Human Ecology, VoL 2L No. 4, 1993

Political Ecology and Environmental Management in the Loess Plateau, China Linda H e r s h k o v i t z 1

This paper explores the changing political ecology of soil and water management---the articulation of physical and political-economic processes--in the Loess Plateau of north-central China. Market-oriented reforms and the shift from collective to household farming have created a diverse array of tenure, management, and financing arrangements. In the process relationships between farm households, the collective, and the state have been altered, with profound implications for land use and sustainability. The paper reviews the political ecology approach and its relevance to environmental management in China. An outline of the physical and economic context of soil erosion in the Loess Plateau is followed by examination of the impact of reform on rural environmental management. Local innovations in the organization of environmental management are highlighted. The conclusion comments on the utility of the regional political ecology approach and suggests some critical issues for further research. KEY WORDS: China; rural environment; political ecology; Loess Plateau.

INTRODUCTION Before the reign of Cheng Te (1506-1521), flourishing woods covered the southeastern slope of the Shangchih and Hsiachih mountains, which were not stripped because people gathered little fuel... It was never seen dry at any time of the year. ... At the beginning of the reign of Chiaching (1522-1566) people vied with each other to build houses and wood from the southern mountains was cut without a year's rest. The natives took advantage of the barren mountain surface and converted it into farms . . . . If heaven sends down a torrent, there is nothing to obstruct 1Department of Geography, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. All correspondence should be addressed to Linda Hershkovitz, 117 Pinewood Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M6C 2V4, Canada.

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the flow of the water. In the morning it falls on the southem mountains; in the evening, when it reaches the plains, its angry waves swell in volume and break embankments, causing frequent changes in the course of the river. . . . Hence Ch'i district was deprived of seven-tenths of its wealth (Gazetteer of Shanxi Province, 1887, quoted in Chi, 1963, p. 22). Essentially, in an explanation of a case of soil erosion, there are two sets of specificity to be tackled-Ahat of the physical system and that of the social/economic system, and they both have to be brought together and analytically integrated (Blaikie, 1985, p. 79).

This paper applies a regional political ecology approach to the study of soil erosion in the Loess Plateau region of north-central China, one of the oldest areas of continuous cultivation in the country, as well as one of its most severely eroded regions, containing some of its poorest and most vulnerable rural populations. Using the dichotomy identified by Blaikie, the physical systems of soil erosion in this region have been studied and documented extensively in both the Chinese and European/North American lite r a t u r e and continue to be the subject of ongoing research. The social/economic systems and their evolution have likewise been objects of scrutiny for social scientists inside and outside China, particularly over the last decade. There are a few studies, however, which have "brought together and analytically integrated" the "two sets of specificity" in a way which clarifies the interrelationships between them. In order to do so, this paper will first elaborate the political ecology approach, pointing out its particular relevance to the study of environmental management issues in China. The second section will introduce the context of soil erosion in China's Loess Plateau region, using heuristic categories that necessarily have very fuzzy boundaries: physical and economic. The third section will outline the broader socioeconomic and political issues in rural environmental management in China at this particular historical juncture, which is often characterized as lying somewhere "between plan and market." Following this will be a discussion of the local impact of a decade of rural reform on the organization of environmental management in the region, particularly in relation to the implementation of innovative institutional measures for soil erosion management. The final section will comment on the utility of the regional political ecology approach, and suggest some critical issues for further research and elaboration.

POLITICAL ECOLOGY The political ecology approach, in its simplest definition, "combines the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy" (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987, p. 17). In academic discourse the term is used in

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two distinct ways. One sense of political ecology relates to environmentalism or the "ecology movement" and can be seen as the politicization of environmental concerns an environmental politics. Political ecology in this sense of the term is both a way of understanding environmental issues politically, and a program for change: "a steady growth of ideas and initiatives that can be interpreted as---and are certainly understood by those involved to be--pointing toward radical changes in the political and social settlement as a whole. It is this side of environmentalism that is referred to as political e c o l o g y . . . " (Atkinson, 1991, p. 21). There is another, quite different use of the term, however, that arises out of the cultural ecology tradition. The latter tends to begin with microlevel analysis of what used to be called "man-environment relations," and usually in places that are, for European and North American scholars, "other." The general outlines of this approach were developed in Blaikie (1985) and Blaikie and Brookfield (1987). It has been applied by other scholars to local studies of environmental change in such diverse settings as Amazonia (Schmink and Wood, 1987; Chapman, 1988-89), the Ivory Coast (Basset, 1988), northern Mexico (Sheridan, 1988) and northern Portugal (Black, 1990). It is this brand of political ecology that Bryant (1992) has identified as an "emerging agenda in third world studies." Political ecology in this sense as in the first can also be seen as the politicized study of human-environment relations and resource use. There are several other features that distinguish this second use of the term, however, principally its intellectual roots in cultural ecology, and its attempt to integrate a political perspective into cultural ecology based on an understanding of the position of communities within the broader political economy of global capitalism. This political perspective can also be linked to political action. Indeed for Hecht and Cockburn, political ecology has begun to define a new political agenda that questions the very terms of environmental debates in the third world, which, they argue. . . . remain embodied in an ideological framework about conservation and development which is largely divorced from the historical and economic realities of most of the Third Wodd. In response to this oversight, and to the declining conditions of life for many of the rural poor, national political and social movements have increasingly moved into the "political ecology" sphere, where social movements and NGOs increasingly hope to define the environmental agenda in terms that address the more general questions of resource distribution and access, political rights and processes, as well as the larger philosophical issues of the nature of property . . . . the nature of n a t u r e . . . , and technical and development alternatives. Their expression and practice emphasize development and equity concerns in which environmental issues are but one subset of a broader range of activities, but most of their efforts focus on concerns of social justice (Hecht and Cockburn, 1992, p. 375).

