Pastoral Land Tenure Reform and Resource Management in Northern Xinjiang: A new Institutional Economics Perspective

Abstract

administration but informal common property arrangements among pastoralists have also emerged. There is the common perception among government officials and researchers that the significant increase in livestock numbers since the privatisation of herds in 1985 has considerably exacerbated pastoral land degradation problems. The situation is widely interpreted by them, as well as foreign consultants, as a classical 'tragedy of the commons' problem, an invariable outcome of having privately owned livestock grazing on common lands. The policy of individualising land tenure is predicated on the assumption that it will improve pastoralists' land tenure security and create the incentives for them to adopt more sustainable resource management strategies. However, this paper argues that if the nature of the existing resource configuration and cultural endowments in the Xinjiang pastoral sector are taken into account, it becomes less obvious that an individualised land tenure system will necessarily result in improved efficiency and resource management. The observed persistence of forms of group farming is explained in new institutional economics terms. It is argued that group farming may represent a lower cost institutional arrangement than individualised tenure and thus should be perceived more as a potential remedy for, rather than the cause of, resource management problems. This paper is based on four weeks' fieldwork undertaken in northern Xinjiang, specifically Altay Prefecture and two counties within this prefecture, Altay and