Jin Sun
Yin Yin Cai1- 1Department of geography, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, China
- 2Institute of Beijing Studies, Beijing Union University, Beijing, China
As global sustainability debates increasingly stress the coupling of social power and ecosystem performance, this study examines the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces as a long-term hydrosocial system. Drawing on historical political ecology, we develop a topographic impact model that links terrain-driven water flows with governance nodes and village institutions across successive regimes—native chieftaincy, people’s communes, and the household responsibility system. Using archival sources, gazetteers, policy documents, and secondary literature, we trace how rules of water allocation, lineage- and village-level cooperation, and ritual/managerial authorities jointly stabilized the terraces’ irrigation network and landscape productivity. While recent restoration policies have improved certain biophysical indicators, the fragmentation of social organizations and uneven access to water and land have heightened vulnerability and management costs in some locales. Our analysis identifies strong institutional continuity in coordination logics encoded in the irrigation infrastructure and terrain, which underpins the terraces’ long-run functioning despite regime shifts. We argue that sustainable governance should avoid a simplistic return to tradition; instead, it should rebuild local subjectivity and institutional resilience, revitalize collaborative mechanisms, clarify multi-level rights and responsibilities, and align contemporary incentives with historically proven coordination rules. Embedding historical experience within modern policy design can better sustain this world-heritage cultural landscape as a coupled human–water system.
1 Introduction
In recent years, debates over global ecological governance have sharpened scholarly focus on how local ecosystems are co-produced with sociopolitical dynamics—especially the politics of power and resource access (Chen et al., 2020; Elsässer et al., 2022). These studies emphasize the impact of political dynamics on environmental management and explore how these interactions shape and reconfigure local societies’ economic and cultural structures. Under these circumstances, political ecology has become an important theoretical tool for analyzing contemporary ecological governance and social change. As a critical research method, political ecology focuses on the role of political factors in the allocation, management, and redistribution of natural resources and plays a central role in explaining the social-ecological crisis in developing countries (Blaikie, 2016). It reveals the importance of political behavior in constructing dialectical interactions between humans and ecosystems and further deepens our understanding of the complexity of environmental governance (Park et al., 2008).
Foundational studies in political ecology incorporate a rich historical perspective, highlighting the profound significance of historical contexts and their influence on political ecology research. One of the most influential early works in political ecology is Silent Violence by M. Watts (Agnew et al., 2000). In this seminal 1983 study, the author conducts a Marxist analysis of the northern Nigerian famine and skillfully integrates historical archives and field research to uncover how the global capitalist system marginalizes African farmers and thus contribute to the structural roots of famine (Good, 1986). Beyond its role as a cornerstone of political ecology, Watts’s research provides critical historical insights that are fundamental to understanding current environmental challenges. Since political ecology was gradually established as a critical research path in geography in the 1980s, the theoretical vision of this field has been continuously expanded, from the early focus on local ecological practices to the systematic analysis of the relationships among global capital flows, national institutional arrangements and natural resource governance (Hua et al., 2022).
Within this shift, water resource governance has become one of the key issues. Karen Bakker’s critical research on urban and agricultural water governance has foundational importance. In “The Politics of Water” (Bennett, 1995)and subsequent works (Bakker, 2007; Bakker, 2010), she proposed a “techno-political” analysis framework, and pointed out that the water supply system is not a neutral physical infrastructure, but rather the result of the joint action of political, economic and technological forces, and it reflects the complex and asymmetric power configuration between the state, the market and society. Bakker is particularly critical of the governance fragmentation, institutional exclusion and distributional injustice caused by the “commodification of water” in the context of neoliberalism, and emphasizes that infra-structure as “materialized politics” creates inequality in space and solidifies power relations in the system. Her research not only expands the critical dimension of political ecology in terms of resource governance, but also emphasizes that to understand the current governance model, scholars must return to the historical process of institutional evolution, knowledge construction and power reorganization. This critical perspective provides a theoretical basis for the focus on historical analysis and institutional continuity in political ecology. Since then, the academic community has gradually turned its attention to the ecological and political significance of local knowledge, informal institutions and cultural practices, emphasizing that governance practices are not only rooted in a specific social and cultural context, but also deeply embedded in its historical heritage and power structure (Williams and Hardison, 2013; McElwee et al., 2020). At the same time, political ecology has also begun to move beyond its traditional emphasis on spatiality, embracing a “temporal turn” that highlights how historical processes shape the interplay between power, knowledge, and environmental change—offering new insights into the dynamics of institutional evolution and ecological governance (Popartan and Ungureanu, 2022).
An in-depth understanding and critical analysis of the historical components of political ecology is crucial to prevent “depoliticized” analysis (Le Billon and Duffy, 2018). Therefore, historical political ecology has become an essential branch of political ecology. Through systematic exploration of historical development of landscapes, environments, social relationships, knowledge, and power, historical political ecology reveals the complex power dynamics of environmental governance. This historical perspective highlights the core of political and ecological analysis. To understand environmental problems, issues must be traced back to the evolution of their deep social and power structures. Mathevet examined the power dynamics within various political and economic systems throughout French history and their interplay with the wetland ecological environment and highlighted that contemporary ecological protection efforts frequently overlook the influence of historical issues, which are the underlying causes of current management challenges (Mathevet et al., 2015). This shows that the analysis of the historical time dimension allows a comprehensive examination of the root causes of environmental disputes and policy decisions, rather than a merely superficial understanding of technical or management issues.
