Alternative Land tenure in agropastoral areas of NW China

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An Alternative Rangeland Management Strategy in an Agro-PastoralArea in Western China☆

Limin Hua a,⁎, Siwei Yang b, Victor Squires c, Guizhen Wang d

a Associate Professor, Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecosystem of Ministry of Education/Rangeland Sciences Department, Gansu Agricultural University/Sino-U.S. Centers for Grazing LandEcosystem Sustainability, Lanzhou, 730070, Chinab PhD Student, Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecosystem of Ministry of Education/Rangeland Sciences Department, Gansu Agricultural University/Sino-U.S. Centers for Grazing Land EcosystemSustainability, Lanzhou, 730070, China, Institute of Animal and Veterinary Science, Bijie, 551700, Chinac Visiting Professor, Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecosystem of Ministry of Education/Rangeland Sciences Department, Gansu Agricultural University/Sino-U.S. Centers for Grazing Land Eco-system Sustainability, Lanzhou, 730070, Chinad Masters Student, Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecosystem of Ministry of Education/Rangeland Sciences Department, Gansu Agricultural University/Sino-U.S. Centers for Grazing Land Eco-system Sustainability, Lanzhou, 730070, China

a b s t r a c ta r t i c l e i n f o

Keywords:agro-pastoral regioncommunity participationfamily incomelivestockrangeland governancevegetation

Governance plays a key role in rangelandmanagement. In China, all rangeland, including pastoral land andagro-pastoral land, is owned by the State. Since 1980, use rights have been granted to households by theChinese government extending the household contract responsibility system (HCRS). But in the agro-pastoral areas of northwestern (NW) China, the rangeland degradation ismore severe than that in pastoralareas. The HCRS is difficult to implement because the limited and fragmented grazing land cannot becontracted to individual households. Thus the pastures in the agro-pastoral areas are grazed as communalpastoral land and the rate of rangeland degradation has accelerated as livestock numbers have grown. Sev-eral measures have been introduced in an attempt to reverse this degradation trend, but most failed. Thispaper reports a 5-year comparison of three rangeland management regimens, including the national“Protecting rangeland by restricting grazing” (PRRG) project under the individual HCRS (PRRG underIHCRS), the Allied Householders Contract Responsibility System (AHCRS) program funded by the WorldBank/GEF, and the free grazing on common pasture as the control area (CA) at Mayinggou Village,Yongchang County, Gansu Province in NW China. The results showed significant differences (P b 0.05) be-tween AHCRS and the other two regimens (PRRG under IHCRS and CA) in terms of biomass of palatable for-ages, cover, and plant diversity index of vegetation but no significant difference (P N 0.05) between PRRGunder IHCRS and CA. Reducing the number of livestock in AHCRS also resulted in increased revenue fromthe livestock turn-off rate compared with that in PRRG under IHCRS and CA. Therefore, AHCRS is a betteralternative management regimen for rangelands in agro-pastoral areas. AHCRS can solve the overgrazingproblem, maintain or improve household income, and potentially ensure a long-term sustainable range-land management regimen in agro-pastoral areas in NW China.

© 2015 Society for Range Management. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction

China has the third largest area of rangelands in the world(Squires and Hua 2010). Rangeland can be categorized as either pas-toral land, where cropping does not occur, or agro-pastoral lands,where cropland and grazing land are in close proximity (Cheng,1999). The agro-pastoral land is the transition region of the

traditional agricultural region and pastoral region (Hess, 1990; Xu,1999). In China, the agro-pastoral lands encompass the southeasternedge of Mongolia Plateau, south Loess Plateau, and part of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (Chen et al., 2004; Shao et al., 2006). The transitionzone covers 12 provinces and 140 counties with an area of 44millionhectare (Mha) and population of 35 million in 2003 (Sun and Shi,2003). In this region, the rainfall is in the range of 250 to 500 mm,both plant cover and productivity are low, and the ecosystem is sus-ceptible to degradation (Cheng, 2002; Pan et al., 2003). As a result,the farming system is sensitive to environmental change andhuman influence. The degraded and decertified area of rangeland inthe agro-pastoral area represents about 50% of the total degradedrangeland area in northwestern China (Cheng, 1999). The rangelandarea in agro-pastoral land in InnerMongolia shrank by 0.41Mha over

