《Non-Equilibrium, Commons and Local Knowledge》

Wang Xiaoyi , Zhang Qian, Xun Lili

Since the system of people’s commune disintegrated in 1980’s, there has been many new problems emerged in grassland management in China. Grassland degradation has become a social focus for all circles, especially after grassland degradation was connected with sandstorms, which means that grassland degradation is not only a problem of pastoral areas but a problem of the whole country or even international level.

In order to improve herders’ livelihood and achieve sustainable grassland use, both government and social sectors have input lots of efforts, including grassland division to household, grazing ban, the development of intensive livestock breeding and the introduction of conception of grassland co-management. However, theoretical research has always lagged behind management practice and policy has frequently confronted with challenges from realities.

The problems we are facing are not unique ones only happened in China. Many countries with pastoral husbandry have confronted with similar problems. In the process of searching countermeasures to solve these problems, some original theories and hypothesis have been proved false by practices. It is the practice of grassland management that has encouraged the emergence of new theories and paradigms. In this book, we tried to introduce some newly developing theoretical thinking to Chinese readers, and hope to expand our research by learning different researches.

In this book, we select good scientific articles and present new theoretical thinking from three perspectives. From ecological perspective, non-equilibrial ecosystem theory and its models are introduced to encourage us to rethink simplified linear relationship between livestock and vegetation, which provided basis for present grassland policies in China. From grassland management perspective, several examples of common property and natural resource co-management provide basis to break down blindly worship on “tragedy of commons”. From cultural perspective, abundant local knowledge should be paid attention to complement the shortage of scientific knowledge.