In recent years, research in historical political ecology has increasingly focused on the interplay between local ecological knowledge and global environmental governance frameworks. Notably, Banos highlighted how local narratives intersect with global governance structures, and demonstrated the significant role of localized knowledge in shaping global ecological policies (Ulloa and Barton, 2024). Through comprehensive cross-temporal and cross-spatial analysis, the study enriches our understanding by offering a multidimensional interpretation of history and its international implications and underscoring the depth and value of local perspectives in addressing global ecological challenges. In addition, the use of historical political ecology broadens the analytical scope of the study to support exploration of how non-material factors—symbolic power, cultural narratives, and memory—shape environmental governance and influence power relations. Escalona contributed significantly to this expanded understanding by exploring the symbolic role of fire in Chilean land control and resistance, thereby highlighting the intricate relationship between power dynamics and symbolic influences (Banos et al., 2023). This approach extends from examining shifts in social relations and resource utilization under capitalism and colonialism to uncovering hidden inequalities within conservation and environmental development initiatives and analyzing environmental conflicts and governance structures. Critical historical methods provide political ecologists with invaluable insights into a range of pressing social and ecological issues, highlighted the pro-found implications of these approaches for understanding and addressing complex power structures in environmental governance (Akampurira, 2023). Although existing studies have explored in depth the interaction between resource management and local power mechanisms, there is still room for further research on how specific social organizational structures and institutional arrangements influence the formation and evolution of the relationship between people and the environment in the historical process.
In China, with the evolution of social history, changes in the social governance system have profoundly impacted environmental governance. In particular, the multilevel, multisubject governance structure has made the relationships between the state and local governments, between local governments and villages, and between villages and families highly complex. In this context, ecological and environmental issues represent top-down policy transmission and implementation problems and bottom-up power interaction and misalignment problems. Early Chinese scholars studied the interaction between China’s central and local policies but did not delve into local governments’ autonomy and possible resistance to the implementation of national ecological policie (Xie et al., 2019). This perspective of the implementation of central policies appears relatively one way, as it ignores the complexity of local governments, which may adjust or reinterpret policies according to their circumstances during the implementation process (Hua et al., 2024). This simplification may obscure the power dynamics among local governments, communities, and national policies. Scholars have increasingly recognized the dynamic interactions between central and local governments in ecological governance in recent years, highlighting the complexities and variations within multilevel policy implementation frameworks (Zhu and Lo, 2022). For example, Feng examined the evolving environmental policy for the Erhai Lake Nature Reserve, illustrating how China’s unique historical and political context shapes policy outcomes (Feng et al., 2024). This case reflects the underlying tensions between centralized directives and the practicalities of local-level operations, and reveals how local adaptations can diverge from central goals while addressing region-specific challenges in ecological governance. The implementation of protected area policy involves problems related to unclear property rights, local protectionism, and social equity, which are deeply rooted in China’s historical social structure and political and economic system. In the Chinese context, recent political ecology research on environmental governance has increasingly focused on the local scale, with attention to how national policies are interpreted, negotiated, and enacted in specific communities (Hensengerth and Lu, 2019; Guttman et al., 2018). However, there remains a lack of systematic analytical frameworks to account for how governance institutions have historically evolved and become embedded within localized power structures and intracommunity dynamics.
The social organization and water resource management issues of the Hani Rice Terraces demonstrate the complex interactive relationship between human activities and the ecological environment. In particular, over the long course of history, this interactive relationship has been not only restricted by natural conditions but also profoundly influenced by social structure and cultural traditions (Zhan and Zhang, 2015). As a world cultural heritage site, the Hani Rice Terraces have a history of more than 1,300 years. Under complex terrain and climatic conditions, the Hani people gradually developed this magnificent agricultural cultural landscape through unique farming techniques. The development of tourism resources has recently provided economic opportunities for local farming communities. Nevertheless, it has simultaneously led to numerous challenges, including ecological security concerns, environmental degradation, issues in managing ethnic minority communities, and increased social risk. These complex consequences have drawn significant attention from scholars worldwide, who have increasingly studied the impacts of tourism on local ecosystems, social structures, and cultural practices and the broader implications for sustainable development and community resilience (Wang and Marafa, 2021). Local water resources and orderly irrigation operations are essential for both the survival of those with agricultural livelihoods and the existence of terraced landscapes (Chan et al., 2016). With the development of tourism, the occasional scarcity of water resources has led to continuous water disputes, and caused local areas in the terraced irrigation system to fall into a state of disorder (Wang et al., 2024). The weakening of the traditional resource allocation system has led to the continuous degradation of the terraced field environment. The changing social organizational model is at the core of controlling landscape patterns and supporting the entire human–land system (Hua et al., 2018).
Contemporary analyses of the Hani social organization emphasize predominantly kinship and geographical affiliations (Ma et al., 2024; Bouchery and Lecomte-Tilouine, 2017). There needs to be a more scholarly focus on the traditional irrigation-centric social structures and their subsequent adaptations to modern environments is also necessary (Luo, 2021). Moreover, given the unique social environment of China’s ethnic minority regions, the top-down research framework of traditional historical political ecology cannot effectively explain the region’s water resource management and allocation mechanism. Building on the above, a historical political ecology perspective is adopted in this article, and an anthropological terrain analysis framework is utilized to illustrate how the environmental conflicts in the region are deeply rooted in past social and political processes. The study also expores the region’s bottom-up model of ecological governance and autonomy, with attention to the critical role of local social networks in resource allocation, the adaptation to environmental pressures, and the reinforcement of local identity over historical periods. This approach provides a comprehensive and in-depth under-standing of the complex ecological political issues in an ethnic minority region in China and offers valuable local insights for global environmental governance and new analytical pathways for historical political ecology.
