Institutional Change Of Pasture Tenure And Its Effect

Pasture area is one of the areas of the harshest natural condition, poorest agricultural resources and the most fragile ecological environment, which, with its low productivity, is considered as a special region in the Construction of New Countryside. Since the beginning of the 21 st century, China has launched a series of major Grassland Construction projects and policies to promote pasture ecological restoration and the transformation and upgrading of the animal husbandr y industry. In this context, this study, which takes Xilingol League of Inner Mongolia, China as its study object, restored and analyzed the institut ional change of grassland tenure and the profound effect of pasture ecological restoration policies on the pastoral society. The study, which chooses state-owned Baiyinxile Farm and natural villages(Gacha) in two property right arrangements, via household survey and statistical analysis, combed and recorded profound influence of the implementation of ?Dual Contract of Grassland and Livestock? from the headsmen's point of view. The main conclusions and innovative points are as follows:Since the 17 th century, pasture tenure in Xilingol Steppe has experienced phases of feudal suzerain system, pasture public ownership system, national public ownership, and ownership by the whole people respectively. And since the implementation of ?Dual Contract of Grassland and Livestock? after 1980s' reform and opening-up, the grassland tenure has changed from single ownership by the whole people to the coexistence of both ownership by the whole people and collective ownership. The institutional transition of pasture tenure has profound impact on strategies and model of the animal husbandry management in Xilingol League. Marked by 1960 s massive settlement construction, the grazing system altered from Mongolian tradit ional large-scale seasonal rotational grazing to m iddle-scale and then to settled grazing management after 1980 s. Thus, livestock amount soared up rapidly with fierce c hange of livestock population structure, and as the result, the peak amount of livestock in 1999 was 7 times of that in 1949 in Xilingol and the proportion of Large and Small livestock lowered from 1:3 in 1949 to the minimum value of 1:20 in 2002.Based on the macroscopic analysis, four case study sites, two respectively with state ownership and collective ownership, are chosen to do the contrastive analys is of the implement ation and its social effect of ?Dual Contract System?. The results showed that on the one hand, the ?Dual Contract System? promoted the animal husbandry economy, and on the other hand, it changed the Mongolian tradit ional grazing system formed in the past centuries. The combination of the two has exerted far-reaching influence on the production and living way in the pastoral area since then. Compared with collective ownership, state-owned ownership arrangement caused the uncertainty among herdsmen, which, thus, triggered ?Tragedy of the Common?, but in the longrun, the large-scale grassland management will be better prepared for the developm ent of intensive modern animal husbandry industry.Based on the data of four levels of city, county, village and households, an evaluation on thepasture polices in the context of the ?Dual Contract System? was conducted. The resulted showed that after three years of ?Conservation Reserve Program?, the grassland coverage had increased by 20%-30%, but due to the lack of well-accepted compensation payment, herdsmen's income reduced. 87.1% of herdsmen supported ?the Grassland Ecological Reward&Compensation Mechanism? but in favor of an increased compensation payment of 3-5 RMB/ Year.The multivariate analysis of pasture tenure, policies concerned to economic income and vegetation condition showed that the steppe policies had significant effect on herdsmen's income(R2=0.9754, p<0.0001), but the direction differs in the perspective of types of policies and policy duration. At a relative short time scale, policies showed negative impact on herdsmen's income but with further implementat ion, policies show positive impact in the later period. Grassland tenure and its related policies inf luence steppe productivity to some extent, and the contribution rates of their quadratic sums are 4.88% and 4.67%(p>0.1) respectively, whereas the quadratic sum of rainfall is 47.85%(p<0.001).