A Study On Grassland Degradation And Sustainable Development Of Pastoral Livestock Industry In Inner Mongolia

The reasonable utilization of grassland is the foundation of pastoral livestock industry. The grassland resources in Inner Mongolia are fairly rich. For a long time, however, natural factors and mankind unreasonable activities such as overgrazing have led to degradation of grassland and deterioration of ecological environment. The stable and sustainable development of pastoral livestock industry is faced with stern challenges. It is an essential problem to study the protection of grassland resources from being devastated and achieve sustainable development of pastoral livestock industry. Based on ecological economics, some factors that may result in degradation of pastoral resources were figured out. Then an econometric analysis is used to find out the relation between overgrazing and economic development in the pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia. The positive analysis to the 31 pastoral banners and counties found that population growth has a positive impact on overgrazing: for 1 per cent increase in population, the possibility of overgrazing will be increased by 0.88 per cent; the goal of economic development in pastoral areas has a positive impact on overgrazing: for 1 per cent increase in total output value of livestock industry, the possibility of overgrazing will be increased by 0.85 per cent; the goal of industrial and agricultural development has a negative impact on overgrazing: for 1 per cent increase in industrial and agricultural output value, the possibility of overgrazing will be reduced by 0.79 per cent; the area of grassland in use or grassland productivity has a negative impact on overgrazing: for 1 percent increase in grassland productivity, the possibility of overgrazing will be reduced by 0.37 per cent. These results confirm the viewpoints of previous studies and at the same time calculate the extents of overgrazing brought about by related factors, and therefore provide the foundation for studying the mutual promotion and coordinated development among population, economy, society, resources and environment. The results also point out that population growth and local economic development must be adapted to the environment in the ecologically vulnerable areas. Only when grassland is reasonably utilized to maintain ecological balance, can pastoral livestock industry realize sustainable development.