2 Research framework
In Chinese, the term “topography” has dual meanings: it refers to both “geographical situation” and “social status.” Anthropologists define topography as comprehensive knowledge that integrates the geography, habitation, political boundaries, and historical context within a specific space. This concept is equivalent to what sociologists, such as Durkheim and Mauss, term social morphology (Steinbeck, 2012). Current social anthropologists use the language of topography to understand the connections and conflicts among space, process, and power dynamics. The perspective of topography can provide a deeper understanding of the uneven power dynamics that shape the geographical pattern characterized by the competition for space, resources, and mobility and are also shaped by this geographical pattern, as well as how this geographical pattern changes, stabilizes and is resisted. Therefore, from the perspective of historical political ecology, topography is not only a concept of physical geography but also a way to shape and influence the development and evolution of human society by influencing resource allocation, social organization, political power, and cultural formation. It can provide a new analytical perspective for historical political ecology.
Anthropologist Zhu interprets “topography” as the geographical situation arising from the interdependent repatronships between humans/organisms and their environment, which significantly influences the evolution of both people and entities, including social status. Zhu posits that power is not exerted exclusively from the top down but is also generated and operated at the grassroots level (Zhu, 2015). The power relationships in grassroots society are complex and often depend on specific spaces to gain legitimacy and organizational power. Therefore, the topographic perspective emphasizes how particular places’ geographical and historical conditions shape current environmental policies and social structures. By analyzing the historical development of these places, we can explore the root causes of ecological governance and conflicts. By introducing the concept of “topography,” this study challenges the traditional understanding of the relationship between resource control and political power from the perspective of political ecology. The conventional perspective usually focuses on the direct interaction between capital, power, and environmental resources and pays less attention to how geographical morphology mediates these relationships. By combining the theoretical elements of social morphology, we propose a new analytical framework, the topography impact model, to show how geographical and environmental conditions affect the power dynamics and resource management of local societies through historical and social structural changes (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The analytical framework.
Topography has multidimensional attributes. There have been many studies on the physical characteristics of topography. Nevertheless, other dimensions, such as social and geographical characteristics, cultural significance, and historical evolution related to historical political ecology, need greater consideration. Therefore, the core analysis variables of this model are power and resource control and the relationship between social organization and space. The measurement indicators are resource access rights, utilization patterns, and social power structures. In the Yuanyang Hani Terraces, this is exemplified by the maintenance and management of the terraces, the changes in the terrace landscape, and the measurement indicators of the relationship between social organization and space. These aspects are used to evaluate social organizations’ spatial distribution, establishment and evolution in response to environmental and social changes.
From the perspective of topography, the groups that maintain terraces in a specific space in traditional society are found at four different levels: family, clan, village and Tusi. Among them, families and clans are based on blood relationships, village organizations are based on geographical relationships, and the Tusi was established on the basis of blood relationships, geographical relationships, and political power. In addition to using political power, the Tusi directly controlled families, clans, and villages through the continuous construction of in-laws and the restricted allocation and management of resources. After liberation, the Tusi regime collapsed, cooperatives were established, and family–village cooperation became the constituent unit of social organization. After the abolition of cooperatives and people’s communes, the household contract responsibility system was established, and the family–village–village committee became the basic structure of the Hani social organization. In the latter two processes, the disintegration of the traditional social organizational model and the establishment of a new model greatly impacted the water resource allocation system and the terraced landscape. This paper analyzes the impact on the terraced landscape of social organization and its changes in the three periods by determining the social organizational model of each period. On this basis, a logical framework is built to analyze the social organization and its changes in the historical period of the Hani Terraces Heritage Site and to understand the impacts on the Hani terrace landscape from the perspective of topography and the theory of historical political ecology.
3 Case site and research methods
The Hani Rice Terraces are located in Honghe Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China (Figure 2). As a world cultural heritage site, the Hani Rice Terraces not only showcase the unique agricultural and cultural landscape of the southern mountainous region of China but also reflect the Hani people’s wisdom in water resource management and their effective social organizational model, which persisted for hundreds of years sowing to the complex irrigation system developed (Yongxun et al., 2016).
Figure 2. Study area. (The study area is defined by the boundaries of water resource distribution within the Honghe Hani Terraces, encompassing 13 village committees along the Malizhai River. The southern boundary aligns with the upper watershed, while the east and west are marked by the Zhenna and Dawaizhe River valleys. The northern boundary follows the administrative limits of Bajiaoling and Shitouzhai. Villages along the heritage tourism route, especially in the Bada scenic zone, are most affected by heritage development (Hua and Zhou, 2015).
The social ecosystem of the Hani terraces is based on the “rice irrigation” model. The terraces rely on natural and artificial water conservancy facilities for irrigation, including water source forests, dragon ponds, and artificial canals. Water resource management occupies a core position in Hani society. Traditionally, the water conservancy social organization maintained the terrace irrigation system on the basis of cooperation and blood relations between villages. Village residents often held roles such as “ditch chiefs” or “Qing chiefs” and were responsible for repairing ditches and allocating water sources. Moreover, the irrigation of the terraces depends on seasonal precipitation and forest conservation. With the development of the social economy and the advancement of modernization, the traditional water resource management system was gradually impacted. In particular, the intervention of external policies, the rapid development of tourism, and the construction of modern water conservancy facilities brought new challenges to the terrace ecosystem. Under these conditions, the traditional water resource allocation system between villages has become more complex, and water resource conflicts have been frequented in some areas. In particular, owing to changes in modern water conservancy facilities and resource allocation, water resources are often unevenly distributed between upstream and down-stream villages.
