Socioenvironmental Pathways to Conservation of Natural Resources & Environmental Betterment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.98.12991Keywords:
fast variables, climate change, conservation, grassland, herders, livestock, degradation, ecological refugeesAbstract
This is an analysis of past and on-going ‘land and people’ management issues in China’s extensive rural areas. Both authors draw on more than 20 years’ experience derived from working in China’s arid northwest and on the ‘roof of the world” on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP). Worldwide, communities of people have adapted to hot and dry, cold and arid and hot and humid environments. They have shown their adaptability and have made remarkable innovations that enabled them to survive for centuries. But many of the strategies used now, and those unaltered from the past, are inadequate to cope with the fast-changing situation in modern China. The paper is in several parts. We explain some of the terminology around socioenvironmental thinking and its application to the real world with examples from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau – a vast upland in NW China. An attempt is made to show how a better understanding of the interplay of fast and slow variables can help to ensure conservation (wise use) of natural resources and serve the needs of the land users (mainly semi-nomadic herders of yaks, goats, sheep, camels and horses). We suggest that the term ‘situation betterment’ is a more realistic goal and the ‘solving’ the manifold problems (ecological, legal, economic, political and logistic) that beset land users, administrators, policy makers and the law makers. An explanation of the systems approach and its relevance to socio-environmentalism is offered
References
Adger, W.N. 2006. Vulnerability. Global Environmental Change 16:268–281.
Adger,W.N., N.W. Arnell, and E.L. Tompkins. 2005. Successful adaptation to climate change across scales. Global Environmental Change 15:77–86.
Breivik, I. 2007. The political ecology of grassland conservation in Qinghai province, China: Discourse, Policies and the Herders. Masters thesis, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB)
Carpenter, S. R., and M. G. Turner (eds). 2000. Special issue on interactions of fast and slow variables in ecosystems. Ecosystems 3(6):495–595. http://dx.doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/s100
Carpenter, S.R., and M.G. Turner. 2000. Hares and tortoises: Interactions of fast and slow variables for vulnerability analysis in sustainability science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:16637-16643
Costanza, R., and C. Folke. 1996. The structure and function of ecological systems in relation to property-rights regimes. Pages 13–34 in S. Hanna, C. Folke, K.-G. Mäler, and A°. Jansson, (eds). Rights to Nature: Ecological, Economic, Cultural, and Political Principles of Institutions for the Environment. Island Press, Washington.
Crépin, A.-S. 2007. Using fast and slow processes to manage resources with thresholds. Environmental and Resource Economics 36:191–213. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10640-00 6-9029-8
Feng, H. and Squires, V.R. 2020 Socioenvironmental dynamics of alpine grasslands, steppes and meadows in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau: A commentary. Appl. Sci. 10: 06488
Holling, C.S. 1986. The resilience of terrestrial ecosystems: local surprise and global change. Pages 292–317 in W.C. Clark and R.E. Munn (eds). Sustainable development of the biosphere. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Holling, C.S., and Sanderson, S. 1996. Dynamics of (dis)harmony in ecological and social systems. Beijer Discussion Paper 81:. Beijer Discussion Paper Series.
Liao, Ch, Sullivan, P.J, Barrett, C.B and Kassam, K.A.S 2013. Socioenvironmental Threats to Pastoral Livelihoods: Risk Perceptions in the Altay and Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang, China. Society for Risk Analysis 2013 1-16
Meadows, D. H. 2008. Thinking in systems—a primer. Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont, USA.
Niu, Y., Yang, S., Zhu, J., Chu, B., Ma, S., Hua, R. and Hua, L. 2020. Cyclic formation of zokor mounds promotes plant diversity and renews plant communities in alpine meadows on the Tibetan Plateau. Plant and Soil 446;65-79
Ostrom, E. 1999. Coping with the tragedies of the commons. Annual Review of Political Science 2:493–535.
Sayer, J., Sunderland ,T., Ghazoul, J….. Buck, L.E 2013 Ten principles for a landscape approach to reconciling agriculture, conservation, and other competing land use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(21):8345-8348 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1210595110
Smith, A.T. and Foggin. J.M.1999.The plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae) is a keystone species for biodiversity on the Tibetan plateau.” Animal Conservation 2, 235–240.
Squires, V.R., Lu Xinshi, Lu Qi, Wang Tao and Yang Youlin (eds), 2009 Degradation and recovery in China’s Pastoral Lands. CABI, Wallingford, UK Squires, V.R , Hua Limin, Zhang Degang and Li Guolin (eds) 2010. Towards Sustainable use of Rangelands in north west China. Springer, Dordrecht Squires, V.R. and Zhang, K. 2009. The context for the study of rangeland degradation and recovery in China’s pastoral lands. pp.3-14 in; Victor R Squires, Lu Xinshi, Lu Qi, Wang Tao and Yang Youlin (eds) Rangeland Degradation and Recovery in China’s Pastoral Lands. CABI, Wallingford, UK Squires, V.R., Dengler, J., Feng, H. and Hua, L. Grasslands of the World: Diversity, Management and Conservation. CRC Press, Boca Raton Straussfogel, D. 1997. World-systems theory: Toward a heuristic and pedagogic conceptual tool. Economic Geography 73:118–130.
Turner, B.L.II, Kasperson, R.E., Matson, P.A., McCarthy, J.J. Corell, R.W.et al. 2003. A framework for vulnerability analysis for sustainability science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100 (14)8074-9 UN (United Nations). 2007. The Millennium Development Goals Report. United Nations, New York Walker, B. H., Carpenter, S.R., Rockstrom, J., Crépin, A-S and Peterson, G.D. 2012. Drivers, "slow" variables, "fast" variables, shocks, and resilience. Ecology and Society 17(3): 30. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-05063-170330
Yeh, E.T. 200 Tibetan range wars: spatial politics and authority on the grasslands of Amdo. Development and Change 34(3):1-35 Yeh, E.T. 2005. Green governmentality and pastoralism in western China ’converting pasture to grasslands’ Nomadic Peoples NS2005 9(1-2):9-30
Yeh, E.T. 2013. The politics of conservation in contemporary Journal of Peasant Studies, 40:6, 1165-1188, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2013.859575
Young, O.R. 2002. The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay, and Scale. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA Zhao, X,. Zhou, L., Xu T., and Xu, S. 2020. The plateau pika has multiple benefits for alpine grassland ecosystem in Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. Ecosystem Health and Sustainability 6(1)
DOI 10.1080/20964129.2020.1750973
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Victor Squires, Haiying Feng
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
