The effects of enclosures and land-use contracts on rangeland degradation on the Qinghai–Tibetan plateau

Rangeland degradation on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau is a growing concern, often attributed to climate change and overgrazing. A minority of researchers have suggested instead that degradation may be caused by changes in land management, particularly enclosures and the contracting of long-term rangeland use rights to households. However, these claims have been hampered by a lack of empirical evidence. This field experiment is the first to compare rangeland conditions over time in the case of different management regimes on the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, specifically single-household versus multi-household management. A survey of vegetation properties in Maqu County, Gansu province in 2009, and repeated in 2011, examined the differences between single- and multi-household management in terms of vegetation biomass, cover, and species richness. In 2009, the biomass of the sedge group under multi-household management was significantly higher than that under single-household management. In 2011, biomass, vegetation cover, and species richness were all significantly higher under multi-household management than single-household management. These data suggest the flaws of the tragedy of the commons assumptions underlying single-household management.     

Conservation planning in the west, problems, new strategies and entrenched obstacles

The United States is often considered the progenitor of conservation planning in the world, the first to establish a vast public domain, for example. But with continued population growth, conservation planning on private lands—rural and at the urban fringe—continues to be a substantial challenge due to a tradition of local home rule in land use planning and strong private property protection afforded by the US Constitution. New “bottom-up” collaborative approaches, as well as other innovative strategies seem to be emerging. How effective these will be given pressures for growth and high property values remain to be seen without a rethinking of ideas of nature, a rebalancing of the role of property in American local fiscal regimes, and of private property rights.     

“Die man is die hoof en vat voor”: Women's attitudes to land and farming in the communal areas of Namaqualand

In the former coloured rural reserves of Namaqualand, land is held under an evolving form of communal tenure. This study, using in-depth interviews with both women farmers and non-farmers in Namaqualand, explores women's attitudes towards land and their experience of agriculture. It finds that women gain access to land for residential and production purposes mainly through dependent relationships with husbands, fathers and sons, and that unmarried women find it virtually impossible to obtain land rights in their own name. In the event of divorce or widowhood, women are vulnerable to loss of land rights and other resources. Women were found to engage in a range of agricultural activities, both on land allocated for their own use and on land controlled by male relatives, while a few better-off women engage in independent livestock farming. While the South African government's land reform programme has extended the area of communal land and attempted to secure the rights of existing land holders, this has largely benefited existing male farmers and appears to offer little to women farmers. Women's attitudes to the patriarchal system of land holding were found to be largely conservative. Few are willing to challenge the highly gendered nature of land rights within families, and women generally feel excluded from public processes around land. Nonetheless, women in the study expressed a demand for more secure access to land and an interest in agriculture as part of wider livelihood strategies.