Rangeland Ecology & Management 68 (2015) 109–118

☆ Research was funded by the Key Laboratory of Grassland Ecosystem, Ministry ofEducation (1102-02) and the Special Fund for Agro-Scientific Research in the Public In-terest (201003061).⁎ Correspondence: Hua Limin, No.1, Yingmen Village, Anning District, Lanzhou,

730070, China.E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Limin).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2015.01.0011550-7424/© 2015 Society for Range Management. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

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a 10-year period (1990-2000) (Zhan et al., 2004). Although manyareas were illegally converted to croplands for producing moregrain crops, the problem of accelerated rangeland degradation inagro-pastoral land has been exacerbated by the imposition of new in-stitutional arrangements relating to land tenure and use rights(Williams, 1996; DaLintai and Gaowa, 2010).

Governance is the key to promotion of sustainable use and man-agement of natural resources and to achieve the goals of conservationof natural resources and environment, alleviation of poverty, and sus-tainable utilization of natural resources (Ostrom, 1990; Acheson,2006). With the implementation of economic policy opening upand reform and cropland tenure reform in the better-watered agri-cultural areas, the household contract responsibility system (HCRS)(jia ting cheng bao ze ren zhi) was extended to the pastoral andagro-pastoral areas to solve the problem of unfettered common-usegrazing (Feng, 1988; Cao and Wang, 1995; Wang and Cao, 2010;Yangzong 2006). HCRS is a policy designed to boost agricultural pro-ductivity and was first adopted in China in 1981. A key part of HCRSwas to assign use rights to individual households from land thatwas formerly communally used (Brandt et al., 2002). HCRS hasbeen the fundamental tool for rangeland management in Chinasince the 1980s and raised productivity and increased animal hus-bandry output from the 1980s to 1990s (Wang et al., 2010). Accord-ing to the Grassland1 Law of the People’s Republic of China (2002Amendment), the use rights to rangeland belonging to the Statecould be contracted by individual householders (dan hu cheng bao)or cooperating householders (lian hu cheng bao) (Banks, 2003; Caoet al., 2011; Li and Huntsinger, 2011). The individual HCRS (IHCRS)(dan hu cheng bao ze ren zhi) implies that a household has use rightsto a specific area of pasture and can run privately owned livestockthere. By contrast, under cooperating HCRS, each household has pri-vate ownership of livestock, but their pasture is shared andmanagedby the cooperating households. From 2001–2011, the contractedrangeland area by individual households and cooperatinghouseholdsin China increased to 273Mha, which accounts for 83% of total range-land available nationwide. The proportion of rangeland contracted toindividual households is now about 80.5% of the total contractedrangeland area in China (China Grass Internet, 2013). The IHCRS hasbeen the dominant management type in the rangeland region ofChina. However, the policy of IHCRS is difficult to apply in agro-pastoral areas because of the contradiction between population pres-sure and the relatively small areas of residual rangeland. In agro-pastoral regions in China, the average rangeland area was 0.23 haper household, which is too small to be operated as functional range-land by individual households (Xu et al., 2012). As a result, the range-land in many parts of the agro-pastoral regions was used ascommunal grazing land and the overstocking rate was higher(42.07%) than that (23.37%) in the pastoral regions (Xu et al.,2012). IHCRS did not solve the dilemma of private livestock onstate-owned land in the agro-pastoral regions. Severe overgrazinghas become a major challenge because of the pressure to maintainor improve livelihoods that was believed by households to comemore quickly from bigger herds (Richard et al., 2006).

