How Did the Lost Shangri-La Get Lost? The Tragedy of the Groundwater Commons in Lijiang, China

Abstract

Groundwater is critical to human survival, however, it has constantly been overexploited around the world. Despite hydrological causes and the effects of global climate change, groundwater governance has an essential role to play in causing or preventing such overexploitation. This paper presented a case of groundwater governance in Lijiang, renowned for its natural beauty and exotic cultures, located in northwest Yunnan, China. Since being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in the 1990s, Lijiang has experienced dramatic tourism development, which eventually escalated its groundwater crisis. This paper applied the diagnostic approach of social-ecological systems to analyse the institutionalised governance process in the case of Lijiang and substantiated the effectiveness of the Social-Ecological Systems (SES) approach in explaining groundwater management issues. Two significant findings were drawn in the case of Lijiang. First, institutional arrangements may play an essential role in resource management, but their analysis is lacking between macro modelling of planetary boundaries of the Earth and micro surveys of individual and community behaviour. The SES framework offered a useful tool to fill this gap. Second, the designation of Lijiang’s Outstanding Universal Values as a world heritage site ironically damaged its local cultural intimacy, which nurtured generations of collective action for Naxi people, escalating the tragedy of its groundwater commons.