The Imposition of an International Environmental Regime on Chinese Grasslands

Abstract

"The paper I propose is based on a year of fieldwork conducted among Mongolian herders in a remote desert region of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. It briefly documents the dramatic environmental and social changes that have occurred in local settings as a result of new government land use policies imposed across national rangelands since decollectivization in 1980. The paper then argues that major international development institutions such as UNDP and IFAD have played a key role in advocating and enabling the culturally biased policies that attempt to privatize and parcelize grassland resources among minority populations. Unfamiliar technologies and environmental regimes are essentially thrust upon native residents in the name of modernity and economic development, undermining traditional conceptions of identity and community. The paper will conclude with a discussion of some of the more important but typically unacknowledged costs of local intervention by international environmental regimes."