In order to find a better management approach for rangeland inthe agro-pastoral region, a potentially viable alternative was trialedin Mayinggou Village, Yongchang County, Gansu Province in NWChina in 2007when theWorld Bank/GEF supported a rangeland con-servation project there. Each community of the village has use rightsto its own winter pasture (closer to the village) and summer pasture(often far from the village). However, the pasture was allocated bythe village committee to households,more or less at random. Each al-location has a use right certificate, but there was no clear boundary

between these individually assigned pastures, so trespass grazingwas a problem. Entry and exit dates were either not well defined orignored, and the pastures received no rest. Therefore, the key issueof rangeland degradation in the agro-pastoral village was the failureof the existing rangelandmanagement regimen. Therewas an oppor-tunity to devise a new rangeland management arrangement. A par-ticipatory rural appraisal was conducted (Hua and Zhang, 2012),revealing that most households considered the uncontrolled grazingon communal rangeland was the biggest contributor to rangelanddegradation in this village. After several discussions between the pro-ject officers and farmers, an alternativeAlliedHouseholds Contract Re-sponsibility System (CRS) (lian hu ze ren cheng bao zhi) wasimplemented in the village in accordance with the households’ ap-proval (World Bank, 2004).

Since 2000, the Protecting Rangeland by Restricting Grazing(PRRG) (tui mu huan cao) project funded by the Ministry of Agricul-ture (MOA) has been conducted in China (Huang and Wang, 2004;Li, 2011). The PRRG project was predicated on the prior registrationof IHCRS for all households in the project area and on demarcationof individual pasture allocations (Liu, 2010). For the funding supportfrom the central government, the local government of YongchangCountry extended the IHCRS to other communities of Mayinggou Vil-lage and the pasture belonging to the participating households fromthe village was divided into each household’s portion on the basisof the number of people in the household.

In this study, the rangeland recovery and changes in stockingpressurewithin the threemanagement regimenswere used to assessthe impact on rangeland recovery and family income of reassigninggrazing use rights to groups of cooperating households in the agro-pastoral rangeland in NW China. There was opportunity to compareoutcomes under three contrastingmanagement regimens: 1) the na-tionally sponsored PRRG under IHCRS, 2) communally grazed range-landwithout institutionalmanagement, and 3) a new regimen, AlliedHouseholds Contract Responsibility System (AHCRS), developed inwestern Gansu.

Study Site and Methods

Study Site

Mayinggou Village is located in the middle section of Qi LianMountain in the Hexi Corridor of western Gansu Province (Fig. 1).The village has 518 households (HH) with 2 155 people of Han na-tionality. Each household has up to six people. The available areasof rangeland and cropland are 8 677 ha and 260 ha, respectively.This accounts for 30.6% and 2.9% of the total land area, respectively.The other land type is primarily sparse woodland with low shruband plantation forestry for woodlots and shelter belts. The altitudeis 2 178 to 2 515 m. The climate is temperate with a semi-alpinezone at higher altitude. Annual rainfall ranges from 170 mm to320mmand temperature from 1.5°C to 7.0°C (Yang, 2010). The rain-fall is mainly distributed in July, August, and September. The range-land types include alpine meadow, temperate grassland, semi-aridrangeland, and arid rangeland. The livestock number in 2007 was 3240 Sheep Unit.2 According to the record of the village committee,sheep are the dominant livestock in the village (Yang, 2010). Themain crops are barley, beans, and wheat. The dominant plants onthe rangeland are Leymus secalinum, Agropyron cristatum, Poapratensis, Stipa sareptarta var. krylovii, Deyeuxia scabrescens, Stipapurpurea, Stipa breviflora, and Artemisia frigida.

1 Grassland in China involves rangeland and sown grassland.

2 SheepUnit:a 50 kg sheepwith a half-year lambat foot eating 1.8 kgper day dry for-age with 14% of moisture.

110 L. Hua et al. / Rangeland Ecology & Management 68 (2015) 109–118


Various rangeland regimens existed in past decades in the village.Before the 1980s, all rangeland and livestock was State owned, butthe village had the right to use the pastoral lands andmanage the live-stock enterprise. From 1980–2007, the State-owned livestock wasredistributed to individual householders, and the rangeland wasowned by the village as common pasture. Since 2007, with the exten-sion of HCRS in pastoral land, partial rangeland in four communitieshas been redistributed to individual householders. In 2007, theWorld Bank/GEF funded a rangeland conservation project to solvethe rangeland degradation based on a reformed rangeland regimenin two demonstration communities of this village.

