AUTHOR=Gongbuzeren  , Wenjun Li , Yupei Lai 

TITLE=The Role of Community Cooperative Institutions in Building Rural–Urban Linkages Under Urbanization of Pastoral Regions in China

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems

VOLUME=Volume 5 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2021.612207

DOI=10.3389/fsufs.2021.612207

ISSN=2571-581X

ABSTRACT=In contrast to the agricultural settings, the processes of urbanization in the pastoral regions of China are largely driven by long-term influences of ecological conservation and the provision of social services. Consequently, many of the herders who have migrated into nearby, secondary urban centers depend on resources from the pastoral regions to support their livelihood, forming complex patterns of rural-urban linkages. While current literature has discussed the processes of herder out-migration and their implications on rural and urban livelihood development, few have examined the linkages between the herders living in the pastoral regions and those out migrated to urban regions, and their importance in rural livelihood transformation. Based on past studies, we argue that in a changing pastoral social-ecological system, herders living in both rural and urban regions depend on each other to support their livelihoods through three types of mobility:1) livestock mobility; 2) herder mobility; 3) resource mobility. However, what innovative institutions in rangeland resource management and herder economic cooperation can do to help maintain these three types of mobilities for sustaining rural livelihood development becomes a critical challenge. Innovative community cooperative institutions developed by pastoral communities from the Tibetan Plateau and Inner Mongolia may be able to offer new perspective and insight on how to better maintain rural-urban linkages in the processes of urbanization in the pastoral regions. We will present the two cases of innovative institutions in this article and their roles in facilitating the three types of mobilities to address livelihood challenges. While current studies recommend an increase of government subsidy, provision of vocational trainings and social insurances that help herders to better adapt to urban livelihood, we argue that rangeland management and community economic cooperation in innovative institutions are needed to facilitate mobilities of livestock, resources and herder population, and only then, maybe the livelihood challenges that migrated herders are facing will be addressed effectively.