Structural optimization and system improvement of grass-livestock balance system in China

The grass-livestock balance system plays an important role in suppressing overloaded grazing and protecting grassland ecology, but it has not fully resolved severe grass-livestock conflicts and grassland degradation in certain regions. Our structural-functional analysis of China's grass-livestock balance system reveals both positive and negative outcomes. Positively, the system has effectively protected grassland ecology and clarified powers, rights, and responsibilities of relevant entities through legal means. Negatively, it has restricted grazing practices, curbed herders' rights, reduced their income, and dampened their motivation to comply, thereby creating negative incentives. An examination of cause and effect shows that the causes lie in the external structural obstacles of the broken normative structure of the grass-livestock balance system and the irrational configuration of the institutional structure, the internal structural obstacles of the excessively long authorization cycle, the imbalance between constraints and incentives, and the limitations of the supervision and monitoring system, as well as the internal and external structural obstacles of the mixing of rewards and subsidies, which inhibit the motivation of the herdsmen. In view of this, the grass-livestock balance system should be improved in conjunction with the prohibition of grazing, rotational grazing, pasture rest, and shelter-feeding, and the incentive, constraint, and livestock-carrying capacity approvals and supervision and monitoring systems should be perfected, so as to establish a reasonable interface between the grass-livestock balance subsidy and the realization of the value of grassland ecological products.