Environmental Research Letters TOPICAL REVIEW • OPEN ACCESS Prospects for the sustainability of social-ecological systems (SES) on the Mongolian plateau: five critical issues To cite this article: Jiquan Chen et al 2018 Environ. Res. Lett. 13 123004 View the article online for updates and enhancements. This content was downloaded from IP address 35.9.159.157 on 07/12/2018 at 17:27 Environ. Res. Lett. 13 (2018) 123004 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf27b TOPICAL REVIEW Prospects for the sustainability of social-ecological systems (SES) OPEN ACCESS on the Mongolian plateau: five critical issues RECEIVED 28 September 2018 Jiquan Chen1 , Ranjeet John1,2, Ge Sun3, Peilei Fan4 ,GeoffreyMHenebry1 , María E Fernández-Giménez5, REVISED Yaoqi Zhang6,HogeunPark4,7,LiTian8 ,PavelGroisman9,10,11 ,ZutaoOuyang1, Ginger Allington12 , 12 November 2018 Jianguo Wu13, Changliang Shao14, Amartuvshin Amarjargal15,GangDong16 ,GarikGutman17, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION 18 19,20 1 1 20 November 2018 Falk Huettmann , Raffaele Lafortezza , Connor Crank and Jiaguo Qi 1 PUBLISHED Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences and Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State 7 December 2018 University, East Lansing, MI 48824, United States of America 2 Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, United States of America 3 Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center, USDA Forest Service, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, United States of America Original content from this 4 work may be used under School of Planning, Design, and Construction and Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University, East the terms of the Creative Lansing, MI 48824, United States of America Commons Attribution 3.0 5 Department of Forest & Rangeland Stewardship and Center for Collaborative Conservation,, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO licence. 80523, United States of America Any further distribution of 6 School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36949, United States of America this work must maintain 7 attribution to the School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States of America 8 author(s) and the title of Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China the work, journal citation 9 North Carolina State University at NOAA, National Centers for Environment Information, North Carolina State University, Asheville, and DOI. NC 28801, United States of America 10 P P Shirshov Institute for Oceanology, RAS, 36 Nakhimovskiy Ave., Moscow, 117997, Russia 11 Hydrology Science and Services Corp., Asheville, NC 28804, United States of America 12 Department of Geography, The George Washington University, Washington DC, United States of America 13 School of Life Sciences and School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, United States of America 14 Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, People’s Republic of China 15 Department of Economics, University of the Humanities, Ulaanbaatar 210620, Mongolia 16 School of Life Sciences, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, People’s Republic of China 17 NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street, SW, Washington, DC 20546, United States of America 18 Institute of Arctic Biology, Biology & Wildlife Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775, United States of America 19 Department of Geography, University of Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China 20 Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of Bari, Bari, I-70126, Italy E-mail: [email protected] Keywords: social-ecological systems, mongolian plateau, land use, institutional change, sustainability, global change Abstract The Mongolian Plateau hosts two different governments: the Mongolian People’sRepublicandtheInner Mongolia Autonomous Region, a provincial-level government of the People’s Republic of China. The divergence between these governments has widened in the past century, mostly due to a series of institutional changes that generated different socioeconomic and demographic trajectories. Due to its high latitude and altitude, the Plateau has been highly sensitive to the rapid changes in global and regional climates that have altered the spatial and temporal distributions of energy and water. Based on a recent workshop to synthesize findings on the sustainability of the Plateau amidst socioeconomic and environmental change, we identify five critical issues facing the social-ecological systems (SES): (1) divergent and uncertain changes in social and ecological characteristics; (2) declining prevalence of nomadism; (3) consequences of rapid urbanization in transitional economies; (4) the unsustainability of large-scale afforestation efforts in the semi-arid and arid areas of Inner Mongolia; and (5) the role of institutional changesinshapingtheSESonthePlateau.Weemphasize that lessons learned in Inner Mongolia are valuable, but may not always apply to Mongolia. National land management policies and regulations have long-term effects on the sustainability of SES; climate change adaptation policies and practices must be tuned to local conditions and should be central to decision-making on natural resource management and socioeconomic development pathways. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd Environ. Res. Lett. 13 (2018) 123004 J Chen et al 1. Social-ecological systems (SES) on the population being Han Chinese. In both cases, we Mongolian plateau observe tendencies of growing urbanization. However, within-country migration to Ulaanbaatar is accom- The contingent, heterogeneous, and adaptive dynamics panied by the depopulation of rural areas, while in IM a ofecological (Holling 1996) and socioeconomic systems strong influx of population from other Chinese pro- (Rosser 1999) often yield complex behaviors in coupled vinces has compensated the rural (and, in particular, SES, with emergent properties that defy reductionist nomadic) population decline. These variations in socio- approaches (Holling 2001,Walkeret al 2002,Allenet al ecological parameters are compounded by spatio- 2003,OstromandCox2010,Binderet al 2013, Chen temporal variation in climate (Liu et al 2013,Johnet al et al 2015b, Turner et al 2016). Further complications 2016, Groisman et al 2017), as well as interactive feed- arise from the disparate scales of observation used to backs among the elements of SES (Hardin 1968, Chen study ecological and socioeconomic systems, making et al 2015b,Haoet al 2016a,Allingtonet al 2017,Hessl measurements at commensurate scales in space and et al 2018). time an exception rather than the rule. For example, Similar to other SES across the globe, the functions data on crop and livestock production may be reported and dynamics of the SES on the Plateau are affected by annually at the provincial level based on a survey of multiple contingent drivers (Turner et al 2016) including producers. In contrast, gross primary production may population, economy, market globalization, global to be measured annually at 1 km or finer resolution based regional climatic changes, and the emergence of online on remote sensing data streams with a temporal information exchange (Chen et al 2013,Groismanet al resolution of twice-daily. Making linkages between 2017,Allingtonet al 2018,Fanet al 2018a).Severalmajor biogeophysical variables retrieved from remote sensing geopolitical shifts—e.g.thecollapseoftheformerUSSR, and socioeconomic variables reported through admin- transition from a planned to a market-driven economy, istrative channels is fraught with uncertainties, missing andaccessiontotheWorldTradeOrganization(WTO) and unreliable data, heterogeneity in measurement and —have also played major roles in shaping the SES since modeling techniques, and mismatches of scale. Never- 1980 in IM and since 1991 in MG (Chen et al 2015a). theless, it is possible to use disciplinary understanding Specific institutional changes include the various policies to identify relationships between socioeconomic and proposed and implemented at the national level that may ecological processes that generate observable, expected protect the environment, prevent natural disasters and patterns. These patterns then become the basis for attenuate natural disturbances (e.g. desertification, sands evaluating differences among SES. storms),and/or promote socioeconomic development The Mongolian Plateau hosts a natural experiment —all of which are critical for the stability and sustain- of opportunity for investigating SES: a vast ecosystem ability of SES. For example, in IM, ‘The Three-North used by pastoralists since 1300 BCE (John et al 2009, Shelterbelt’ and the ‘Grain to Green’ programs were Fernández-Giménez et al 2017) that was subdivided in implemented to restore degraded grasslands and to miti- the early 20th century into two governments with differ- gate the impacts of local climatic change, desertification, ent socioeconomic systems: the Inner Mongolia Auton- and soil erosion. In MG, the ‘Law on Lands (1994)’ and omous Region (IM), a provincial-level government of the ‘Law on Allocation of Land to Mongolian Citizens for China, and the country of Mongolia (MG).Overtime, Ownership (2002)’ aimed to improve management and environmental policies, economic development and protection of land resources and to promote their demographic pressures have progressed at different