Study On The Institutional Change Of Traditional Irrigation Management In The Hani Terraces

In the process of longt-term adaptation to the natural environment,the ethnic minority communities in the border area have formed unique production modes and cultural systems that adapted to their local environmenst,and created unique agricultural cultural landscapes.The traditional natural resource management institutions of local communities played a key role in ensuring the sustainable use of their resources and sustaining their agricultural cultural landscape.In the process of modernization,the communities were intergrated to and shaped by the national state,and were impacted by the process of globalization,marketization,and urbanization.Increasingly institutional failure were observed in the traditional natural resource management systems of ethnic communities in the border area,degrading their natural resources and threateningthe sustaining of their cultural landscapes.Hani terraces are one of the Important Global Agricultural Cultural Heritage and World Cultural Heritage.Traditional irrigation management systems are the core elements that sustain the traditional land use systems and the Hani terraces landscape.In recent 20 years,the destruction of the irrigation infrastructures and the traditional irrigation institutions have exacerbated the destruction of Hani terraces.However,there are limted understanding of the process,causes and impacts of the insitional change in the traditional irrigation management systems.This study takes Amengong Village,Panzhihua Township,Yuanyang County as a case area,systematically studied the process of institutional changes of the traditional irrigation system of Hani terracesduring the modernization process.Using the methods of key informant interviews,questionnaire,field investigation and literature research,it explored the key lements of the traditional irrigation management systems,and the processes of institioanl change during the process of mordanization,with special attention to the causes for the decline of the traditional irrigation system and its impacts on peasant’ livelihood,collective resource management,terrace landscapes and traditional terrace culture.Results are as follows:(1)The ancestors of Hani and Yi communities formedthetraditional irrigation institutions to regulate the construction and maintenance of irrigation infrastructure,and the allocation of water resources.The institution included two core elements: a collective management organization of water users based on "River-chief system",and a water allocation systembased on "Water-allocating wood system".The traditional irrigation institution provides rules to regulate irrigation behaviors,and realizes drational and effective use of irrigation water resources.(2)The traditional irrigation system of Hani terraces experienced four phases:the formation and stable development phase(before 1956),the phase of national control and traditional institution coexistence(1956-1983),the phase of traditional institution recovery(1984-2007),and the phase of traditional institution weakness(2008-present).The first two were imposed institutional changes driven by the establishment and end of the national planned economy system.The last one was induced institutional changes under the influence of marketization,peasant’ livelihood transformation,national water policy changes,and natural disasters..(3)The general weakening of the traditional irrigation system promotes the further differentiation of farmers’ livelihood patterns,increases uncertainty and vulnerability of some households’ livelihoods,decreases the capacity of community irrigation water resources management.It also reduces the hydrological connectivity and water source stability of Hani terraces,decreases terrace landscapes area,and exacerbates the fragmentation of the terrace landscapes and the decline of the traditional terraces cultural.This study contribute to the understanding of the changes in the traditional natural resource management model and the agricultural cultural landscape of ethnic groups duringminority areas in the process of modernization,and has reference value for the policy design of agricultural cultural landscape protection and irrigation water resources management in Hani terraces.