath 1996a; Taylor 2012) This is because these policies have been shown to have eroded the ecologically adaptive nomadic grazing and common-pool resource management strategies that allowed herders to collectively manage grasslands in the past (Li and Huntsinger 2011; Williams 2002). The results indicate that the study population believes that seasonal mobility is key to maintaining healthy grasslands, but given the state of Chinese grassland policy, pastoralists share the same attitudinal dispositions towards state policy regardless of their settlement strategy
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