Methods

The administrative village of Mayinggou includes eight communi-ties. The study selected AHCRS (1 170 ha) and PPRG under IHCRS(4 500 ha). The remaining communities grazed their livestock on com-mon pasture under an unregulated rangeland management regime.

In AHCRS communities, allied households were formed fromamong the original herders who were neighbors in a community.Most of the herders were relatives. All the members of allied house-holds were aware of the issues of rangeland degradation in their pas-tures and wished to improve and protect the pasture for theirlivelihood, as well as their next generation’s. Although a few house-holds who had more livestock (N100 sheep) did not initially support

the concept of allied households organization, they accepted it afternegotiation. Persuasion by the group and a guaranteed role indrafting of the rangeland management rules made them become al-lied households. The AHCRS stipulated that the use rights over previ-ously allocated pasture should bemanaged on behalf of themembersby a designated group of households selected from the communitymembers, instead of being used without restriction by the whole vil-lage. The World Bank/GEF project funded the participating house-holds with the AHCRS to fence the boundary of their assigned 1170-ha pasture, and the households made rules for the entry andexit dates into the seasonal pastures. They also decided on the num-ber of grazing livestock from each household that could be allowed tograze. This number was based on the family size. Surplus livestockhad to be either sold or stall-fed indoors. About 26% of the householdsin the village participated in AHCRS.

The PRRG project under the IHCRS start-up in 2007 coincidedwith the implementation of the AHCRS in the village. The implemen-tation plan of the PRRG project took a top-down approach, whichmeans the decisions were made by the PRRG management office.The PRRGmanagement officewas in charge of rangeland fencing (de-sign, bidding for construction) and supervision of construction in thefield. In 4 500 ha of the PRRG rangeland, the area of seasonal grazingbanswas under the spasmodic supervision by the PRRGmanagementofficials. About 36% of households participated in PRRG in the village(Yang, 2010).

Fig. 1. Location of the pilot village, Mayinggou Village of Yongchang County, Gansu, China and disposition of land for the comparison of three grazing regimens: 1) the nationallysponsored retaining pastures by restricting grazing project based on the individual HCRS, 2) communally grazed rangeland without institutional management, and 3) allied house-holders contract responsibility system.

111L. Hua et al. / Rangeland Ecology & Management 68 (2015) 109–118


The study also selected the free grazing (often year-long) on com-mon pasture as the control area (CA). The households in CA generallyused their unfenced pasture within the area according to their ownschedule. There was no fence in the CA area, and entry and exitdates were either not well defined or ignored.

Field Sampling

The parameters to compare the impact of different rangelandmanagement regimes on rangeland productivity, ecological function,and livestock production, as well as family income during the re-search period (2007–2012), were biomass of palatable forage, vege-tation cover, plant community diversity, livestock inventory andflock structure, stocking rate, and family revenue stream from thelivestock enterprise.

Each of three sampled pastures (AHCRS, PRRG under IHCRS andCA) covered 10 ha, and the parameters were measured using thesame sampling technique. Five fixed monitoring locations wereestablished in each sampled pasture, and 150 samples were takenat random from within the fixed locations. Standard methods(Chen, 1994; Shi, 2009) were used to determine the dry matter bio-mass of palatable forages, cover, and plant species diversity in August(late summer) and inMarch (early spring). Herd/flock structure (ageand sex) and their number and composition were obtained for eachparticipating household at the end of each year from 2007–2012.Family income from selling lambs and costs for buying fodder wererecorded in 15 families, accounting for around 20% of total house-holds in the AHCRS, PRRG under IHCRS, as well as CA areas.

