Abstract
Title: Rangeland resources utilization of China: conflict and coordination between product function and ecological function
Authors: Lu Chunxia, Xie Gaodi, Cheng Shengkui, Ma Beibei, Feng Yue
- Institute of Geography and Natural Resources Science, CAS, Beijing 100101
Abstract: Multi – functionality of grassland ecosystem implies that the rangeland not only produces many kinds of goods but also provides a set of ecological functions and services. This includes goods such as animal meat, wool, milk and fur, forage, biomass fuels, the services such as the water and soil conservation, the maintenance of biodiversity and life-support functions, intangible aesthetic and cultural benefits. A healthy ecosystem should have a harmonious existence of production function and ecosystem services.
China has 400 million hectare of grassland and some 80% distributed in arid and semi-arid regions of North China, mainly cover the vast region westwards along the Xinanlin mountains-Yanshan mountains-Lvliang mountains-qinglin mountains-Tibet plateau. This region has a poor natural conditions and fragile ecosystem. And thus, the grassland plays two important roles in ensuring the development of animal husbandry and maintaining the ecological safety of China.
Since 1949, the only goal of Chinese’s government is to gain the maximum food products for solving a wide-reaching food shortage of China and until 1990’s the ecosystem functions and services of grassland weren’t paid any attentions. And then the serve degradation occurred popularly owing to the over-exploitation of grassland and the ecological functions and services were damaged seriously. The balance of grassland ecosystem were broken which resulted in the conflict between the product function and ecological function of grassland. In fact three causes resulted in the function conflict. Firstly, the government’s "food for the program" policy has lead to reclaim the large tracts of grassland and the area of good natural grassland decreased greatly meanwhile the structure and function degradation of grassland ecosystem appeared. Secondly, the lack of investment for reproduction and management, the output of the nutrient and energy was greater than the input in grassland ecosystem in a long term so that the ecological balance of grassland and the ecological functions were destroyed, such as loss of check winds and fixation sand and water conservation. The fundamental cause of insufficient investment lies in the separation of grassland ownership from managerial authority. In China, the grassland is the state-owned and the herdmen have the managerial authority. No powerful policy limits the herdmen’s behavior and thus, the over-grazing and grassland deterioration becomes ineluctable. Thirdly, there is a serious conflict between the demand growth of animal products and environmental protection in the period of urbanizing acceleration. With the increase of urbanizing rate the more the animal foods consume and the more grass forage is needed while the degraded grassland should to be rehabilitated. So China has to face this kind of conflict in the future.
The errors for seeking after maximum production function hinder the modern proceeding of animal husbandry, on the one hand, on the other hand prick up the conflict between the production function and ecological services of rangeland ecosystem. In face of the population growth, arable land decrease, high animal food demand, the grassland resources should play a important role in maintaining the food safety of China. Three aspects need to be done in recently to coordinate multiple functions of grassland ecosystem , including i) making the harmonious policy of animal husbandry development and grassland environment protection, ii) Optimizing management of multiple objectives and multiple functions of grassland, and iii) combining the administrative management and market system to exploit the grassland resources.