Hunting, Fishing and Gathering Law and Policy for Minority Peoples in China's Autonomous Areas - An Empirical and Comparative Study

Description

The environmental effects of economic development, shifting land use patterns, population growth and climate change have severely threatened China’s biological resources and habitats. According to the 2013 IUCN Red List there are 880 threaten species in China but protecting them has proven difficult as policymakers have struggled with the often contradictory priorities of economic development and conservation objectives set out in national legislation and international commitments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. Besides the maintenance of biological resources through the creation of reserves and efforts to eliminate unsustainable poaching or other illegal resource uses, an important aspect of Chinese conservation efforts must involve encouraging sustainable use of natural resources. Much of this resource use involves subsistence and cultural uses by minority groups in more remote and undeveloped autonomous regions which have an abundance of protected species, or l degradation of biodiversity. As such, minority group practices can have a disproportionate impact on wildlife and biodiversity preservation and conservation efforts. The research will seek to explore the content, extent and implementation of l (national and local) related to minority customary hunting, fishing and gathering practices in various autonomous prefectures in Yunnan and Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Using surveys and interviews with minority groups and governmental official the project will analyse various environmental management regulations, minority involvement in developing those regulations as well as cataloguing minority hunting fishing and gathering practices in order to assess the effectiveness of local institutions and approaches to wildlife management in areas where there are significant minority populations. It will analyse this data in light of legal and policy developments regard hunting, fishing and gathering practices for minority/indigenous peoples in other jurisdictions. The research will generate specific suggestions on how the relevant national and/or regional regulations and the institutional/administrative structure should be reformed to facilitate wildlife and biodiversity conservation. It argues that national efforts to conserve and preserve biological resources must include consideration of local/minority subsistence and cultural needs in the formulation and implementation of the regulations. The output of the research will enable policymakers to better understand the effectiveness of their regulations, to implement policies and procedures more sensitive to minority practices, and to overcome the often significant political, cultural, technical and institutional obstacles to flora and fauna management by adopting a co-management model that allows for significant local participation.