Data Analyses

All statistical analyses were carried out using SPSS 19.0 (SPSS Inc.,Chicago, USA). Descriptive statistical methods were used to analyzethe data set for maximum and minimum values, mean, and standarddeviation. To test the significance of three rangeland managementregimens on the examined parameters, a one-way analysis of vari-ance (ANOVA) was applied.

Results

Stocking Rate in AHCRS and PRRG under IHCRS and CA Areas

In all three areas (AHCRS, PRRG under IHCRS and CA), the totalstocking rate increased from 1985–2006 (Fig. 2). However, the stock-ing rate in the PRRG under IHCRS area and AHCRS area has decreased

since 2007 due to the implementation of the PRRG project under theIHCRS and AHCRS programs. The stocking rate in the CA arearemained the same after 2007, but the reduction in stocking rate inPRRG under the IHCRS and AHCRS areas after 2007 was noteworthy(Fig. 2). The stocking rate in the AHCRS area dropped more thanthat in PRRGunder the IHCRS area from2007–2008, and it slightly in-creased from 2008–2012. Although the stocking rate in PRRG underthe IHCRS area also decreased from 2007–2008, the rate of decreasewas lower than that in the AHCRS area.

The changes in livestock inventory over the period 2007–2012 inthe ACHRS area are given in Figure 3. In 2007 the households thatraised large numbers of livestock (N100 sheep) and medium num-bers of livestock (50–100 sheep) accounted for 21% and 32% of thetotal households in the area before the AHCRS implementation. How-ever, in 2008, the households with large numbers of livestock (N100sheep) andmediumnumbers of livestock (50–100 sheep) accountedfor 1% and 18% of the total households in the AHCRS area andremained the same until 2012.

Flock Structure in ACHRS and PRRG under IHCRS and CA Areas

In 2007 the turn-off of lambs was similar from AHCRS and PRRGunder IHCRS and CA areas (Fig. 4). Turn-off of lambs in the AHCRSarea increased from 60% in 2007 to 98% in 2012, the highest inthree areas. In PRRG under the IHCRS area, the turn-off rate declinedinitially from58% but increased to 80% in 2012while turn-off fromCAremained unchanged at about 70% (Fig. 4).

Implementation of AHCRS led to some immediate changes. At theoutset, the number of livestock was reduced and the proportion of

Fig. 2. Livestock number across the three management schemes.

Fig. 3. Livestock inventory over the period 2007–2012 in AHCRS area.



wethers went, on average, from 20 wether/household flock in 2007to 1 wether/household in 2012 because wethers increase the cost ofwinter feeding. The number of carry-over lambs decreased from 24lambs/household to zero (Fig. 5). Lambs were sold in the currentyear. Households in the AHCRS area kept only ewes. Total stockingpressure in the AHCRS area was decreased. In both PRRG underIHCRS and CA areas, there were more wethers and more carry-overlambs, thus maintaining the high stocking rate on the winter pasturein these two areas and incurring higher costs for purchased fodder.

Plant Cover and the Biomass of Palatable Forages

Over the 5-year period (2007–2012), the average cover of range-land in the AHCRS area increased from 54.8% to 87.6% while in thePRRG under IHCRS area, it increased from 57.6% to 69.2% and in theCA it increased from 57.4% to 65.0% (Fig. 6). Changes in biomass ofpalatable forage species reflected the response to grazing pressurealso. In the AHCRS area, the biomass of palatable forages increasedfrom 9.6 g·m−2 to 21.6 g·m−2 while in the PRRG under IHCRS areathe increase was from 10.8 g·m−2 to 14.9 g·m−2. This was also thecase in the CA area, where the increase was from 10.5 g·m−2 to14.6 g·m−2.