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Despite this apparent convergence, there seems to be little correspondence between the two senses of political ecology identified here. z different intellectual traditions, the concept operates in two separate worlds of discourse. Yet there is a sense in which Atkinson's approach to political ecology can be seen as a European and North American variant, set in the context of corporate capitalism, the liberal state, and the "core" of the world economy. The rest of this discussion focuses on the second approach, rooted in cultural ecology and focused on the third world. The political ecology approach, true to its cultural ecology roots, is tied closely to the study of physical systems and processes, as well as local production systems. It is also behavioral in its emphasis, asking questions about why the users of land follow particular courses of action that in many cases exacerbate destructive physical processes that in the long run jeopardize their own livelihood. Although this approach situates the questions at the individual or household level, it locates the answers at higher levels within the realm of political economy. As Blaikie puts it, The central question asked is why certain land-uses take place . . . . The answer to these questions lies in the political-economic context in which land-users find themselves. The analysis must start therefore in areas which initially may seem remote from the physical processes which directly cause degradation and erosion (Biaikie, 1985, p. 32).

These areas include, to name a few: the links between local production systems and the larger national and international economy, political structures and structures of decision-making, particularly as they impinge on decisions about resource use, the structure of ownership and rights to use and control resources, and the role and limitations of the national and local state in policy development and implementation. By taking an explicitly place-bound perspective focusing in the first instance on local production systems, this work falls under what Westcoat (1991) calls the "unfortunate heading" of regional political ecology (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987). Rather than "unfortunate," I believe the term does the important service of focusing attention on critical issues of scale and context, as well as the interaction of the social and physical at different spatial levels. An important element of this approach is what Bassett, citing Vayda (1983), calls "progressive contextualization"---the understanding of local environmental problems in the interlinked contexts of the household, the locality, the region, the state, the world economy. What distinguishes this approach from human ecology, in Bassett's view, is precisely its attempt 2Atkinson (1991) deals both theoretically and politically with political ecology in the former sense, but does not refer to authors like Blaikie and Brookfield (whose work is cited by Bryant and others as one of the foundations of the political ecology approach) or even list them in the bibliography.

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to contextualize local production systems within the national or global political economy (Bassett, 1988). An important methodological issue in this literature is the problem of conceptualizing theoretically the interrelationships between the local and the global. As Blaikie points out, "One of the major problems of building a theory of soil erosion is the high degree of contingency which always accompanies any explanation of soil erosion at a particular place" (Blaikie, 1985, p. 79). When viewed at the local level, cases of environmental degradation appear to be tied uniquely to local environmental and social conditions. The connections with higher scale processes and systems may appear tenuous at best. Bassett reaches a similar conclusion, noting that his own research " . . . suggests that [land-use] conflicts are largely conjunctural and thus difficult to theorize" (Bassett, 1988, p. 472). Yet at the same time he holds out hope for bridging theoretically the gap between what goes on at the local level and the larger political-economic processes that shape it: This study suggests however, that these conflicts contain structural features related to the larger political economy which can be theorized without reducing the complexity of the situation in a crude, deterministic way. The challenge which students of human-environmental relations continue to face is how to analyze the interrelationships between local level field studies and macro-level processes (Bassett, 1988, p. 472).

Black (1990) points out a related methodological issue. He argues that while in the regional political ecology approach the interrelationships between the local and the global are commonly described as dialectical, in Blaikie and Brookfield at least, the larger political economy is in fact treated as exogenous and impervious to influence from the local level: Although the model itself is iterative, there is also no explicit consideration of the ways in which local conflicts over land resources feed back into the wider political process . . . . In addition, there appears to be little consideration.., of the ways in which local political structures, often intimately bound up with the landlaolding structure, affect environmental outcomes (Black, 1990, p. 44).

These concerns are echoed by Bryant in his attempt to outline the parameters of a research agenda for political ecology within Third World studies. He emphasizes the role of state policy in human-environmental interaction "As well as suggesting the priorities and practices of the state, such policies help to structure social discourse about environmental change, and are crucial to a broader understanding of the politics of such change" (Bryant 1992, p. 18). Furthermore, he underlines the "importance of process as well as content" in the analysis of policy, including spheres not directly " e n v i r o n m e n t a l " that might n e v e r t h e l e s s have i m p o r t a n t environmental consequences. He notes a need for more research on policy implementation, the relationship between the central state and local po-

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litical structures, and the role of local officials responsible for interpreting and implementing policy directives which are at times inappropriate to local conditions or conflict with their own interests and priorities. In China, because of its bureaucratic traditions as well as the continuing centrally-directed orientation toward economic development and distribution, and at the same time the extreme local variations in practice, analysis of these local-global relationships is critical to an understanding of environmental problems. State policy and its implementation at the local level where it interacts with local physical and political-economic systems, are the primary factors that create the context for environmental degradation and management. In particular, the last decade of state-led rural economic and political restructuring has had far-reaching implications for land use, land tenure, agricultural production, marketing, rural industrialization and urbanization, resource extraction and use, and population migration. All of this has had local environmental impacts which are as yet little understood, yet which have profound implications in China as well as beyond its borders. Policy in the environmental field itself operates within this broader policy context, which sets the general parameters as well as providing latitude for local experimentation and accommodation. An understanding of the articulation between the broader policy context and specifically environmental policy, as well as that between environmental policy and variations in implementation at the local level, will help to elucidate the current interrelationships between the environment and the political economy in China. In order to explore the utility of this framework for the Chinese case, it is necessary first to establish the local context in which environmental decision making occurs. The next section will outline the physical and economic conditions of the Loess Plateau, focusing specifically on the area that provided the field data for this study: the western edge of Shanxi province, bordering the eastern bend of the Huanghe (Yellow) River.

PHYSICAL CONTEXT: THE LOESS PLATEAU The Loess Plateau region includes part or all of seven provinces or autonomous regions, with a total area of about 580,000 km 2. Altogether it supports a population of about 40 million people, the vast majority of whom depend on agriculture for their livelihood (Li, 1991). Very serious problems of environmental degradation exist throughout the region---and not coincidentally, the region contains some of the poorest agricultural counties in the country.

