Grassland Ecological Environment Deterioration Causes

Grassland ecosystem is the largest terrestrial ecosystems of China. It is not only the production base of livestock, but also an important ecological shelter for the local environment. The prairie of Inner Mongolia, which has more than 860,000 square kilometers of grassland, is the largest natural pasture and the animal husbandry production base of China. It is also the place where many nomads to survive in history. What's more, it is a very important ecological shelter of the north of China. However, for various reasons, the lush grasslands disappeared and became a place where sand has gone everywhere in the past century. especily since 1999, the strong sandstorm, which attacked Beijing, and even the whole of China frequently, made the grassland degeneration and desertification of Inner Mongolia a wide concern question. In addition, it attracted wide attention from the international society.The Chinese Government start to involve in the environmental protection in-depth since 1970. Since 1990's, the central government and local government put more emphasis on the improvement of the ecological environment of West region. They made lots of political regulations and implement a series of eco-building projects, for example, the Sand Source Control Project in Beijing and Tianjin, the program of restoring grazing to grasslands, the grazing ban project, the project of conversing cropland to forestland, natural forest protection project, "Three North" Shelterbelt Development Project, Ecological migration policies etc. However, twenty years passed, when we look back the 20 years'efforts, we found:despite there are more effective environmental policies, more Eco-building projects, more environmental input and stronger environmental awareness, the deterioration of grassland has not been improved, and even worse. What is the reason? That's what the essay to explore.The central problem of this thesis is about who will bear the guilt of deterioration of grassland:Is the goat which bark to feed on grass roots extremely harmful to the grassland? Does the greedy herdsman overgraze? Or there are other reasons? Why the numerous efforts that designed to protect the grassland ecology and reverse the deteriorating situation in grassland are all ineffective? Based on a sandy community that located in the north brink of Maowusu Desert in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and with the synchronic and diachronic approach, this thesis studies the changes in herdsman's action who act as the actors and the unintended consequences that caused by the change under the influence of the structural background such as Market economy, political power, ideology etc since 1980's. Social structure theory provide me with two important perspectives of this thesis:The first is focused on describing the dwelling environment of herdsman that under the influence of the market mechanism, the wave of industrialization, the implemen-tation of policies and ideology. This is the big structural backgroud of the herdsman's act and have an "regulate" and "shape" effect that difficult to implicit on the herdsman's act; the second is concerning on the herdsman's specific actions that under the above structural background to make out how the herdsman adapt the dwelling environment by their "habitus", "practice" and "tactics". It also displays these act's destructive consequences to the socity and environment that the herdsman take to cope with the pressure from the structure.Chapter 1 put forward the research problem,then hackle the literature from two aspects:the first one is the development of social structure theory; the second one is the existing research on the deterioration of ecological environment of grassland of Inner Mongolia at home and at abroad. The review of social structure theory provide me with vital theoretical guidance to analyze the structural reason behind the herdsman's action; whereas other studies on the deterioration and its raason of ecological environment of grassland in Inner Mongolia will provide me with relative background and inspire.Chapter 2 shows the ecological environment evolution of survey points with a large number of historical documents, and displays the current ecological conditions of town S to give reader a general understanding.Chapter 3 strat to look for the reasons for the deterioration of grassland ecology and elaborate two usual views:irrational human behavior and disasters natural factors. Then the author refute above view through the relationship between action and structure and proof that the usual view are important but they were exaggerated so that covered other more fundamental reasons.Chapter 4 continue to dig the reason for the deterioration of grassland ecology and come up with a new perspective that the structural reason or institutional reason to replace the usual view. Then this chaper analyze the social background factors from political and economic aspects. In other words, it shows the structural factors'"regulate" and "shape" effect which lead to the change in individual action and result in serious environmental consequences.Chapter 5 is a summary. It shows that the relationship between human behavior and deterioration of grassland is not the direct cause-and-effect relationship.They are the result of different levels of the political structure and economic structure'change. Then the auther appeal to return to the community and rebuilding local communities to cope with various kinds of problems triggered by the rapidly changes in pastoral society.