Adaptation to Changing Institutional, Market and Bio-Physical Environments: The Case of China’s Grasslands

In the modern world, small pastoral herder households living on grasslands in countries such as China face major challenges in adapting to changes in their institutional, market and bio-physical environments. In China, these changes have been profound over the last 30 years. Herders, their communities and others dependent on the grasslands have responded to these developments but not always as might be expected. In this paper, the sources of the macro-forces in China that have created the pressure for change at the grass roots are outlined and the micro-adjustments made by herders and others in response to these pressures are analysed. A longitudinal multidisciplinary perspective is employed to distil insights from studying the dynamics of these adjustments over the last three decades. The major finding is that macro reforms can create enormous pressure for micro adaptive initiatives by herders and others dependent on the grasslands. Most importantly, the responses of these actors are not always as predicted and may pose major threats to the future sustainability of pastoralism based on the grasslands