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The entire region is overlain with a very thick loess mantle consisting of fine, easily eroded soil anywhere from 10 to 100 m deep, highly fertile when watered and covered with vegetation, but very susceptible to soil loss once the vegetation cover is removed. The major environmental problem in the area is therefore the very high rate of soil erosion: an average of more than 1 cm of loess is removed from the region every year (Luk, 1991). On site, erosion damages soil fertility, particularly on the upper slopes, by washing away nutrients contained in the soil and preventing the accumulation of organic matter. Although nutrients are deposited in valley bottoms, they are also liable to removal in floods due to intense rainfall. This has had a very serious impact of local agricultural production and carrying capacity, creating extremely precarious conditions for much of the region's agricultural population, particularly in the hilly or mountainous areas where erosion is most severe. The off-site impacts of soil erosion are potentially even greater: most of this eroded loess finds its way into the Huanghe or Yellow River (hence the name), where it causes very serious problems of sedimentation of reservoirs, lowering their capacity and thus ability to store water and contain floods (Greer, 1979). Moreover, in the densely populated lower reaches of the Yellow River valley (the home of some 200 million people), alluviation has raised the level of the river bed above the level of the plain, causing very serious flood hazard which has in the past cost millions of lives. The major climatic factor contributing to soil loss is the nature of precipitation in the region. Very low annual precipitation (300-700 mm) is highly concentrated (70%) in the short rainy season (July-September), and in a few high-intensity rainfall events. In addition there is high variability from year to year, with droughts a common occurrence. When rainfall does occur, it is often in the form of very heavy storms that quickly initiate erosion of various types (Luk, 1991). Erosion is of course a product of both natural and human activity. This region has been cultivated continuously for approximately 3000 years, during which virtually all natural vegetation has been removed, to clear fields for planting or for fuel, for building materials and raw materials for local industry, or by grazing of sheep and goats. This process has historically been exacerbated by poverty and by increasing population pressure on limited arable land. In recent decades, it has been accentuated by inappropriate agricultural policies emphasizing grain monoculture, by excessive grazing, by continuing deforestation and removal of vegetation cover for land reclamation, fuel and raw materials, and by mining, road and railway construction, and urban development.

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The nature of erosion in this region itself has created complex local agro-ecosystems. The landscape is highly dissected by gullies of various scales. Each small drainage basin or gully is composed of several ecological zones with different slope gradients and thus different types of land use (and different types of erosion characteristic of each zone) (Luk, 1991). In a typical gully, the ridges and upper slopes, which generally have a slight to moderate gradient, are cultivated and often terraced, with trees or shrubs planted below the fields to stabilize the slopes. The lower slopes are much steeper and are used primarily for grazing. Valley floors usually have gentle gradients, and are often not used for cultivation because of their vulnerability to flooding. Where earthen check dams have been built to contain runoff, however, these bottom lands have become very productive because the nutrients contained in the soil washed down from the upper slopes are trapped inside the gully rather than lost to the larger drainage system. However, the productive use of this land for agriculture requires very heavy investment of both labor and capital on erosion control measures such as construction and maintenance of terraces, check dams, drainage and irrigation systems, as well as vegetative measures such as planting of shrubs and trees on steep slopes to stabilize slopes and fix nutrients in the soil, and specialized cropping strategies. These measures in turn require extensive social resources: organization and leadership, institutional support, research, dissemination of information, policy, and legislation. This all depends, of course, on adequate financing.

THE LOCAL ECONOMY The rural areas of the region are primarily agricultural, densely populated, and generally relatively poor by national standards (Kuchler, 1990). The agricultural economy is characterized by a combination of subsistence farming and market-oriented production, with the local mix depending on geographical proximity to markets and urban areas, as well as local fanning conditions. In this respect, it is quite typical of inland agricultural regions outside the range of major urban markets. In some parts of the Loess Plateau region, however, the existence of extensive mineral resources gives the local economy some unique features. Shanxi, for example, is one of the major coal producing provinces of the country. The distribution of coal deposits is very widespread--it is estimated that coalfields are found under approximately 45% of the area of Shanxi province, and the province contains about one-third of China's verified coal reserves (Breslin, 1989). Because of the nature of the loess parent material, the coal is very easily mined. In recent years, the provincial gov-

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ernment has promoted development of small-scale local mines as a way of diversifying the rural economy, providing financial incentives, credit, training programs, etc., to encourage this trend (Breslin, 1989). Thus in the coal-rich areas of the province, virtually every village and/or township has its own coal mine and coking facility. The mines provide off-farm jobs for surplus male farm labor, especially during the slack agricultural season, offering additional cash income and economic security to households. Generally these mines are owned by the villages and are run as township or village enterprises. Thus they also earn collective income for the village, much of which is reinvested in the agricultural sector on field improvement, terrace and dam construction, purchase of earth moving machinery, etc. It is difficult to gauge the magnitude of the economic contribution of the mines to the village economies, but in certain areas it is undoubtedly considerable, particularly in areas not well-endowed for market-oriented agriculture. Thus, the income from coal mining makes an important contribution to improvement of the rural environment in the region. But the negative environmental impacts are considerable as well, especially since methods of extraction, processing, handling, transport, and use of the coal are quite basic, with high waste and low efficiency. In villages where these mines are located, poor air and water quality and related health hazards are a very serious problem. Because of its economic contribution to local economies, however, apparently little attention is being paid to mitigating the environmental costs of coal extraction or even to building them into local environmental decision making and planning. The mutual isolation of economic and environmental considerations in this region is one symptom of a much broader issue. The seemingly single-minded pursuit of economic development in rural China is both a cause and effect of the wide-reaching economic reforms that have been implemented in the country for more than a decade. This, and its implications for environmental management at the local level, form the themes for the next sections of the paper.

THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC CONTEXT The reorganization of agricultural production in rural China is part of a comprehensive reform process that began in the late 1970s. As summed up by Jean Oi, "Within less than a decade of the Chairman's death [in 1976], the structural features of collectivized agriculture that defined Maoist socialism were gone" (Oi, 1990, p. 15).