Rainfall influenced vegetation cover and biomass production(Fig. 6). The cover and average dry matter biomass of palatable for-ages were significantly different (P b 0.05): AHCRS N PRRG underIHCRS N CA, especially from 2011 to 2012. But the differences incover and palatable biomass between the PRRG under IHCRS areaand CA area were not statistically significant. In early spring, the for-age biomass is one indicator that reflects the degree of rangeland uti-lization in winter (Cui et al., 2009). The average palatable biomass inMarch in the AHCRS area was significantly higher (P b 0.05) than thePRRG under the IHCRS and CA areas by the fourth and fifth year(Fig. 6). There was a clear response to the lower stocking rate onAHCRS pastures (Figs. 2 and 5) but no significant difference in bio-mass in March in the PRRG under IHCRS and CA areas.

Plant Community Diversity on the Pasture

The richness index and diversity index are useful indictors to re-flect the impact of different grazing systems on plant community(Pärtel et al., 2005; Yang et al., 2006). The richness index (MargalefIndex) of the community diversity in AHCRS increased over the 5years in all sites, but for different reasons. Initially the differenceswere less pronounced, but by year 5 the magnitude of the increasesin the indexes was AHCRS N PRRG under IHCRS N CA. The MargalefIndex and the Shannon Index in the AHCRS were significantly higherthan the PRRG under IHCRS and CA by the fourth year (P b 0.05), butthere was no difference in theMargalef Index and the Shannon Indexin the PRRG and CA areas (Fig. 7).

Family Incomes and the Revenue Stream

From 2007–2012, the gross income from lambs’ sale of house-holds in AHCRS and PRRG under IHCRS and CA was not statisticallydifferent (P N 0.05) (Fig. 8). The principal benefit flowed from the re-duction in winter feeding costs. The cost for fodder and feed supple-ments of households in the three areaswas not significantly differentin 2007 (P N 0.05) (Fig. 8). However, the cost for fodder and feed sup-plements in AHCRS area was significantly lower (P b 0.05) than thehouseholds in PRRG under IHCRS and CA areas (P b 0.05) from2010–2012 (Fig. 8). From 2011–2012, the net family income inACHRS area was higher than that in other areas.

Fig. 4. Turn-off rate of lamb inAHCRS, PRRGunder IHCRS and CAarea from2007–2012.

Fig. 5. Flock structure in AHCRS, PRRG under IHCRS and CA area from 2007–2012.



Discussion

The rangeland governance and policy are important for rangelandmanagement. The innovative AHCRS that was adapted for use inGansu’s agro-pastoral interface zone can help to address the problemof rangeland degradation and establish a more sustainable rangelandsystem. Family incomes were higher under the AHCRS arrangementsdespite the reduction in livestock numbers. The AHCRS is acommunity-based rangeland management system. It has the poten-tial to play a key role in mediating the relationships among the mar-ket economy, state policies, and environmental change and serving asa link among individual households, herder communities, states, andmarkets (Wang and Fernández-Giménez, 2012). In the villages

included in our study, before implementation of the AHCRS and thePRRGunder IHCRSprogram, due to the free access to communal graz-ing area, some households with spare labor raised more livestockthan other farmers, exploitingmore natural resources and impingingon the forage resources of famers with small herds/flocks. This situa-tion caused the wealth gap in the village and overexploitation of thegrazing areas. This made it easier to gain acceptance, on the part ofthose disadvantaged households, of the reforms proposed under theAHCRS. The total number of livestock dropped significantly by theend of second year to comply with the community rangeland man-agement plan developed under the AHCRS.

In the AHCRS area, despite opposition and resistance from thosewho wanted to raise more livestock, all were persuaded to accept

Fig. 6. Comparison on (a) the plant cover in August, (b) the average palatable forages biomass in August, and (c) the average palatable forage biomass in March in AHCRS, PRRGunder IHCRS and CA areas from 2007–2012. Note: Different lowercase letters indicate the significant difference at 5%.



