Rangelands are extremely important to society for the goods and services as well as for the ecological services they provide. They account for about one-half of all the lands in the world. In China,rangelands form the largest terrestrial ecosystem and one of the three most important food producers(Li,1997). However,about 90% of the total usable rangelands in China has been degraded to various extents and become into one problem facing agricultural production,rural development and environmental improvement(Li,2004). Especially for Qinghai-Tibet plateau—the origin of the three major rivers—Yellow River,Yangtze River and Lancang River,and the“water tower of China”due to its huge capacity to preserve water,where degradation of grassland not only affects the local pastoral production and life,but also causes environmental problems in many other areas. Biophysical factors like the global change and some social economic factors are attributed to such degradation. Among the latter ones,the first step of grassland reform,i.e. allocating the collective-owned livestock into individual herd household while kept the grassland collective-owned,to a great extent resulted in the so-called“common tragedy”. The subsequent step of the grassland reform was implemented some years later by allocating the grassland into households(see section 3 for details),intending to solve the common pool resource issue. However,the problem of over-grazing is still remaining. An innovation of grassland governance is therefore needed for managing rangelands in a sustainable way.
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