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The widespread introduction of contract responsibility systems devolved responsibility for agricultural production to the level of the household and set into motion the virtual dismantling of the rural commune system which since the late 1950s had been the central institution for the organization of agricultural production and rural life. In addition, the state's monopoly procurement system for agricultural products has been gradually supplanted by a system in which markets play a much larger role. This process has occurred at an uneven pace, with broad regional variations in rural management forms that depend on complex interactions of many factors such as local production conditions, the degree of commercialization of local economies, the proclivities and talents of local leadership, and the orientation of intermediate and local governments such as provinces, prefectures, and counties (Watson, 1992). In terms of the organization of rural production, the result is a complex mixture of state (central and local), collective, and private undertakings, as well as joint ventures between and among all three levels. Although it is difficult to generalize, one thing is dear: New socio-economicgroupingsare in the process of rapid formationall acrossrural China now.The old divisionof rural productionand ownershiprelationsinto "state" and "collective"no longer even begins to capture the complexityof the emerging situation (Shue, 1990, p. 65). There are three general features of the rural reforms that need to be highlighted because of their potential impact on environmental management. The first is their market orientation. Market criteria rather than fulfillment of production objectives are now taken as the measure of success of an enterprise. As well, market relations have to a great extent replaced other kinds of non-market relationships that formerly structured rural production and exchange. Farmers are encouraged to produce for the market---local, regional, even national (and in some places international)rather than primarily for local subsistence or for the state procurement system. Market-oriented reforms are also forcing local government organs to pay attention as never before to cost recovery and economic self-sufficiency. Nevertheless, what now exists is far from a "pure" market economy. The state and the collective continue to play a very large role in the organization and functioning of the rural economy, albeit in new and much more complex relationships with individual producers. Second, the devolution to the household as the basic economic unit in the countryside, and at least structurally, the virtual elimination of the collective sector in the form of the commune and production brigade, has changed the role of the local state, and the relationships between the household and the local state. The dismantling of the commune required

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the redistribution of its administrative and economic functions. Sodal affairs within the village that were formerly the responsibility of the production brigade became the responsibility of village management committees. Non-agricultural enterprises operated by the commune or its subsidiary units, such as stores, small factories, and mines, became cooperative, collective, or in some cases privately managed enterprises under the direction of the village or township. Agricultural production became the responsibility of individual farm households, which also now retained their own profits, subject to taxation by the state and local governments (Zhu, 1991). However, the major means of agricultural production---including l a n d r e m a i n coUectively owned, in practice at the village level. At the same time, the higher level administrative functions of the commune became the work of local governments, mainly counties and prefectures. Because the separation of responsibilities has occurred simultaneously with the burgeoning complexity of local economies, the local state now has to resort to more indirect forms of guidance and regulation than in the past in order to get producers to conform to policy and planning guidelines, for example by manipulating marking mechanisms, providing economic or material incentives, passing and enforcing legislation, and creating regulatory apparatus. Vivienne Shue calls this process the "thickening" of the local state: As society becomes more differentiated and more complex, local state organizations are challenged to do the same . . . . No longer can a few universalistic policies, slogans, and regulations be expected to apply effectively to all relevant rural units. No longer can local government administrations expect to maintain such a thin profile. Increased specialization of function and application of technical expertise, a greater division of labor, and more organizational complexity are sanctioned and emerging within China's local-sate structure itself, in response to the rapid socio~economic changes unleashed a few years ago by the reforms (Shue, 1990, p. 65-66). 3

A third aspect of the rural reform relevant to environmental management has been the effort to promote economic structural change in the countryside as a strategy of regional economic development. The rural 3Unger, however, disputes Shue's portrayal of the pre-reform local sate, and hence her interpretation of the impact of reform on the state's influence at the local level: . . . the state in China, though still strong, has pulled back dramatically from its earlier efforts to directly control what occurs in the villages. In doing so, it has weakened, and in some spheres abolished, the mechanisms by which it had earlier imposed its will, level by administrative level. . . . But at the very same time, the state's pullback has also weakened it sown hold over the local officialdom. Increasingly, networks of local officials have taken advantage of this pullback to favor each others' private interests . . . . Whilst Party despotism is not longer the problem it was, patron/client relations of a kind common in the countrysides of other Third World countries increasingly are becoming entrenched (Unger, 1989, pp. 134-135). This dispute is less about administrative apparatus than about the effectiveness of institutions and the importance of informal power structures in the countryside.

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population is encouraged to shift wherever possible from subsistence crop production to more market-oriented specialized crop production or animal husbandry, as well as non-agricultural activities such as handicrafts, small industry, and tertiary activities, either in the villages or in nearby small towns and cities. This strategy is seen as an alternative to mass migrations to the cities. As a result, small-town urban development has been emphasized, as well as the development of village-based rural industry and commercial enterprises. In many part of the country, this strategy has had a dramatic effect on local economies and living standards. In the process, considerable regional economic disparities have been generated.

REFORM AND THE RURAL ENVIRONMENT

What has been the impact of reform upon the rural environment? While it has been speculated that a number of aspects of rural reform have had the potential to affect rural environmental management, there has been little research published on actual outcomes at the local level in different part of the country. There has been much analysis in the economics and political science literature about the impact of reform on quantitative levels and structure of agricultural production, on the social and spatial distribution of wealth in the countryside, on the changing relationship between the household and the state. In this context, researchers have paid a lot of attention to the fate of the redistributive functions of the collective---to social welfare, medical care, and education. Somewhat less attention has been paid to the infrastructural functions of the collective that most directly impinge upon environmental management--for example, to the financing and organization of soil conservation, land management, irrigation and drainage systems, dam building and maintenance, afforestation programs, etc. Many researchers have pointed out the decline in state investment in agriculture and rural infrastructure since the beginn'mg of the reform period. Zhu, for example, argues that agriculture's share in total government investment decreased from 11% in 1979 to 3.4% in 1985, and that agricultural investment also declined in absolute terms during the same period (Zhu, 1991). This decline has affected both investment for major capital projects and agricultural support funding of various types, which used to fund infrastructural maintenance and repair as well as basic farmland construction. Moreover, the dismantling of collective production units has caused their local investment function to shift to local governments and other institutions, including private producers. Zhu argues, however, that:

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. . . this transformation has not yet been wholly successful. None of the relevant institutions combine collective ownership of land and other physical capital with public economic interests in villages, so that little investment has been put into maintaining and improving the existing small-sized infrastructure (Zhu, 1991, p.

