Grassland conservation and environmental inequality in Inner Mongolia, China

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes have become a widely used policy instrument for states to incentivize desirable environmental behaviors to meet conservation and preservation goals. However, many studies have shown that market-based regulatory mechanisms may change human-environment relationships, ultimately generating environmental inequalities and injustices. Our case study of an extensive grassland conservation program in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China demonstrates that PES in an illiberal context is highly contingent upon existing state structures, political ideologies, national economic imperatives, and the ability of technocrats to account for the complexity of human-environment interactions. The state’s conflicting mandates to provide environmental protection and facilitate economic growth have worsened environmental inequality in the region. This case study contributes a nuanced understanding of how the normative functions of ecosystem valuation and environmental interventions led to the commodification of natural resources, exacerbating stratification and generating environmental injustice in top-down, centralized environmental governance models.