Range Enclosure on the Tibetan Plateau of China: Impacts on Pastoral Livelihoods, Marketing, Livestock Productivity and Rangeland Biodiversity (RETPEC)
Investigator(s)
Principal investigator:
Grant Davidson, Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, UK
E-mail: g.davidson(at)macaulay.ac.uk
Abstract
RETEPC is a 3-year research project investigating the biophysical and socio-economic impacts of policy-driven changes that are transforming China's rangelands in response to a perceived threat of environmental degradation. Having transferred livestock property from state to private ownership over the past two decades, government policy is now encouraging pastoralists to privatise parts of the natural resource, in the form of fenced enclosures. In other areas, the government has asserted its ultimate rights of land ownership and is excluding grazing entirely. These reforms are presented as packages that include incentives for pastoralists to fence pastures, cease moving their animals seasonally, build permanent settlements on the ranges, or emigrate to towns. The RETPEC project will inform public policy by assessing whether land degradation is ameliorated by the new land tenure and grazing regimes. It will also measure the consequences of sedentarisation on pastoralists’ social and economic welfare, when pastoralists are forced to settle in rural areas or are obliged to leave the rangelands altogether and seek scarce alternative livelihoods in towns – creating a rural-to-urban population shift. The overall purpose of this research is to identify the immediate and long-term environmental, social and economic impacts of policies now being put into practice.
URL
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