The Asian drylands: Managing competing land-use pressures

Population pressure on arable land in Asia is considerable-and growing. Severe land degradation affects some 35 percent of productive land. The result has been to put more population pressure on the Inner Asian drylands. Most affected are Afghanistan, China, India, and Pakistan,¹⁴ and Inner Asia's high steppe, the largest remaining pastureland in the world, which includes Mongolia, northwestern China, and parts of Siberia. Over thousands of years, these grasslands have been home to nomadic herders of horses, camels, goats, sheep, and cattle, practicing elaborate systems of seasonal pasture rotation across wide stretches of land in response to climate fluctuations. Herd rotation has helped sustain the fertility and resilience of grassland ecosystems and improve the health of livestock.¹⁵

Over the past decade population pressures and competing uses on these fragile lands have made it hard to find the right balance between traditional land management and demand for higher agricultural productivity. Government policies that discouraged a nomadic lifestyle, herd movement, and temporary use of patchy grasses led to dependence on agricultural livelihoods and sedentary herds, which created greater pressure on local ecosystems, and degraded fragile grasslands. The contrasting experiences of Mongolia and northwestern China illustrate some of the problems and possible solutions.

Mobile pastoralism-Mongolia.¹⁶ Mongolia has retained many traditional herding customs and customary tenure with land management as a commons. Herders rely on local breeds (which are stronger and more resilient) that graze year-round on native grasses. These customary practices were effectively supported by the collectives between the 1950s and 1980s. The policy environment allowed people and herds to move over large areas and provided the possibility of sustainable grasslands management under controlled-access conditions. Until 1989 the state helped move families around to different grazing areas and provided subsidized schools and clinics. The state also set up several public enterprises that offered employment outlets, reducing the numbers of herders and keeping herd sizes relatively stable.

The economic transition since 1990 has not been conducive to sustainable management. Livestock mobility declined significantly. Many public enterprises closed. Having few alternatives, people turned to herding-often for the first time. The numbers of herders more than doubled from 400,000 in 1989 (17 percent of Mongolia's population) to 800,000 in the mid-1990s (35 percent). Poverty also increased to 36 percent of the population by 1995 from a very low base in the 1980s. Herds went from the traditional 25 million head to about 30 million. State subsidies for health, education, and relocation services were halted, making migration and the acquisition of human capital more difficult. Today, an estimated 10 percent of pastureland is believed to be degraded, causing noticeable increases in the frequency and intensity of dust storms.

The problem is considered manageable in Mongolia because population pressures are not too high. Rural population increased by about 50 percent from 1950 to 2000 (compared with a 700 percent increase in neighboring northwestern China). The government is responding to the consequences of the last 10 years by promoting secure livelihoods in the pastoral livestock sector through asset diversification, risk management, microfinance, and assistance to improve population mobility. The state is setting up a fund to finance service delivery in remote areas and is trying to foster growth and new jobs in other parts of the economy, reducing the number of herders. Having fewer more mobile herders should reduce overgrazing pressures, promote sustainable grassland management, and ensure acceptable livelihoods.

Mixed farming and intensifying livestock production-northwestern China.¹⁷ As in Mongolia, the grasslands in China are state-owned. But settled pastoralism and the conversion of grasslands to arable cultivation were more common in northwestern China than in Mongolia, beginning in the 1950s when state-owned pastureland was allocated to "people's communes." The concentration of people in villages meant declining pasture rotation and expanding agriculture. Policies encouraged conversion of prime pasturelands into arable crop land, leading to salinization and wind erosion in some areas. Common policies were applied to highly diverse circumstances, resulting in perverse outcomes and higher degradation in some places. Subsidies encouraged mixed farming systems, which put more pressure on fragile land than the traditional mobile pastoralism .

Economic reforms in the early 1990s granted households nominal shares in the collective land pool. Shared areas were fenced off, making herd mobility more difficult. Subsidized inputs, income transfers, and deep pumping of underground aquifers encouraged a rapid increase in farming. From an estimated 3 million indigenous pastoralists in the 1950s in the "Inner Mongolian" part of northwestern China, farmers and livestock producers today number 20 million, and cattle doubled from 17 million head in 1957 to 32 million today.

China's western development plan shares two characteristics with the policies followed in the Southern Plains of the Unites States: intensify agricultural production and create "climate-free" agriculture in the grasslands through irrigation from underground aquifers. The objective is to make the area a bread and meat basket to provide for China's growing demands for improved local diets. But unlike the Southern Plains-where about 1 million farmers left between the 1930s to the 1970s, enabling reconsolidation of land holdings and conversion of vast grassland areas to protected areas-population pressures have continued to increase in China's grasslands. Poverty rates in these degraded and ecologically sensitive areas are well above the national average (25 percent in some provinces, compared with the national average of 6.3 percent). There is little empirical scientific research on what is happening to the land and the aquifers. The frequency and intensity of dust storms are increasing. Estimates of degradation are 50 to 75 percent, compared with 10 to 15 percent in the grasslands of Mongolia.