140). Aubert (1990) argues that this situation created an "agricultural crisis" in the Chinese countryside in the 1980s. There are several elements to this crisis. From the farmers' point of view the separation of ownership and use rights to land means many farmers are reluctant to make long-term investments in property that is not theirs in the long run, even if they have the means to do so and it is in their short- or medium-term interests. Moreover, there is still considerable tmcertainty over what Aubert (1990) calls "the precarious right to land": land tenure, land use rights, and the permanence of current land tenure policies. The insecurity over tenure influences agricultural practices or land use decisions, prompting farmers to favor what Zhu calls "soil mining" (farming practices that yield short-term profit even if they can be destructive to fertility and productivity in the long run or downstream): . . . [I]t is not difficult to identify the decisive barriers to capital investment in farmland and the causes of soil mining.... Theoretically, village farmland belongs to all members of the village. In reality, it belongs to none of them. The rights of owners and users of farmland have not yet been clarified either in theory or in policies. In practice, the contracted area of farmland is temporarily owned by individual farmers, since they have a right to till it free of charge. This has led directly to shortsighted decisions which are clearly reflected in the abandoning of capital construction on farmland. Furthermore, farmers are aware that this involves problems which will be settled sooner or later by changing farmland policies. In order to obtain returns from farmland as far as possible before the anticipated changes take place, farmers mine the soil without caring what kind of resource they will leave for the future (Zhu, p. 1991, 143).4

It also seems that among many Chinese farmers there linger what are sometimes called "leftist" tendencies, for example long-held beliefs that capital investment in agriculture is the responsibility of the state, Such beliefs are deeply rooted in the political culture that has developed in the country over the last four decades. On the other hand, Zhu speculates that ' as a result of the rural commune experience, Chinese farmers now have a "very strong aversion to over-collectivization" that inhibits the growth of voluntary cooperatives such as exists in many market economies to overcome the scale disadvantages of family farming (Zhu, t991). *l]ais contention is supported by my own earlier work on small-scale private entrepreneurs in the cities--Mnsecurity about the permanence of the current lenient policies influenced business practices and created emphasis on consumption and short-term profit-taking rather than long-term (or even medium-term) investment (Hershkovitz, 1985).

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Thus, although farmers' earnings and savings have increased over the reform period, with great potential for agricultural investment, this has not in fact offset the decline in state investment. On the contrary, it appears that these funds have gone primarily to investment in non-agricultural income opportunities, which tend to yield greater and faster returns than agricultural investment. Or they have gone to consumption, particularly for housing and household consumer goods? From the perspective of local officials and planners, there are other factors that have contributed to the rural investment crisis, particularly with regard to infrastructure projects such as irrigation systems which cut across individual parcels of land. In such cases, construction and maintenance either has to involve voluntary cooperation among contractors, which is rare, or it requires higher-level organization and investment by local governments. Many local governments, particularly in poorer parts of the country, lack the revenue sources to fund such investment. Moreover, the responsibility of the collectives to organize surplus labor for infrastructural and land improvement projects, and to organize maintenance of irrigation systems and the like has been eliminated, while the organizational capacity of local governments to take on these tasks appears to be limited.6 There has thus been much speculation that as a result of rural reform, the rural environment, particularly in the poorer parts of the country, is in jeopardy of becoming a victim of management based on short-term profit-taking and unproductive investment by households, unsupported by infrastructural investment in things like irrigation and soil management, with the local state too disorganized and too poor to intervene in the deterioration of agricultural land. What actually seems to be the case is that, just as with the reorganization of agricultural production itself, new, varied, and complex organizational forms are evolving in the area of rural environmental management. In order to assess the impact of reform on the rural environment, we need to know much more about the actual management structures and arrangements that have evolved in different localities at different levels in the institutional hierarchy to deal with environmental management problems, and 5And, according to Zhu (1991) children's marriages which, along with new houses, are seen as secure, non-alienable forms of investment. 61-his area provides some examples of the "thickening" of the functions of the local state. For instance, when the communes were dismantled, the "labor accumulation" obligation of commune members was eliminated, and they were no longer required to contribute mandatory labor to infrastrnctural projects. In many areas, however, revenues were insufficient to hire workers for these projects, and the mandatory labor requirement was reinstated, now admitfistered by local governments. In the study area in western Shanxi the standard was 20 days per year per adult male under the age of 55, with adjustments for age and sex (see also Manoharan, 1990).

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how these relate to the broader organizational context. That is, we need to know more about the "regional political ecology" of environmental management in particular localities. It is clear that these structures are now in a period of change and experimentation, and that there is a broad range of local variations in management forms and modes of financing. The next section gives some information on the reorganization of environmental management systems in the Loess Plateau region of western Shanxi. The data sources include information collected on two field visits from personal observation, discussions with local officials and researchers, documents supplied by the same sources, as well as published articles and books. After some discussion of the general features of emerging environmental management systems, one form of management will be highlighted that has become particularly influential in rural Shanxi, a local variant of the household responsibility system known as household contracting of small basin management. 7

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT IN THE LOESS PLATEAU The foregoing discussion indicates that rural reform has increased the complexity of environmental management at the local level, as well as the multiplicity of forms of financing and organization of environmental management. The picture that emerges is of extreme local variation within some broad policy guidelines laid down by government agencies at the central and provincial levels. In this section, information gathered from the Loess Plateau region of westem Shanxi will help to flesh out this picture. The published literature indicates that at least six organizational innovations in environmental management have emerged over the last decade in connection with rural reform in this region (Sun, 1989; Duan, 1990). All of these are in evidence in the study area, as I have verified in field visits and discussions with local researchers and officials. The categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. 7My interest in this region stems from several years' collaboration with Canadian and Chinese colleagues on the Soil Erosion Management Geographic Information Systems (SEMGIS) project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency and implemented jointly by the University of Toronto Geography Department, the Institute of Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Shanxi Province Ministry of Soil and Water Conservation. The object was to develop a soil erosion GIS decision support system for an experimental basin in order to improve land management and soil conservation capabilities and support agricultural development. My role was to analyze socioeconomic and political factors influencing the possibility of implementing the system as a decision-making tool for environmental managers, ranging from government planners to individual farmers. The local data in this paper was gathered in two field visits in 1991 and 1992.

