Gongbu Zeren

Southwestern University of Finance and Economics · Center for China's West Economic Development

Understanding of how rural livelihood systems embedded in different social‐ecological contexts affect household energy consumption behaviour is critical for facilitating rural energy transition. This study assesses the energy consumption level and structure for three different livelihood systems, including mobile livelihood (ML), semi‐settled livel...

Many studies have emphasized the importance of community-based natural resource management institutions in adapting to climate change and responding to the global shift towards individualized land tenure regimes. However, few have reported on the innovative institutions developed by some rural communities to rebuild community cooperation and rural...

Community-based tourism is key to rural sustainable development. However, information remains inadequate on how natural resource management institutions restructure community social capital and property rights regimes while developing community cooperation and tourism participation within evolving rural socio-economic systems. This study investigat...

The privatization of collectively used rangelands results in fragmentation of land use in pastoral areas. This affects pastoralists' grazing strategies and results in new institutional arrangements for addressing changing social-ecological systems. Two main systems of grazing management have emerged in the pastoral regions of the Qinghai-Tibetan Pl...

While current literature has discussed the processes of herder out-migration and their implications on rural and urban livelihood development, few studies have examined the linkages between the herders living in the pastoral regions and those who have out-migrated to urban regions and their importance in rural livelihood transformation. Based on pa...

Economic, policy, and climate changes have profoundly influenced pastoral social-ecological systems on the Tibetan Plateau. Climate change is believed to be leading to increasing extreme weather conditions such as snow disasters and droughts, putting a strain on the rangeland resources herders must have to increase income. Market-based economic ref...

In 2014, China announced an ambitious plan to help alleviate rural poverty through deploying distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in poor areas. The solar energy for poverty alleviation programme (SEPAP) aims to add over 10 GW capacity and benefit more than 2 million households from around 35,000 villages across the country by 2020. This art...

Rangeland ecosystem has unique characteristics as it provides home to both extensive livestock production and thousands of herders. Thus, valuating rangeland ecosystem needs to consider the co-evolved system of grass, livestock and herders. Based on case study from Guinan County, Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai with semi-structured in...

A policy briefing highlights the unique value of traditional pastoralism, particularly in maintaining efficient and sustainable livelihood, avoiding degradation of the environment, responding to extreme events, and preserving culture and traditional knowledge.

Beginning in the early 1990’s, grazing lands once held in common were contracted to individual households in the rangeland regions of China. The resulting fragmentation of rangelands has led to ecological and social problems. As China seeks to address intractable poverty and rangeland degradation, attention has turned to rental, or transfer, of con...

In order to prevent rangeland degradation and to recover the ecological services provided by the rangeland ecosystem, China has implemented a series of ecological policies (EPs) since the beginning of the 21st century. Nevertheless, the impacts of these policies are greatly debated in terms of ecosystem, herders’ livelihoods, animal husbandry and p...

In China, three major rangeland management policies have caused dramatic social, economic, and ecological changes for pastoral regions in the past 30 yr: the Rangeland Household Contract Policy (RHCP), Rangeland Ecological Construction Projects (RECPs), and the Nomad Settlement Policy (NSP). The impacts of these policies are greatly debated. In thi...