In this study, data were collected strictly according to the requirements of Denzin’s ‘data triangulation,’ and cross-validation from different sources was used to improve the reliability and validity of the data (Denzin, 2017). The research team conducted nine field surveys from August 2020 to August 2024, with a total survey time of more than 40 days. The survey sites are mainly concentrated in the Hani Terraces area of Yuanyang, Honghe, and Yunnan, which include multiple villages, including Zhulu Village, Mali Village, Quanfu Village, and other vital areas. This study focuses on the interaction between water resource management and social organizations in the Hani Terraces area of Yuanyang, Honghe, Yunnan, with attention to the power structure and conflict issues in local water resource allocation. In-depth interviews were conducted with more than 50 people, including village committee members, traditional leaders, ordinary villagers, cultural inheritors, and government-related personnel in the Hani Terraces area. The total interview time (including supplementary interviews) was more than 65 h, and a single interview ranged from 15 to 240 min. A total of 51 interviewees were selected as the sample through maximum difference sampling (with consideration of aspects such as the individual’s role type) and stratified sampling (with consideration of aspects such as whether the individual is directly involved in water resource management), and 12 representative participants were further interviewed in depth.
In addition, ordinary villagers were screened on the basis of gender, education level, whether they were engaged in agriculture, and other factors. Finally, 18 villagers were selected as interviewees. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the research institution, and each participant gave verbal informed consent before the interview. The interviews were conducted in Hani by a research assistant familiar with the local culture and language to ensure the cultural sensitivity of the interview process. The research team retained the original Hani text records during the analysis to ensure semantic accuracy during translation. To maintain the anonymity of the interviewees, numbers were used instead of individuals’ real names, and the numbering system was implemented in the form of “role type + interview order.” For example, T represents traditional leaders, W represents village committee members, M represents ordinary villagers, C represents cultural inheritors, and G represents government-related personnel. Some interviewees have dual identities, for example, village committee members may also serve as cultural inheritors. These individuals are first coded according to their primary identity (Table 1). For example, T01 represents the first traditional leader interviewed, W01 represents the first village committee member, and so on. In addition, secondary data from sources, such as local government work reports, historical archives, and policy planning documents, were used during the research process to supplement and cross-validate the interview data and thereby improve the reliability and validity of the data.
Table 1. Summary of crucial information and interview materials.
This study adopts a theory-guided inductive analysis rather than a formal coding procedure. Drawing on the “theory of access” proposed by Ribot and Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power and social field, the analysis focuses on how various actors gain or lose access to ecological resources (especially land and water) through political, economic, social and symbolic mechanisms in different historical periods (Ribot and Peluso, 2003; Bourdieu, 1989).
We repeatedly read interview records, field notes, archival documents, and local chronicles to identify patterns in power practices and governance arrangements. The analysis focuses on the controllers of ecological resources in each period and explores how institutional logic and sociocultural processes facilitate or restrict resource access. Through induction, four ideal types of political, economic, social, and symbolic power are constructed as a perspective for analyzing historical governance changes.
In the course of our analysis, we reconstruct socio-institutional mechanisms and trace their evolution over time, emphasizing the interaction between formal institutions (such as national irrigation schemes or land reform policies) and informal arrangements (such as clan authority, customary water-sharing rules, or ritual legitimacy), following the logic of “mechanism-based explanations” (Mahoney, 2000; McAdam et al., 2001).
This approach allows us to explain power dynamics from a historical perspective, focusing on temporal layers and the reconstruction of power under different political regimes (Table 2).
Table 2. Comparative table of power types across historical periods in the Honghe Hani Terraces region.
Ultimately, the research aims to move beyond static descriptions of “who has power” to understanding how power is exercised, negotiated, and transformed through specific access mechanisms embedded in political economies and cultural imaginaries (Lund, 2016; Li, 2007). In this way, the research situates local ecological governance within the broader trajectory of state formation, development interventions, and heritage discourses.
4 Traditional social organizations and the power structure of terrace water resource management
The social organization structure of the Hani people is based on blood relations and is composed of families, clans, and villages, forming a complex village network. In traditional Hani society, blood relations are the core bond of social operations. The Hani people use the “father‒son joint name system,” in which the eldest son’s name inherits one character from his father’s name, this reflects the family structure and property distribution model of patrilineal inheritance. Usually, the eldest son in the family inherits a more critical part of the family property, the second son and other children receive less land, and the youngest son usually lives with his parents and inherits part of the land and property.
As each family multiplies, the family gradually develops and forms villages with other families. On the basis of the geographical relationship formed by living together, families of different clans gradually form a village network. The Hani people strengthen the blood and geographical ties between villages through the “place name joint name system.” This tradition is manifested in Hani villages as “subvillages” inheriting part of the name of “mother villages” to indicate that they are derived from the mother village (Ma and Han, 2022). Although the standardization of place names has weakened this feature, local people still need to clearly understand the relationships between villages. In the study area, the family–clan–village organizations can be divided into three main groups: Zhulu, Qingkou, and Shuibulun. A survey of nearly 40 natural villages in the area revealed that these villages have obvious correlations in terms of ethnic composition, main clans, formation period, and blood relationships (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Social organization relationships and spatial distribution among villages (Village clusters and their spatial relationships are shown, emphasizing hydrological linkages and social coordination among communities).