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The first form is joint share companies or consortia (gufen gongsi) for environmental management or land improvement projects. Shareholders can be any combination of local governments, villages, enterprises, individuals or households. Governments and enterprises typically contribute capital and technical inputs, villages contribute land, individuals or households contribute labor, and each shareholder is paid profits according to their original contribution, with very complicated formulae for sharing out the proceeds. A second organizational innovation in evidence in this area are land development companies (tudi kaifa gongsi). These are set up by local governments (usually counties), using initial investment from provincial poverty alleviation funds to construct terraced farmland (Kuchler, 1990). The use rights to this land are then leased or auctioned off in order to partially recover the initial investment, which is then rolled over into new farmland construction projects. A third approach is the commercialization of public agencies responsible for watershed management. This has been applied, for example, to local soil and water management stations which are responsible for locallevel conservation, management of reservoirs and drainage systems, enforcement of land management regulations, etc. In addition to their regular duties, they are encouraged to be at least partially self-funding through commercial agricultural ventures on the land the manage. Likewise, agricultural research stations earn income from shares in joint share consortia received in exchange for technical inputs to local land improvement or conservation projects. A fourth approach used for larger-scale conservation projects, particularly those requiring the use of heavy machinery, is for local govern ments to set up specialized soil and water conservation work teams. The teams are organized at the county or township level, and wages are paid out of soil conservation subsidies the townships receive from the provincial government. Many of them also have long-term contracts to manage the improved land, and some operate revenue generating ventures as well. This is also seen as a means of absorbing under-utilized rural labor. A fifth approach is public or collective soil and water conservation projects organized at the village or township level. These projects make coordinated use of the mandatory labor contributions required of farmers every year for public works projects. Each household is assessed according to the number of family members available, with adjustments made for gender and age. In the more affluent areas, farmers are partially compensated for their labor, and wealthier farmers are able pay others to do the work for them. or they can buy their way out of the obligation, which is one way these localities fund the salaries of the conservation work teams.

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The sixth organizational innovation evident in this area is individual household contracting of small basin management (hubao shili xiao liuyu). This will be discussed in more detail below. These forms of environmental management thus cover the spectrum from state to collective to private, reflecting many of the complexities in the new relationships between producers, the collective, and the local state that are discussed above. They share some general features common to post-reform rural organization. First, they all combine environmental management with market-oriented economic development---an approach that has been described by local government officials in western Shanxi as "ecofarming development" (Luliang Prefecture, n.d.). Essentially, this model links expanded production with environmentally sound agricultural practices, and funds environmental management projects out of the proceeds. Second, these approaches represent an attempt to reduce the financial burden on the local state by devising ways of making environmental protection self-financing at the local level. To demonstrate just how far-reaching some of these changes have been, I will describe in more detail one form of environmental management which appears to be particularly influential in western Shanxi: household contracting of small basin management. This represents possibly the most radical departure from former approaches, but is the system most in keeping with the general logic of the household responsibility system. It also exhibits most sharply many of the "contradictions" of rural environmental management in the post-Mao era.

HOUSEHOLD CONTRACTING OF SMALL BASIN MANAGEMENT Household contracting of small basin management (HCSBM) is a variant of the basic household contract responsibility system in which a household contracts responsibility for the management of a particular basin or small watershed rather than, as in other versions, for individual plots of land. (As with responsibility systems in general, ownership of the land is retained by the collective.) The contracting households are required to carry out land management, water management, and erosion control practices, as well as agricultural production. The household's subsistence and income derives from the sustainability of the agricultural production system established in the watershed, which in large part depends on its ability to exploit the land use potential of the various ecological zones within the basin.

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The system was introduced to the region in the early 1980s. The first pilot project began in the spring of 1981 when a farmer contracted responsibility for a small watershed in Hequ county (Shanxi, 1983).8 In Baode county in northwestern Shanxi, the system was introduced in the spring of 1983 by means of a campaign which, according to a county government report, "opened a new path to development-oriented production (kaifaxing shengchan) in the mountain regions" (Baode, 1990). By 1983, the system had been endorsed by the provincial government, and promoted through a combination of provincial and local-level work conferences, newspaper reports, propaganda campaigns, and organized field visits. It was also supported by enabling legislation that laid out the parameters for the new system (Shanxi, 1983; Sun, 1989; Baode, 1990). According to a report by an official of the Shanxi provincial Bureau of Soil and Water Conservation, by the end of 1988 there were 386,000 households in Shanxi which had small basin management contracts, representing 11.9% of all the households in the mountain regions of the province. In the 7 years between 1983 and 1989 these households had achieved control over 765,000 ha of land (Sun, 1989). Household contracting has apparently been promoted as an appropriate system for land management in several regions of the country that combine environmental vulnerability with economic marginality. By 1982, some 3400 small basins were subject to household management nationwide (Yang, 1988). 1984 saw the formal adoption of HCSBM at the national level. Small basin management was to be instituted in eight key regions in the country which were considered to be particularly vulnerable to soil erosion (of which three were located in the Huanghe river basin). According to one report, by 1985 one-third of all households in the seven provinces and autonomous regions in the middle and upper Huanghe basin had become HCSBM households, responsible for the management of approximately 250,000 small watersheds (Yang, 1988, pp. 209-210). 9 Household contracting is considered particularly appropriate to the Loess Plateau region for several reasons. As spatial units, the scale and ecological integrity of small basins or watersheds are seen to provide a "good fit" for the labor, technical, and economic resources of individual 8It is worth noting that the first farmer in the province to contract a small basin for household management was a former brigade leader under the commune system. A farmer portrayed by local officials as the most successful example in the prefecture of a privately managed watershed (one the author visited in 1992) also, upon questioning, proved to be a former brigade leader. The perpetuation of old patron-client relationships at the village level under the new system is discussed in Oi (1989). 9The figures here and in the previous paragraph come from different published sources and are impossible to verify or correlate. They are reproduced here to give an indication of the widespread promotion and acceptance of this system.

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households. The physical characteristics of small basins in this region lend themselves to the possibility of integrated management, offering distinct ecological niches which can be exploited for different land uses. The combination of land management and market-oriented production is seen as an efficient way of increasing production and achieving the breakthrough to commercial viable agriculture in marginal regions such as this. Finally, in a region with limited resources for public investment, land management and increased productivity can be achieved with minimal investment on the part of the state. According to Sun, for the province of Shanxi as a whole the annual public investment put toward small watershed management by households is only about 15% of the total spent on soil and water conservation, but the area managed under contract is about 50% of the total area in the province subject to soil and water management (Sun, 1989). At the same time, however, the state retains the contractual power to enforce its requirements for land conservation practices. The logic of the system is that in order for these households to achieve a sustainable livelihood they must link market-oriented agricultural commodity production with conservation practices to ensure productivity of the land over the long term. This at least in theory ensures that both economic development and land management will be achieved. According to a report by Baode County (Shanxi) Water Conservation Bureau: The adoption of various rural economic policies, especially promotion of household small basin management responsibility systems, has given new impetus and force to soil and water conservation measures in the basin. For the contracted household it links responsibility, control, and benefit (ze, quan, li). This has made a huge difference in economic results. There has been continuous improvement in people's standard of living, and environmental benefits have also increased greatly (Baode, 1990).