the plan because of the group power. Solving the problem ofovergrazing did not rely on administrative directives. In the AHCRSarea, the farmers reduced the livestock number from 2007 onwardsand adjusted the livestock production pattern to adapt to the changesof rangeland utilization in accordancewith the agreed-upon plan. Thevegetation communitywas recovered, and the indexes increased in theCA and PRRGunder IHCRS area (Figs. 6 and 7), probably because of bet-ter rainfall that favored proliferation of annual and pioneer species. Inthe AHCRS area, with the improvement of pasture productivity in thefollowing years, the winter pasture provided better nutrition to preg-nant ewes and lamb birth weights and survival were higher thanthose before the implementation of AHCRS. The farmers producedmore lambs in spring, which were all sold in autumn (Fig. 5). This re-duced the stocking rate on winter pasture, improved the turn-off, andgenerated higher family income. Although farmers living in the PRRGunder IHCRS area reduced the overall stocking rate because of govern-ment rules, theywere unable to get their lambs to slaughter weight byautumn and either had to carry them over and feed them indoors orsell to feedlots before winter at a reduced price. Many switched towethers that were better able to cope with poor nutrition fromwinterpasture and from poor-quality roughage. The livestock production pat-tern in the PRRGunder IHCRS areawas similar to the CA area, the aver-age stocking rate in the two areas was higher than that in the AHCRSarea. Although the livestock number in the PRRG under IHCRS area de-creased because of government ruling, the stocking ratewas onlymar-ginally lower than in the CA area.

In China, overgrazing is a big challenge to rangeland recovery(Squires et al., 2009). Rangeland degradation in winter pasture isvery serious in NW China because of almost constant grazing pressureand a short return time between defoliations (Harris, 2010; Zhou et al.,2005). Therefore, controlling overgrazing is the key to restore degradedrangeland in agro-pastoral areas in NW China. The HCRS became a na-tional policy in China in the late 1970s (Longworth and Williamson,

1993) and was progressively extended to the pastoral and agro-pastoral regions in the 1980s. The HCRS initially promoted animal hus-bandry development in the rangeland region in China (Banks, 2003;Feng, 2011).Many families throughout the agro-pastoral regions raisedmore and more livestock, encouraged by the policy of the HCRS from1985–2007 that permitted privately owned livestock to graze onState-owned land, and livestock inventories rose alarmingly (Squireset al., 2010). Due to lack of the effective rangeland supervision, HCRScame to be regarded as the one of the driving forces contributing toan overgrazing problem on the rangeland in China (Richard et al.,2006; Yangzong, 2006). According to Xu et al. (2012), overgrazingdue to poor rangeland management resulted in the severe rangelanddegradation in the agro-pastoral area in 2012 that was higher (42.1%)even than that in drier andmore variable pastoral areas (27.3%). There-fore, the primary step for solving the problem of overgrazing in theagro-pastoral area is to establish a sustainable rangeland managementregimen (Squires et al., 2010).

The Chinese government regards HCRS as the fundamental toolfor rangeland management in China (Liu et al., 2013; Wang et al.,2010). Years after the rollout of the HCRS, the realization came thatthe promised improvement of land stewardship was not evidentand that high stocking pressure was causing severe damage(Squires et al., 2010; Li and Huntsinger, 2011). A national schemewas announced, and the government allocated a large amount offunds to the PRRGunder IHCRS for erecting fences, believing that bet-ter land stewardship would follow if use rights were clearly defined(Wanget al., 2010), livestockon the allocated land could bemanaged,trespass grazing could be eliminated, and range improvements couldbe implemented. A basic requirement in the covenant between thegovernment and the cooperating family was that stock numbersshould be reduced. However, because the directive to reduce herd/flock size was made by the PRRG management office, without refer-ence to the land-user community, many livestock owners ignored

Fig. 7. (a) The Margrlef Index and (b) the Shannon Index in AHCRS, PRRG under IHCRS and CA from 2007–2012.



the directive as they tried their best to make profit quickly (Feng,2011). The PRRG under IHCRS project has not proved useful to restorerangeland productivity and stability. Elsewhere in NW China, even inpastoral regions, the PRRG project is controversial in terms of range-land fencing, sustainability, and herders’ livelihoods (Williams, 1996;Dong et al., 2007; Pu et al., 2008; Li and Huntsinger, 2011). There is ev-idence that it has accelerated the rate of rangeland degradation, at leastin some regions (Taylor, 2006; DaLintai and Gaowa, 2010). In themoreremote pastoral regions or in most agro-pastoral regions, it is difficultto supervise livestock reduction schemes and protect rangeland fenc-ing. Monitoring stations within the Animal Husbandry Bureau have in-sufficient staff and facilities (transport and communication equipment)for rangeland supervision (Liu, 2010). Left unsupervised, herders andfarmers didnot reduce livestocknumbers and theovergrazingproblemwas not solved by the PRRG project or the IHCRS (Song et al., 2004).