5 Terrace management and water resource allocation under the Tusi system
Above, we discussed the role of Hani village organizations in water resource allocation and terrace landscape maintenance. This water resource allocation mechanism, which is based on geographical and blood ties between villages, cannot explain the large-scale contiguous distribution of terrace landscapes across the entire region and its continuous management. To understand this complex resource allocation system, we must also consider the role of the Nalouchadian Tusi regime. The study area has been under the governance of the Nalouchadian Tusi (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Jurisdiction of Dunhouli. (This figure delineates the jurisdictional boundary of Dunhouli and its overlap with village settlements and heritage management zones around the Hani Terraces).
Throughout history, especially since 1883, when the study area was directly governed by the deputy chief of the Nalouchadian Tusi, Dunhouli, and the Tusi organization became an essential group for maintaining terraces in this area. The jurisdiction and governance of the Tusi regime were based on the local family-clan-village organization, but it also achieved integration between the family-clan-village organizations and realized the redistribution of resources within the entire jurisdiction. It played an important role in the formation of the entire regional system of human-land relations, as well as in the allocation of key resources and the maintenance and management of the terraced landscapes.
5.1 Social structure of the Tusi
The study area was historically part of Dunhou Li, a subdivision under the Nalou Chadian Tusi, a hereditary chieftainship that governed parts of present-day Yunnan for more than 600 years (1335–1949). Originating in the Yuan dynasty, the Nalou Tusi was formalized under imperial rule and maintained semiautonomous control through the Ming and Qing dynasties. In 1883, the territory was divided into four family branches, with the third branch overseeing the Dunhou region, centered in what is now Xinjie Township of Yuanyang County (Yuan Yang County Committee for Literature and History, 1992).
The Tusi system operated through a multilayered governance structure comprising four levels: chieftain of-fice (sishu) – district (li) – village – household. Each li was administered by local stewards responsible for tax collection, labor conscription, and dispute mediation. In addition, zhaoba (village stewards) and sanhoutou (assistants) managed village affairs and received grain as compensation, whereas qingzhang (forest wardens) and gouzhang (canal wardens) were tasked with managing shared natural resources (Yang, 2021; Jiao et al., 2012).
This structure combined lineage-based authority with formalized administrative roles, and embedde fiscal, legal, and environmental responsibilities into the everyday governance of rural society. The legacy of this system continues to shape local power relationships and patterns of resource management in the region.
5.2 Tusi control over terraced field water resources and ecological maintenance
In the Tusi jurisdiction, terraced fields were either official or private. Official fields were developed under the Tusi’s leadership and remained under his ownership. These fields were rented to tenant farmers, who, after paying the official rent, could cultivate them across generations and had the right to sublease or mortgage their tenancy. However, they could not buy or sell the land itself. In contrast, private fields were opened by villagers and fully owned by them with formal land deeds, although a rent of 6%–20% of the official rate was still due to the Tusi. Villagers could also claim wasteland for cultivation, which was rentexempt for 3 years. After that, formal registration and rent obligations began, and the land became the property of the cultivator (Jiao et al., 2011).
Forest ownership belonged entirely to the Tusi. Each public forest was managed by a forest chief who was appointed by the Tusi and was responsible for setting conservation rules, regulating access, and protecting water sources. Unauthorized logging was strictly forbidden. Those needing timber had to apply through the forest chief and receive approval from the Tusi’s office, with supervised cutting as a requirement. Village forest guards, who were elected by locals and compensated in grain, monitored everyday compliance. Violations—including illegal logging, grazing, or land clearing—were subject to fines or confiscation of livestock.
The Irrigation infrastructure was categorized into official, communal, and private ditches. Official ditches, often cross-village and critical for irrigation, were built under the Tusi’s directive using communal labor and remained under his ownership. Users paid water rent, and the ditches were managed by appointed ditch chiefs responsible for maintenance, rent collection, and enforcement. Village ditches were co-owned by local communities, rent-free, and managed by elected leaders. According to archival records, water allocation followed strict rules, with severe penalties for violations such as illegal diversion or obstruction (Zhang et al., 2024). Private ditches, constructed by individual households or small groups, served exclusive use and required no rent, as long as they did not interfere with others’ access.
Field interviews in Yuanyang County indicate that many of the ditches still in use today were constructed during the Tusi period. These ditches not only facilitated efficient water management across administrative boundaries but also played a vital role in enabling the formation and sustainability of large-scale terrace landscapes. Archival records of neighboring Tusi offices, such as Nagen and Mengnong, further confirm the lasting significance of official ditches in supporting agricultural expansion and irrigation in water-scarce regions (Shaowen and Hanqi, 2017).
6 Changes in social organization under the people’s commune system and dynamic changes in the terraced landscape
6.1 The social organizational model of “integration of government and society” and the absence of traditional social organizations
With the disintegration of the Tusi regime, the social governance structure of the study area underwent significant changes, which in turn had a certain impact on resource management methods and the terraced landscapes. After the founding of New China, each village established a party branch and an administrative team. The party branch was responsible for leading village affairs and implementing national policies. Although the Tusi system was abolished, the traditional village organization based on the family-clan-village continued to a certain extent under the leadership of traditional leaders such as “Migu,” and participated in village affairs together with village-level party and government cadres. From 1950 to 1956, the traditional resource management method was maintained to a large extent, and the terraced landscape was not significantly disturbed.
Afterwards, with the advancement of the collectivization movement and the “Cultural Revolution,” the traditional village organization was gradually marginalized, and the governance model of integrating politics and society began to dominate village affairs. The resource management method changed accordingly, and the traditional empirical and customary allocation mechanism was gradually replaced by institutionalized and unified management methods, as recalled by interviewees. A series of policies, including land reform, agricultural collectivization, and people’s communes, were implemented successively, which had a profound impact on the local social structure, resource use patterns, and evolution of terraced landscapes.