However, the adoption of household contracting of small basin management has also created some new issues that are common to household contracting of all forms, but are particularly critical in environmentally vulnerable areas. The first has to do with the dangers of households, as individual economic units, making decisions based on short-term profit considerations and without regard to upstream and downstream costs and benefits, or long-term impacts. The second is related to the limited resources (funds and labor) available to individual households for mediumor large-scale capital construction. It is in these areas that the new, "thicker" role of the state in rural environmental management becomes apparent.

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HOUSEHOLD, COLLECTIVE, AND STATE The challenge for the public sector thus falls into two main areas: administration and finance. In terms of the former, the implementation of policy regarding HCSBM has followed a familiar pattern for economic reforms in China: local experimentation under intense official scrutiny, preliminary legislation accompanied by promotion in the press and local propaganda initiatives, local regulations and administrative apparatus, further experimentation and observation, resulting in refinement of legislation and the administrative apparatus, and wider adoption of the innovation. In October 1982, the Shanxi provincial government promulgated a policy decision endorsing the experience of Hequ county in promotion and regulation of household contracting. This was given wide play in the local, provincial, and national press (Shanxi, 1983). Local implementation continued over the next several years. Provincial-level work conferences were held in 1986 and 1988 to evaluate the system and exchange experience among local officials from different parts of the province. These meetings, according to a provincial official, "raised the level of policy guidance and the attention of the leadership at every administrative level. All this has had a major impact on the ongoing improvement and healthy development of household contracting of small basin management." (1989, Sun, p. 8) A further set of supplementary regulations was passed in 1989. Direct management of the contract system is the responsibility of the village, which retains collective ownership of the land. County governments play a supervisory and coordinative role, particularly in the administration of state subsidies and other types of funding. The prefectural and provincial governments are responsible for setting general policy guidelines and providing technical and financial support. There appears to be a strong emphasis, however, on local management according to local ecological and economic conditions (Sun, 1989). One of the major advantages of HCSBM and other new land management systems is that the cost of land improvement and management is largely borne by the households themselves. Because of the high start-up costs for field improvement, construction of terraces, check dams and irrigation systems, and other soil conservation measures, however, as well as the need for labor, heavy machinery, and technical support, local governments are heavily involved in financing the land management activities of contracting households as well as other types of local land management arrangements described above. A large number of very complex funding arrangements have evolved, involving every level of the hierarchy from the household through village, township, county, prefecture, and province, as well as the central government (and in some cases international agencies

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as well) (Duan, 1990). One important source of support is the regional development subsidies supplied to poor regions of the country by the central government as part of the anti-poverty strategy initiated in the mid1980s (Kuchler, 1990). Field observations confirm the complexity of local administrative and funding arrangements for land improvement and environmental management. In many counties of western Shanxi, the majority of funds for land improvement came from the revenues from small scale coal mines and coking operations. The financial arrangements for these mines can be quite complex. In one village in Baode county the operation of the coal mine was originally contracted to an individual household, but after it became apparent that the profits were being used to improve the family's lifestyle rather than for productive investment, the contract was cancelled and the factory reverted back to the village. It was subsequently run as a joint share company. The villagers earn dividends according to their original investment, and also contribute 20 days of labor per year, in fulfillment of state labor accumulation requirements. The majority of the profits are treated as collective income and invested by the village in soil conservation and terrace construction projects. In another village in the same county, the mine and coking operation is run as a township enterprise, reportedly earning the village 1.2 million yuan per year (or 4240 yuan per capita). The profits from the mine financed large-scale land improvement projects organized by the village, including the planting of soil stabilizing shrubs on uncultivated slopes. The farmers contributed labor as part of their mandatory labor requirement. The provincial government provided interest free loans to the village for field improvement under the following arrangement: the provincial Soil and Water Conservation Bureau allocated these funds to the county-level land development corporation (tudi kaifa gongsi), and the county distributed the funds to the villages. The government also subsidized agricultural development by supplying 20 kg of oil per mu for the operation of tractors, and 20 kg per mu of chemical fertilizer at controlled (rather than market) prices. In general, it appears that in western Shal~xi, field construction is funded or subsidized by the counties. The work itself is generally organized by townships or villages, which also own the machinery, purchased with subsidies from the county government (70% for poor townships, 50% for the more affluent ones) (Sun, 1989). Villagers are expected to contribute labor. The more affluent counties are able to subsidize farmland construction carried out by the small basin contract households themselves one coal-rich county in Shanxi in 1987 subsidized the private construction of 340 ha of terraces at a cost of 450,000 yuan (Sun, 1989).

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The foregoing is but a small sampling of the multitude of specific local arrangements that exist for environmental management in the Loess Plateau region, providing the context for environmental decision making by farmers and other land managers. It is clear that individual environmental decision makers are embedded in a complex web of political and economic relationships that go far beyond the local level. Thus, the regional political ecology of environmental management affects local environmental decision making in very specific ways that can only be understood with reference to the larger context. By the same token, however, local decisions and innovations have dearly had an influence on policy at higher levels.

APPLICABILITY OF THE FRAMEWORK AND QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE STUDY As demonstrated by this case study, the value of the political ecology approach lies in its emphasis on the complexity of environmental management issues, notwithstanding how straightforward the problems and their solutions might appear at the local level. To achieve the kind of integrated understanding advocated by Blaikie and Brookfield, and others, bridging the physical and political-economic as well as the local and global, is obviously a very tall order. Much of the debate over the regional political ecology approach has to do with how to operationalize such a methodology, indeed how even to conceptualize these relationships in ways that avoid simple uni-directional determinism. As difficult as this might be, it is also necessary if environmental problems are to be understood in all their complexity, and, from a practical point of view, if appropriate measures are to be taken to ameliorate them. To illustrate with the Loess Plateau case study, there are a number of issues that are highlighted through the application of the regional political ecology approach, suggesting several avenues of future research. These will be outlined briefly. The first set of issues has to do with the interrelationships between development strategy, regional development initiatives, and environmental management at the local level. The general thrust of regional development policy for the Loess Plateau, and for China's underdeveloped regions generally, has been the principle of eco-devetopment mentioned above. The idea is to alleviate poverty through the development of market-oriented agricultural production while at the same time minimizing or mitigating environmental hazards, indeed using the proceeds from commodity production to finance environmental management measures. This approach is also seen as a vehicle for the transition of the rural economy from subsis-

