Trade-offs in ecological, productivity and livelihood dimensions inform sustainable grassland management: Case study from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Developing sustainable management practices for alpine grassland on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is a key challenge related to the protection of regional ecological environments, the provision of husbandry production and the improvement of pastoralist welfare. This challenge requires researchers and policymakers to seek options that optimize benefits among multiple objectives in ecological, productivity and livelihood dimensions. In this study, we developed a novel tool to value the overall benefits and trade-offs of ecological protection, livestock production and pastoral welfare from four types of grassland management practices mainly used on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau: individual grassland management (IGM), joint household grassland management (JHGM), shareholding cooperative grassland management (SCGM) and communal grassland management (CGM). The results showed that JHGM led to the highest ecological benefits, while CGM led to the highest benefits for livestock production and livelihood welfare. SCGM resulted in the lowest level of trade-offs as well as relatively high total benefits among multiple objectives in the ecological, productivity and livelihood dimensions. The results of this study provided empirical evidence that the effect of trade-offs among multiple objectives varied with different grassland management practices. We argue that grassland management practices may be biased if a single objective (i.e., ecological protection, livestock production provision or pastoral welfare improvement) is stressed due to the high level of trade-offs among them. The SCGM showed great potential to balance multiple objectives if properly designed.