6.2 The impact of the social organizational model of the “integration of government and society” on landscapes
Before liberation, forest resources were mainly owned by the Tusi, and only the “Dragon Tree Forest” around the village belonged to the village collective. After the land reform in 1956, forestland was divided into private, village and state-owned land. After the collectivization in 1958, all mountain forests were transferred to the people’s commune. In 1961, forest rights were adjusted and divided into state-owned forests, township forests and private forests; in 1964, private forests were uniformly discounted and included in the commune, and state-owned forest farms were established in some areas. The “Qingchang” system of the original Tusi period was abolished, forest rangers were replaced by rotation management, and management was combined with village rules and regulations, which played a certain protective role.
During the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution,” forest rights changed frequently, management was chaotic, the forest protection system existed in name only, and indiscriminate logging was a serious issue. In particular, the deforestation and reclamation activities associated with policies such as “Great Steel Production” in 1958 and “Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture” in 1972 exacerbated the forest damage. The forest coverage rate decreased from 24% in 1949 to 11.6% in 1970, water sources decreased, and soil erosion became increasingly severe. However, the government strengthened the responsibilities of forest rangers after 1978 and reformed the forestry system in 1980; these efforts promoted afforestation, and the trend of forest destruction was initially curbed.
The ownership of ditches also changed many times. After the land reform, ditches were managed by the villagers; after the collectivization, management was assigned to the collective, water sources were uniformly allocated by the commune or production brigade, and the traditional “water sharing system” between villages was abolished. Some co-operatives organized villages to carry out water conservancy construction, such as the Anfenzhai, Dayutang and Shengcun reservoirs, but most of them could not store water due to improper location, loose soil and poor quality, and the irrigation efficiency was limited.
During the “Great Leap Forward” and “Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture” movements, the terrace reclamation process did not follow the traditional sequence of “selecting land, creating fields, and managing water,” and there were widespread problems, such as insufficient water resources and land-slides during the rainy season (Luo et al., 2024; Yuan et al., 2014). The land that was originally suitable for development had basically been reclaimed into terraces before liberation, and the remaining land was mostly dry, barren slopes without water. It was generally difficult to maintain cultivation in newly opened fields. During this period, the introduction of cash crops further changed the landscape structure. Owing to good heat conditions, sugarcane had long been planted in the Malizhai River Valley, and local people processed sugarcane. In 1959, “Taiwan Sugar” and other varieties were introduced, and the planting area increased from 158 mu at the beginning of the liberation to 2,081 mu in 1960. In 1976, 2,792 mu were planted in Hushan, and the total area reached 5,238 mu in 1978. After 1980, the policy of returning farmland to pasture was implemented, and the sugarcane planting area gradually decreased, falling to 1,678 mu in 1984 (Yuan Yang County Gazetteer Compilation Committee, 1990). At the same time, some dry land and terraces were also used to grow sugarcane. Since 1958, the government has begun to promote banana planting, expanding from private gardens to the slopes of the river valley, but the scale is small and the impact is relatively limited.
7 The social organizational model since the household contract responsibility system and its impact on the landscape
7.1 The weakening of the “state–society division” organizational model and the traditional resource allocation system
After the household contract responsibility system was implemented, the social organizational model changed from the “integration of government and society” during the people’s commune period to the “division of government and society.” With the household contract system, the people’s commune was abolished, and at the commune level, the “withdrawal of the commune and establishment of the township” was implemented. The brigade was transformed into a grassroots mass self-governing organization, and the village committee and the production team were changed to a villager group or natural village. The traditional social organization that had lasted for thousands of years in Hani villages was revived with the system led by the Migu and Mopi. The village committee was responsible for administrative affairs, whereas the Migu and Mopi were responsible for traditional cultural affairs. At this time, land and canals were reclassified from collective to individual ownership. The “Three Determinations” policy of 1983 stabilized forest rights (Delang and Wang, 2012). The 2003 Returning Farmland to Forest program increased forest coverage in the Hani Terraces while reducing arable land at their margins (Zinda et al., 2017). In 2013, the area was designated a key ecological function zone under the Ecological Redline policy. In 2023, the collective Forest Tenure Reform introduced the separation of ownership, contracting, and management rights. contract, and management rights. These measures have played an essential role in maintaining the integrity of the terraced landscape (He and Sikor, 2017).
However, with the loosening of village organizations, the traditional water resource allocation system gradually weakened, leading to the general degradation of the terraced landscapes. During the people’s commune period, collective ownership and related policies unified the management of resources. After the household contract responsibility system was implemented, the family unit emphasized autonomous actions, which led to the primary loss of traditional social organizations, especially in terms of resource allocation and collaborative production functions based on family–clan–village relationships. With the loosening of village organizations, the principle of water use changed from the maintance the previous traditional irrigation governance system to the prioritization “convenience” and “proximity.” The disintegration of traditional water resource allocation methods became a critical factor in changing the terraced landscapes, especially in villages that relied on conventional systems.
7.2 Institutional weakening and its landscape consequences under the decline of traditional resource allocation practices
After the disintegration of the people’s communes, the breakdown of the traditional resource allocation system significantly impacted the terraced landscape. As an example, the “Zhulu group” once represented the largest village community organization in the study area. A close collaboration network was formed on the basis of blood and geographical relationships to jointly distribute water and other essential production resources. However, the implementation of household based production quotas and the dissolution of the collective system gradually destroyed this stable distribution system, which resulted in increasingly serious competition for resources among villages and the gradual drying up and degradation of terraces.
