Tibetan Pastoralists Research Articles

Climate change, risk management and the end of Nomadic pastoralism

Mobility has been argued to be the single factor explaining why some pastoralists do relatively well during extreme climatic events, while others do not, because mobility works by taking advantage of the spatial and temporal structure of resource failure by moving away from scarcity towards abundance. In spite of this, a common governmental management strategy is to resettle pastoral populations and thereby significantly reduce mobility. By revealing the underlying logic of mobility for Tibetan pastoralists, this paper questions official policy that aims at privatizing communally owned rangelands since it reduces pastoral flexibility and access to key resources. This is especially pertinent in the face of climate change. While little is known as to the specifics of how climate change will affect nomadic pastoralists, environmental variability is likely to increase. Consequently, policies resulting in decreased mobility may exacerbate the negative effects of climate change because of a positive feedback between climate and negative density dependence.

Climate Change Adaptation Among Tibetan Pastoralists: Challenges in Enhancing Local Adaptation Through Policy Support

While researchers are aware that a mix of Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK), community-based resource management institutions, and higher-level institutions and policies can facilitate pastoralists' adaptation to climate change, policy makers have been slow to understand these linkages. Two critical issues are to what extent these factors play a role, and how to enhance local adaptation through government support. We investigated these issues through a case study of two pastoral communities on the Tibetan Plateau in China employing an analytical framework to understand local climate adaptation processes. We concluded that LEK and community-based institutions improve adaptation outcomes for Tibetan pastoralists through shaping and mobilizing resource availability to reduce risks. Higher-level institutions and policies contribute by providing resources from outside communities. There are dynamic interrelationships among these factors that can lead to support, conflict, and fragmentation. Government policy could enhance local adaptation through improvement of supportive relationships among these factors. While central government policies allow only limited room for overt integration of local knowledge/institutions, local governments often have some flexibility to buffer conflicts. In addition, government policies to support market-based economic development have greatly benefited adaptation outcomes for pastoralists. Overall, in China, there are still questions over how to create innovative institutions that blend LEK and community-based institutions with government policy making.

Ecological Conservation, Cultural Preservation, and a Bridge between: the Journey of Shanshui Conservation Center in the Sanjiangyuan Region, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China

The Sanjiangyuan region is located on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in western China and encompasses the headwaters of the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong rivers. It is also home to 300,000 Tibetan pastoralists. The area is characterized by its significant ecological service, unique culture, and fragile ecosystems, and has undergone a rapid degradation over the past several decades. Traditional Tibetan culture offers alternative knowledge and perspectives that facilitate the environmental conservation throughout the region, but have yet to be recognized or adopted by the Chinese government. Beginning in 2007, the local environmental NGO, Shanshui Conservation Center, has initiated a journey to bridge Tibetan communities with the outside scientific community, mainstream society and policy-makers with the aim of advocating integrating traditional Tibetan practices in conservation actions in the Sanjiangyuan region. Through the conservation concession program initiated and facilitated by Shanshui Conservation Center in collaboration with Conservation International, the Sanjiangyuan nature reserve turned over the management of some reserve lands to local communities after a conservation agreement with clear management plans and monitoring indictors was made between the two parties. The trial and demonstration of the conservation concession program successfully led to the adoption of community-based conservation models in state level conservation policy in 2011. We demonstrate as a bridging organization, Shanshui Conservation Center plays the role of cultural translator to promote the understanding and appreciation of traditional Tibetan culture in conservation in western China.

Challenges and Solutions for Sustainable Land Use in Ruoergai-the Highest Altitude Peatland in Qinhai-Tibetan Plateau, China

Abstract The Ruoergai peatlands play an important role in regulating the hydrology of vast upland rangelands and downstream regions - the Yellow River watershed, maintaining the biodiversity and providing living space for Tibetan pastoralists. With various channels of funds, substantial measures were taken to stop or reverse the degradations. However, the degradations associated with over-grazing and other improper resources utilization remain unsolved. The satellite images in 1977 and 2007 were analyzed with the aid of field survey through peat coring to assess the dominant degradations and seek further solutions for the sustainable land management in this area. Results show that 77% of peatlands were degraded by overgrazing and artificial drainage change for more cultivation land. Approximately, 1,568 ha of the degraded peatlands have been successfully restored by damming approach. The ecosystem functions such as their resilience to climate change and adaptive capacity to the local and downstream communities may be restored through damming approach with very little expense.

