Rangelands in north Africa and the near east in general provide numerous goods and services that have great economic, social, cultural, and biological values. For centuries, inhabitants of rangelands have engineered pastoral and farming systems that have sustained their livelihoods in these harsh and dry environments. Unfortunately, these rangelands have undergone profound socio-economic changes where traditional grazing systems (transhumance and nomadism) which had historically allowed for grazing deferment were abandoned.

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 this paper, we conduct a systematic review of academic perspectives on the impacts of the three policies and the causes of ineffective and negative effects.

Governance plays a key role in rangeland management. In China, all rangeland, including pastoral land and agro-pastoral land, is owned by the State. Since 1980, use rights have been granted to households by the Chinese government extending the household contract responsibility system (HCRS). But in the agro-pastoral areas of northwestern (NW) China, the rangeland degradation is more severe than that in pastoral areas. The HCRS is difficult to implement because the limited and fragmented grazing land cannot be contracted to individual households.