Preface

Irene Bain*

This book is a translation and interpretation of key articles in the recent international ecology and sociology of rangeland management. It aims to help address the absence of any similar books in Chinese on this overlooked area of scholarship.

The need for such a publication is increasingly evident. China’s herding areas are experiencing dramatic changes in terms of reported ecosystem deterioration, market penetration, rangeland fragmentation, policy reform, and the economic activities of special interest groups. The current response to these new challenges has been promotion of a unitary model of ‘modernized’ ranching premised on fixed tenure allocations, fenced boundaries, feed and fodder inputs, and designated stocking rates. In areas of greatest perceived ecological threat, an exclusionary zoning and resettlement model is applied. However, the implementation of these models has resulted in a degree of socio-economic disruption, and debated ecological impacts, in affected herding areas.

These issues highlight the need to explore a wider range of theories and practices to determine whether a more diverse set of policy tools and understandings would better address the diversity of grassland issues in herding areas. They also highlight the need for broadening the human resource capacity to grapple with these topics. Years of emphasizing technical training for grassland as a production input now need to be supplemented with the skills to re-orient grassland management in herding areas toward more people-centered approaches[i]. These approaches are also becoming important new means for strengthening grassland policies and programs internationally, and for better incorporating the socio-economic and cultural concerns of traditional grassland users.

People-centered approaches are particularly important in dealing with a new generation of development problems known as ‘wicked problems’.[ii] These “are subject to multiple and conflicting criteria in their definition and identification of solutions, they involve multiple actors, are interconnected across multiple levels and require decision making at multiple levels, are iterative in nature, and are often the symptoms of broader problems and persist over time” (Mwangi 2008, citing Rittel and Weber, 1973). In short, these problems cannot be ‘solved’. They require on-going negotiation and adaptive management among stakeholders over long-time frames to maintain harmony. Many environmental issues, including grassland management, are examples of wicked problems. Community Driven Development and Landcare[iii] are examples of government programs that have been adopted to cope with wicked problems. Each approach provides general guidelines and funding for diverse local activities, but site-specific actions are proposed, implemented, and monitored by groups of rural residents. This provides an opportunity for local (or indigenous) knowledge, creativity, and interest to contribute to effective action, in cooperation with technical and information resources from local government, and policy oversight from national level.

What is ‘modern’ in these approaches is not the activities themselves, but the acceptance of diverse roles, and responses, for different contexts. This runs counter to a more traditional development perspective of standardized stages in grassland modernization, progressing from nomadism, through settled production, toward intensive feed systems. Closer observation of a country with a ‘modern’ livestock sector, Australia, reveals that boundaries between these stages are actually fuzzy and non-linear, with different systems in concurrent operation; “While Australia’s pastoral industry was developed along the lines of a European private property system, livestock mobility has recently been increasing as the industry matures into its variable climate…because a diverse portfolio of strategies is needed to manage risk” (McAllister, forthcoming[iv]). Such mobility commonly involves two forms of movement. The first is between owned/leasehold pastures and agistment[v] areas through informal agreements among herders. The second involves utilization of the vast network of national stock-routes as a common-property reserve feed supply for herded livestock during drought. Both activities are similar to the traditional Mongolian nomadic practice called otor. All three indicate that some degree or form of mobility remains a necessary component of risk management in complex and uncertain herding environments.

Government policy for the grazing properties in Australia’s arid and semi-arid north has also, since the 1990’s, “emphasized multi-use co-management, with an increasing emphasis on Aboriginal and environmental values” (Hunt: 2003 cited in McAllister 2010). This reflects a wider interest in ‘Learning to be Australian’; “to live on this continent in a way that is sympathetic to its strengths and limitations” (Botterill: 2003:200[vi]). It also recognizes that national policies need to work with the informal rules and social norms of indigenous knowledge to be locally effective.

This scientific development perspective on modern pastoralism in Australia is evolving in response to grassland degradation and severe drought/ climate change. It is increasingly characterized by activity across different scales to reduce risks; by inclusion of the diverse local knowledge of different herding groups; and by the provision of state-funded participatory mechanisms to engage herding communities in activities for grassland protection and recovery. Indeed, these same perspectives are also recommended in a recent book on China’s western grasslands by Australian researchers with long experience in the region; “the land management approach needs tailoring to sustain both the grasslands and herder livelihoods in the short and long term…In essence grassland degradation and herder livelihoods are a natural resource management problem requiring a systems-based approach where the various dimensions (including ecological, economic, social, cultural, livestock, feed), should be considered in an integrated manner. (Brown et. al., 2009:3, 266)[vii].”

A background note on the genesis of this book:

In 2006, a group of researchers and practitioners interested in grassland issues formed a People and Grasslands Network in Beijing. The Network convened a series of guest lectures by visiting international scholars working on grassland-related issues. These included Dr Esther Mwangi (CGIAR/ Harvard University); Professor Eleanor Ostrom (Indiana University/past President of the International Association for the Study of Common Property); Dr Robin Mearns (World Bank/ Mongolia program); Dr Emily Yeh (Colorado University); Dr Maria Fernandez-Gimenez (Colorado State University) and Dr Peter Ho (University of Groningen). Topics included new approaches to grassland tenure, livelihood protection and grassland policy issues in China, Kenya, Mongolia, and other international contexts. However, presentations were insufficient to increase audience understanding of the wider body of theory and scholarship which underpinned each talk. Presenters also felt frustrated that participants lacked wider familiarity with key international concepts and reference works. This dilemma stemmed partly from linguistic barriers, but also from uncertainty among Network members about which scholarly articles were most authoritative, representative, and relevant to the Chinese context.

The search for an effective means of conveying new concepts in international grassland management continued in the lead-up to the 2008 International Grassland and Rangelands Congress in Huhhot and resulted in the publication of People and Policy in Grassland Management: A Glossary of Key Concepts (2008). However, this book contained only short scholarly introductions to individual concepts, rather than an extended exploration of particular grassland paradigms. This latter task was taken up by three scholars from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Peking University and the Central University of the Minorities through a novel translation process. The editors identified articles relating to key paradigm shifts and prepared commentaries to interpret the wider significance of these works, resulting in the current book. Its three theoretical papers are matched with ten case-based articles from the global South. These emphasize experiences from the African continent, a vast grassland region where China is beginning to provide development assistance and support for sustainable poverty reduction and economic development.

All three editors subsequently became founding members of China’s first Center for Rural Environmental Social Studies (CRESS). CRESS undertakes multi-disciplinary research and evaluation of complex rural social and environmental problems, including the environmental impacts and social changes resulting from rural resource management policies. Through site-based projects and policy recommendations, CRESS staff aim to better protect the interests of vulnerable rural residents, including those of its vast grasslands.

I congratulate the commitment of the editors, translators, and CRESS staff in bringing these new research perspectives to a wider Chinese readership and hope it marks the start of an on-going CRESS endeavor.