Rethinking “Ecological Migration” and the Value of Cultural Continuity: A Response to Wang, Song, and Hu

Rethinking “Ecological Migration” and the Value of Cultural Continuity: A Response to Wang, Song, and Hu

Tibetan pastoralism in neoliberalising China: continuity and change in Gouli

The effects of neoliberal contexts on livestock production have been relatively ignored in geography. This paper contributes to this literature through a case study of continuity and change in pastoralism on the Tibetan Plateau in China. Since use rights to winter pasture were allocated to individual households, herders in Gouli, Qinghai, have developed an extensive, new practice of renting livestock and pasture from each other. Written contracts entail a calculation of potential price of livestock and pasture, as well as a mechanism for the wealthy to offload risk of livestock loss onto the poor. Social relations between family members have become monetised as herders become market actors. At the same time, however, these transactions allow herders to partially maintain flexibility over the opportunistic use of pasture resources that has long been at the basis of pastoralist livelihood strategies. They engage in these practices in order to maintain, rather than give up, their identities as Tibetan pastoralists, which also manifest in the limited spheres in which profit-making and entrepreneurialism are condoned. Thus, pastoralists are adapting to their new circumstances, though in potentially compromising ways. As a form of governance, neoliberal rationality intersects in contingent ways not only with other logics of gover­ nance but also with historically rooted identities and cultural idioms.

Political Machinations in a Rural County

The article discusses corruption and selective policy implementation as general phenomena, related to the configurations of political power and the behavior of key actors in a specific rural county, Benghai County of Anhui Province. The County government only takes up initiatives in which three conditions are met, which are highlighted.

Decline in Medicinal and Forage Species with Warming is Mediated by Plant Traits on the Tibetan Plateau

Experimental studies of how global changes and human activities affect plant diversity often focus on broad measures of diversity and discuss the implications of these changes for ecosystem function. We examined how experimental warming and grazing affected species within plant groups of direct importance to Tibetan pastoralists: medicinal plants used by humans and palatable plants consumed by livestock. Warming resulted in species losses from both the medicinal and palatable plant groups; however, differential relative vulnerability to warming occurred. With respect to the percent of warming-induced species losses, the overall plant community lost 27%, medicinal plants lost 21%, and non-medicinal plants lost 40% of species. Losses of palatable and non-palatable species were similar to losses in the overall plant community. The deep-rootedness of medicinal plants resulted in lowered sensitivity to warming, whereas the shallow-rootedness of non-medicinal plants resulted in greater sensitivity to warming; the variable rooting depth of palatable and non-palatable plants resulted in an intermediate response to warming. Predicting the vulnerability of plant groups to human activities can be enhanced by knowledge of plant traits, their response to specific drivers, and their distribution within plant groups. Knowledge of the mechanisms through which a driver operates, and the evolutionary interaction of plants with that driver, will aid predictions. Future steps to protect ecosystem services furnished by medicinal and palatable plants will be required under the novel stress of a warmer climate. Grazing may be an important tool in maintaining some of these services under future warming.

Assessment of the health status and risk factors of Kham Tibetan pastoralists in the alpine grasslands of the Tibetan plateau

The health status of Tibetan herders in the Sanjiangyuan region of the Tibetan Plateau, in southwest Qinghai Province, is assessed in this paper. The field study was conducted in 2002 in the context of a broader community development and research framework, the ultimate goal of which is to achieve an effective region-specific programme of preventative health care and training for Tibetan pastoralists. Specifically, the authors analysed the impact of a number of potentially health-related environmental and lifestyle risk factors on self-reported health indicators, with a special emphasis on mother and child health. Several health status indicators were used, including a general morbidity index and a measurement of functional incapacity due to illness in the sample households. Maternal and child health findings were alarming with high rates of miscarriage and infant loss, with no traditional midwives to assist in pregnancy and delivery. Preventable childhood illnesses were also common. Other debilitating diseases included hepatitis, tuberculosis, arthritis (gout), gall bladder disease, peptic ulcers and back pain. Finally, binary logistic regression analysis showed a significant link between general morbidity and the time it takes to obtain water. The survey findings, validated by the focus groups, indicate a real need for increased accessibility and quality of health service provision to women and men and effective preventative health strategies.