Multihousehold rangeland management models in pastoral re-gions benefited rangeland recovery (Dong et al, 2009; Tian et al.,

2009; Cao et al., 2011). Our study showed that allied householdscan create sustainable grazing systems, because of the larger scale,even in agro-pastoral areas. In many agro-pastoral zones, smallareas of rangelandmean that it is not practical to divide the lands re-quired by IHCRS. The variable weather and the rangeland spatio-temporal heterogeneity determine the flexibility of any grazing sys-tem in pastoral or agro-pastoral regions. Larger scales of operationgive more flexibility and allow rest rotation grazing and range im-provement measures to be practiced.

AHCRS is not a panacea. The way to implement a sustainablerangeland management model mainly depends on many complicat-ed things, environmental and human conditions. Existing communitystructures under any policies should be maintained wherever possi-ble. The community cohesion is the key for rangeland sustainablemanagement in the long term. One of the successes of AHCRS is thewillingness of farmers towork cooperatively and ensuremutual ben-efit. The families in AHCRS area aggregated their pasture use rights

Fig. 8. Comparison on (a) the family incomes from lamb, (b) the cost for fodder and feed supplements, and (c) the net family income of householders in AHCRS, PRRG under IHCRSand CA from 2007–2012.



and fenced the perimeter of the pastures to bemanaged by the groupof cooperating families. They reduced livestock numbers on the basisof negotiation inside the community.

Usually, the impact of a donor-supported project will diminishwhen the project finishes. However, in Yongchang County the localcounty government realized the superiority of the AHCRS modeland extended this land management approach within the countyafter the GEF project was completed in 2010 (Yang, 2010). The fam-ilies using the AHCRS model have continued to abide by the regula-tion on their pasture use because they see that they are empoweredto exercise better land stewardship and improve their incomes.

Implications

The rangeland in the agro-pastoral area was degraded anddecertified in northeastern China (Cheng, 1999), and the problemof accelerated rangeland degradation in agro-pastoral land has beenexacerbated by the imposition of new institutional arrangements re-lating to land tenure and use rights (Williams, 1996; DaLintai andGaowa, 2010). Although the Chinese government has invested heavi-ly in PRRG and other similar projects since 2000, the overall nationaloverstocking ratewas 23% in 2012 butmuchhigher inmany locations(MOA 2013). The results of this study offer several benefits to range-land management. First, by focusing on rangeland management gov-ernance rather than simply on technical interventions, ecologicalobjectives and financial goals can be achieved and rangelands re-stored. The exercise of use rights based on AHCRS was demonstratedas a viable alternative in a typical agro-pastoral area. Policy reformcan play an important role in the future of the rangelands. Second,there are benefits from relying on the community instead of outsidedirectives to achieve long-term effects with lower cost. The study re-lied on community action resulting in democratic decision making,and the project activities thatwere pursued suited the local situation.Finally, the recovery of rangeland ecosystem should not be at the costof the households’ livelihood. The land users make efforts to protecttheir environment but need sustainable livelihoods. A newcommunity-based governance model such as AHCRS can help themachieve this goal. The AHCRS model can be extended to other agro-pastoral areas in China and other similar places in the world.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to many people in Yong Chang Countywho have contributed to this project. We thank Dr. Zhongnan Nie,Dr. Weihong Ji, and the anonymous referees for assistance in revisingthe paper. We also thank the farmers in Mayinggou Village for theirsupport during 2007–2012.

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Alternative Land tenure in agropastoral areas of NW China

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