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tence and local self-sufficiency to a more diversified and market-oriented system tied more closely to regional, national, and international markets. Given that rural China will likely remain in its present situation "between plan and market" for the foreseeable future, the state will continue to retain responsibility for the overall direction of development, and the local state will still have important levers at its command to ensure implementation of rural environmental management and regional development measures. A hopeful view is that this may allow the Chinese state to develop more creative solutions than other Third World governments to environmental problems arising in the development process. The challenge for the Chinese government will be to successfully make this transition from direct managers of the economy to directors of a more market-oriented system without sacrificing the important role that the state has to play in coordinating and mediating between environmental and economic priorities, and between individual and collective interests, particularly without neglecting the needs of poorer regions where immediate economic return is likely to be a continuing priority. A second set of issues has to do with the new role of the rural household as an economic unit responsible for both commodity production and environmental management. I would hypothesize that, of the various models for rural environmental management that have emerged over the past decade, household contracting of small basins will increase in popularity and may in fact become the prevalent model for micro-level environmental management in regions where ecological conditions are appropriate. This is especially true in the poorer, more marginal inland agricultural regions of the country, where sources of public revenue are limited, where the state cannot expect large returns on its investment, or where local and township industries cannot be expected to generate significant collective income to be used for both redistributive and infrastructural purposes. This hypothesis is supported by jean Oi's contention that under the rural reforms the role of the collective is weakest in those rural areas that continue to depend on agricultural production rather than on rural industry. According to Oi, The higher the level of industrialization, the more likely that local government will act in a corporate manner to intervene, extract, and redistribute income. Villages that rely exclusively on agriculture, particularly in the more remote a r e a s . . , are left with few (legal) income sources b e c a u s e . . , the only major assessments on farm i n c o m e . . , go to the central state. Peasants have autonomy over the management of their work and direct control over the profits from their harvests. Hence villages that rely primarily on agriculture are the most likely to have experienced a decline of the collective in both fiscal and organizational terms (Oi, 1990, p. 18).

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In western Shanxi, this picture is complicated somewhat by the presence of village and township-owned coal mines which, as we have seen, can produce collective revenue for infrastructural improvement and land management. This very fact underlines the importance of understanding local forms of articulation between the collective and the household before general conclusions can be drawn about the impact of household responsibility systems on local environmental management. The new emphasis on the household as environmental manager has certain implications for the way in which environmental management is carried out. Household contracting raises a number of issues that require further investigation: methods of compensation and distribution of benefits to farmers for environmental measures that do not yield immediate or direct economic payoff, or where benefits are primarily realized offsite; provisions for training and agricultural extension to farmers (an issue that is rarely addressed yet seems crucial for the successful implementation of environmental measures); variations among households in access to land, capital, and technical inputs and the potential impact of these variations on land-use choices; variations in the security of tenure afforded by contracts; the role of market signals in determining how land is managed, and potential conflicts with environmentally sound farming practices. In addition to these are issues relating to intra-household relations. For example, the gender division of labor in agriculture is undoubtedly affected as the functions of the household change, as local economies diversify, and as land tenure arrangements evolve. Just as in other areas of development research, we cannot treat the household as a "black box" or as a unit with homogeneous interests, nor can we make a priori assumptions about who, in fact, the environmental decision markers are within a given household. A third set of issues has to do with the impact of broader structural change on local environmental management. If the rural economy continues to diversify as dictated by central government policy, attracting labor away from agricultural production, this will inevitably have an impact on the choices made by households and local governments alike regarding agricultural production and environmental management. How will opportunity costs of various alternatives be assessed? How will the environmental externalities of this economic diversification be managed by producers and by the state, particularly as they affect the agricultural environment? These issues have particular importance in the Loess Plateau region where abundant and cheap energy resources provide great potential for rural diversification. If funds for the implementation of conservation measures are to come from expanded coal exploitation, how will the environmental costs

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be factored in, or will they be treated as externalities, and if so, at what long-term cost? This issue has national and global dimensions as well, in that Shanxi coal is seen as an important export commodity as well as the major energy source for domestic industrial development. The environmental costs, in the form of air and water pollution and acid precipitation, will undoubtedly be significant, and it is conceivable that the costs of environmental protection in the industrial sector may divert further resources away from rural environmental management. A fourth set of issues has to do with the role of various levels of local government in environmental management. Drainage basins are natural spatial units, but environmental planning and management is overseen by institutions whose jurisdictions do not necessarily conform to these natural boundaries. Much more needs to be known about potential conflicts between natural and administrative units, and the problems this may represent for the regulation, administration, and funding of environmental management. By the same token, soil erosion management involves both on-site and off-site (upstream and downstream) costs and benefits, which potentially require cooperation between organizations with different spatial jurisdictions, as well as between households with responsibility for different basins in the same drainage system. Little is known about existing methods for mediating conflicts or achieving consensus among units with different interests and different spatial jurisdictions. For example, what role does the state play in distributing costs and benefits? By what methods are these costs and benefits assessed? As well, questions of financing from different levels of government also requires much more research, since the implementation or lack of implementation or particular conservation measures might in the end depend upon funding levels in quantitative terms, the details of funding arrangements and distribution of funding sources, or the priorities of and potential conflicts between particular organizations from which funding is obtained. The challenge presented by the regional political ecology approach is to integrate the physical dynamics of environmental degradation and the technical approaches to its mitigation with the political-economic factors that structure the choices about environmental management available to individuals and institutions. To do so requires the researcher to develop an understanding of how regional, national, and global forces interact in both those spheres, without losing sight of the original objects of inquiry: local decision makers and the local environment. Although the reciprocal links and modes of articulation between the local and the global may be difficult to specify, it is here that the clues to solving some seemingly intractable environmental problems may be found.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Acknowledgment is due to the following organizations and individuals for support and assistance in the research and writing of this paper: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Canadian International Development Agency; Department of Geography, University of Toronto; Institute of Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Shanxi Institute of Soil and Water Conservation; Joe Whitney; Shiu Luk; Tony Davis; Professor Huang Bingwei; Cai Qiangguo; Wang Guiping.

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