In the traditional period, the “Zhulu group” included 14 natural villages, including Zhulu Dazhai, Malizhai, and Luopu. According to the water distribution system formulated by villagers’ ancestors, which was believed to ensure that the terraces in each town could be fully irrigated. However, with the collapse of the commune system, the management of water resources gradually became decentralized in each village, resulting in a severe imbalance in resource allocation. Upstream villages, such as Shangmadian and Bada, often used their geographical advantages to seize water sources from downstream villages, which caused in severe water shortages in downstream terraces.Owing to the lack of an effective resource coordination mechanism, upstream villages often blocked downstream ditches during droughts, this caused severe problems with terrace irrigation in villages such as Zhulu Dazhai and Zhulu Shangxinzhai (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Terraced fields of the Zhulu group that dried up due to a lack of water.
The irrigation of terraced fields in Luopu Dazhai faced a similar dilemma. Luopu Dazhai depended partially on the ditch of Zhulu Shangxinzhai as a water source. Nevertheless, the water source of Zhulu Shangxinzhai itself could no longer meet the needs of the village, such that the water source of Luopu Dazhai was frequently cut off. The villagers tried negotiating many times but failed to reach an effective solution. A Luopu villager mentioned helplessly, “We share the ditch with Zhulu Shangxinzhai’s water source, but when the weather is dry, they cut off the water first, and our terraced fields can only be drained” (M14).
In the traditional period, the water allocation books between villages recorded the water consumption of each town in detail, which was perceived by local communities to ensure fair access to water. However, after the institutional reform, many villages no longer abided by the water allocation system set by their ancestors, which gradually broke the original cooperative balance. The villagers reflected that the current water resource allocation method relies on “rational water use” and lacks clear rules and regulations. “Water comes from nature—it’s not owned by anyone. Everyone should be able to use it. They say we’re using their water, but have not they used ours too? The water we diverted flows into their channels as well” (M15).
This conceptual change further weakened the sense of cooperation between villages, and made it more difficult to guarantee the water sources of downstream villages, and the terraced landscape was degraded accordingly. Many villagers in Zhulu Dazhai recalled the past water sharing system, believing that although this ancient system was unwritten, it was regarded by villagers as a fair and binding mechanism for resource distribution between villages. However, under the current social and organizational structure, villagers can rely only on the coordination of the village committee or government departments, and the results often needed improvement. This phenomenon of resource competition and imbalanced distribution is not limited to the Zhulu group but is manifested throughout the study area. The spirit of cooperation between villages has gradually disintegrated. Water resources are no longer allocated according to traditional distribution rules, such that many terraces have lost access to irrigation and become dry land, and the Hani terraced landscape has been severely damaged. The main internal driving force of this phenomenon is the disintegration of conventional village organizations and water sharing systems. Therefore, the collapse of the traditional resource allocation system in the study area, especially the water resource allocation mechanism, directly led to the degradation of the Hani terraces. This phenomenon not only reflects the impact of modern social changes, particularly the restructuring of governance institutions and property relations, on traditional social organizations, but also reveals the importance of traditional resource management mechanisms in maintaining ecosystem stability.
7.3 The internal mechanism of the weakening of the traditional resource allocation system
With the transition from a collective economy to the household contract responsibility system, the traditional resource allocation system in the Hani Terrace area has gradually weakened. Initially, under the guidance of the idea of “large in size and collective in nature,” essential resources such as land, forests, and water resources were collectively owned, and all production and resource management inside and outside the village depended on collective consultation. Through the traditional family–clan–village organization, each village strictly followed the resource allocation rules handed down by ancestors, which were intended and perceived locally to ensure fair and reasonable water distribution between upstream and downstream areas and between families. However, the reform of the household contract responsibility system changed this situation. The family became the basic unit of production and resource management, and the function of the traditional village organization gradually weakened and even disappeared entirely in some areas. Although this change increased the production enthusiasm of individual farmers, it also led to the collapse of the traditional cooperation mechanism.
In addition, the development of the market economy has prompted many villagers to work outside the village, which further weakens the sense of cooperation between towns and communities. Work outside the village has become the primary source of income for many villagers, and the importance of agricultural production has gradually decreased. Traditional water source management and terrace maintenance work should be addressed. The ditch chief system, once used for collective negotiation to resolve challenges regarding water resource allocation, has gradually disappeared. Many villages need dedicated people to maintain and manage canals. A villager mentioned, “The ditch chief is embarrassed to take the reward because he cannot rush to get water. No one is in charge of the water. More than 400 mu of terraces are dry, and everyone is powerless to do anything” (Z06). The decline of the traditional water distribution system was perceived to have intensified resource competition between villages, and the degradation of terraces has become increasingly severe. According to interview data,the dissolution of the public ownership of resources and the prioritization of individual interests have made it difficult for villagers to negotiate resource allocation. In particular, in the dry season, villagers often use “rational water use” as an excuse to break the original water distribution order, resulting in frequent resource competition. The villagers’ interests have gradually overridden the interests of the village as a whole. As observed in field investigations and reported by interviewees, upstream villages prioritize their own use of water resources, whereas downstream villages face water shortages or even the abandonment of terraces. This individualized management model of water resources has led to the failure of the traditional water distribution system and is the inherent mechanism driving the changes and degradation of the Hani Terraces landscape.
