Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
light bulb in their tent. The Chinese might be wrong in assuming that everybody wants
the same thing, but I have yet to encounter a pastoralist who did not prefer the coziness
of his brick or adobe winter home to a drafty tent or windowless yurt. 89 Even fencing,
which is universally condemned by Western-based analysts of recent Chinese initiatives,
is often viewed with genuine appreciation by many pastoralists if they are otherwise
prevented from safeguarding their own emergency pastures, or find it burdensome to
allow for pasture fallow when needed. Mobility and flexibility were no doubt important
components in facilitating stable livestock-grassland dynamics in a pre-modern, subsis-
tence economy, and Western critics are right to point to the risks of poorly considered
sedentarization. But such critics also need to consider that many pastoralists also wish to
reduce some of the burdens associated with nomadism: it may be as arrogant to condemn
these pastoralists to a future filled with these hardships as it is to impose upon them a
radically different life.
In addition to limitations imposed by nature, culture, and the land tenure system, my
view is that the fundamental economic system in place is a critical, if often overlooked,
component. The likelihood that any given area is subject to declining range trends is
a function of moisture regime, soil quality, human population density, and—most im-
portantly of all—degree of integration with the market economy. In the extreme case,
where climate is arid, soils are saline or otherwise not conducive to plant growth, human
populations have increased (due either to local demographics or in-migration), and pas-
toralists produce livestock solely in order to convert them into cash for purchasing other
products, the probability of finding a downward spiral of grassland health is high. At the
other extreme, where climates are relatively mesic, soils not heavily saline, population
density not dramatically increased from historic levels, and pastoralists produce livestock
primarily for domestic use, the probability of finding this downward spiral of grassland
health is low (see Figure 2.8).
This conceptual model neither requires nor prohibits any particular system of land
tenure. Anthropologist Tony Banks (among others) has argued that informal, common-
property arrangements have provided pastoral Kazaks in Xinjiang with numerous eco-
nomic and social advantages, but he has not shown that such arrangements necessarily
prevent range degradation. 90 The Chinese Grassland Law (as well as many other gov-
ernmental initiatives) is largely an attempt to strengthen individual land tenure, and thus
the linkage between husbandry and benefits. 91 The ardor with which these reforms are
touted does make it sometimes seem, as some commentators have remarked, that Chinese
policy views privatization as a panacea for grasslands currently used unsustainably. 92 But
pastures in Jianshe (and elsewhere 93 ), whether damaged by earlier policies or not, are at
the least not being rehabilitated (and are probably being worsened) despite reasonably
clear individual-family land tenure. Private-property mimicking does not appear capable,
by itself, of coping with the competing imperatives of modernization in such a harsh
environment. But of course, total government control, as occurred during the collective
era, has hardly been exonerated as a contributor to range degradation, based on its recent
record. 94 Thus, “mutual coercion, mutually agreed,” to use Hardin's phrase, 95 does not
necessarily prevent range degradation either.
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