8 Conclusion
In mountain rice terrace systems, water governance is deeply shaped by the interaction between institutional arrangements and the landscape. Lansing’s study of Bali’s Subak system highlighted how ritual institutions and water temples are spatially embedded in the volcanic landscape, and coordinate irrigation through a sacred ecological logic (Lansing, 2007). In contrast, Wall’s work on the Ifugao terraces reveals a kinship based system, where irrigation practices follow microtopographical features and are maintained through clan level cooperation and oral tradition (Wall and Ringer, 1998). The Hani Terraces of Yuanyang present a distinct model of landscape and institutional coupling, in which water flows vertically from forested uplands to terraced fields, and each elevation corresponds to a particular social unit governed by clans and ancestral authorities. Unlike systems where institutions adapt to the landscape, here the landscape actively structures the institutional hierarchy. This coupling of ecological terrain and social organization invites a broader understanding of governance as situated within the material and symbolic dimensions of the landscape.
The “topography impact model” proposed in this paper aims to integrate historical political ecology’s attention to both “temporality” and “spatial materiality” and emphasizes that the terrain not only serves as a context for the evolution of governance systems but also participates in the embedding and reproduction of power through its physical structure. This analytical framework builds upon Watts’s understanding of the power dynamics in irrigation systems and engages with Mathevet’s discussion of the construction of local environmental knowledge and cognitive orders. The practices in the Hani terraced rice fields demonstrate that local knowledge is not merely reproduced through language or formal institutions, but is materialized and institutionalized through the coordinated relationships among topographical elevation, irrigation systems, and village spatial organization, forming a spatially embedded expression of knowledge and power.
This paper further argues that the state’s effective intervention in the Hani Terraces water governance system is not entirely based on the coercion of external forces but rather on the strategic reconstruction of the existing terrain structure and local governance network. This state led “activation of tradition” reflects the political absorption of the histoical system as well as the modern governance system’s practical consideration of spatial cotrol and institutional integration. Through a historical analysis of the evolution of governance mechanisms, this paper reveals the fundamental role of geographic space in the reorganization of national and local power and provides a path of analysis that combines institutions and space for an understanding of Chinese style ecological governance.
In alignment with the argument of this paper, Pia’s recent ethnographic study in Huize County, Yunnan Province proposed the concept of “cutting the mass line,” which reveals a structural rupture between the national technological logic and the local ethic of collaboration in infrastructure development (Pia, 2024). In multiethnic mountainous societies, water is not only the basis of livelihoods, but also a key site of negotiation between national projects and local subjectivities. Modern governance attempts to reconfigure the water system through the logic of standardization and regulation, and is often in tension with the adaptive and contextual nature of local practices. The experience of the Hani Terraces also demonstrates that national projects need to draw on local institutional legacies and spatial logics to be implemented, but that such interventions continue to reshape the institutional foundations of local collaboration.
Therefore, this paper not only offers a systematic spatial and institutional analysis of the historical evolution of governance mechanisms in the Hani Terraces, but also provides a theoretical lens for understanding the political ecology of infrastructure in the mountainous regions of Southwest China. The results demonstrate a clear causal pathway linking institutional decentralization and weakened collective coordination to uneven water distribution and terrace degradation, highlighting how governance restructuring directly shaped the hydrosocial landscape. Finally, this study reveals a representative form of “state-guided traditionalism” in China’s ecological governance practices. In the context of current policies advocating “cultural confidence” and “ecological civilization construction,” traditional governance practices have been reactivated, but they are often selectively reconstructed within the state led framework (Lin, 2021). This reconstruction embodies not only the policy driven assimilation of historical experience, but also the strategic priorities of modern governance in pursuing institutional integration and maintaining political stability. The “topography influence model” proposed in this article supports the analysis of how geographical space continues to affect the reconstruction process of the power structure and governance mechanism in a context where local participation in governance is constrained and reforms are largely initiated and directed by the state.
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.
Ethics statement
The studies involving humans were approved by Yunnan Normal University Ethics Review Committee: Yunnan Normal University. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
Author contributions
JS: Methodology, Data curation, Conceptualization, Investigation, Software, Writing – review and editing, Formal Analysis, Writing – original draft, Validation, Resources, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Visualization. YC: Project administration, Writing – review and editing, Software. LH: Investigation, Data curation, Validation, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization, Formal Analysis, Writing – review and editing, Writing – original draft, Project administration, Methodology. ZC: Writing – review and editing, Methodology, Supervision.
Funding
The author(s) declared that financial support was received for this work and/or its publication. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China–Yunnan Joint Fund (Grant Nos. 42161040 and 41861030) and the Graduate Research Innovation Fund of Yunnan Normal University (Grant No. YJSJJ25-B155). These funders provided financial support for fieldwork, data collection, and analysis. The article processing charges (APCs) for this manuscript will be covered by these funding sources. The funders had no role in the study design, data interpretation, or the writing of the manuscript.
Conflict of interest
The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Keywords: culturallandscape sustainability, historical political ecology, Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, hydrosocial systems, institutional resilience, water governance
Citation: Sun J, Cai YY, Hua LH and Cheng ZF (2026) Transformations of water governance and social authority in the Hani Rice Terraces. Front. Environ. Sci. 13:1687976. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1687976
Received: 18 August 2025; Accepted: 10 December 2025;
Published: 08 January 2026.
Edited by:
Richard Kwame Adom, University of the Witwatersrand, South AfricaReviewed by:
Shreyashi Bhattacharya, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, IndiaAnıl Poyraz, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Copyright © 2026 Sun, Cai, Hua and Cheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Lian Hong Hua, MzU3OUB5bm51LmVkdS5jbg==; Zhi Fen Cheng, emhpZmVuY2hlbmcyMDA0QDE2My5jb20=