Pasture Types andEchinococcus multilocularis, Tibetan Communities

Our study showed that open pastures had more small mammal burrows than fenced pastures in Tibetan pastoralist communities in 2003. This characteristic was linked to a higher prevalence of Echinococcus multilocularis in dogs and indicates that pasture type may affect E. multilocularis transmission.

Legal Complexity on the Tibetan Plateau

The dominating nature of the legal and judicial control exercised by the Chinese government over the Tibetan pastoralists of Amdo masks a host of complex relations by which they maintain order. Rather than analysing the relations between them in terms of domination and resistance, it is suggested that there is both adaptation and resistance among the pastoralists to the new normative landscape and both acceptance and avoidance by them of new structures of authority. The two do not coincide and the issues of norms and authority must be kept separate in order to explain why the pastoralists rely on government officers to determine boundaries and prevent conflict, on the one hand, while regarding them as without authority to resolve their feuds, on the other. Moreover, in adjusting to the government of the Chinese state the pastoralists do not always pursue their political interests, rather allowing their responses to be shaped by fundamental ideas about the nature of order and the sources from which it can and should be sought.

From subsistence to market economy: Responses of Tibetan pastoralists to new economic realities

In many regions around the world the pastoral economy shifted from subsistence-oriented to a market-oriented production. Pastoral goods acquired monetary value and became a market commodity that entailed changes in the production system and in the attitude towards livestock. On the Tibetan plateau this shift did not follow a linear way. Until the 1950s, most consumption requirements could be satisfied with animal products. Economic exchange relations were essential to provide grain requirements, at least for those households who relied exclusively on animal husbandry. During the Mao era, animal husbandry was carried out in line with state targets and the produce was delivered according to central planning. In the late 1970s the transition towards a market-oriented production began. This paper discusses the recent reactions of pastoralists to the new realities in one specific area on the eastern Tibetan plateau. This shift from pastoral products to market commodities, the commercial network established as well as the market places for pastoral produce, are examined in this paper. These facts show that the pastoralists in question successfully market their produce. The research area, Dzoge county, is located on the eastern border area of the Tibetan plateau, where different ethnic groups live in proximity to each other. Grassland predominates the landscape, used by nomads as pastures for livestock breeding (yak, sheep and horses). Mobile animal husbandry and the marketing of the livestock products are decisive to guarantee the livelihood of the majority of the population.

Fenced pasture: a possible risk factor for human alveolar echinococcosis in Tibetan pastoralist communities of Sichuan, China

Alveolar echinococcosis, infection caused by the parasitic helminth Echinococcus multilocularis, is a zoonosis strongly linked to climatic and ecological factors. Cross-sectional survey data were used to test a hypothesis that partial fencing of pastures could promote alveolar echinococcosis transmission in semi-nomadic pastoral communities of the Tibetan plateau, PR China. Using multiple stepwise logistic regression with consideration of factors of age and gender, it was shown that partial fencing around the settlements in winter pasture was significantly and independently associated with the risk of human alveolar echinococcosis in the surveyed villages ( P=0.021). The underlying reason may lie in overgrazing, an assumed cause of population outbreaks of small mammal intermediate hosts of the parasite on the Tibetan plateau. Overgrazing may have been exacerbated by the reduction of communal pastures nearby the settlements due to introduction of partial fencing around group tenure pastures acquired by Tibetan pastoralist families.

Decline and re-emergence of nomadism: Tibetan pastoralists revive a nomadic way of life and production

Numerous examples worldwide demonstrate the displacement of a nomadic way of life and economy, with common features in the diverse regional contexts shown. Sometimes the pastoralists can respond with other forms of mobile herding, as for instance the current reindeer husbandry in northern Fenno-Scandia or Lapland suggests. An extensive form of herding management has succeeded an intensive one; nowadays the reindeer roam freely nearly all year round, and the reindeer owners live sedentary. Modern technologies support the animal husbandry. However, a decline in nomadism can also be followed by a revival. Records exist about re-emergence from, among others, the Mongolian Republic and the Tibetan plateau. The nomadic lifestyle of Tibetans was displaced, as in the other pastoral regions of China, for two decades. Its re-emergence in one region of the eastern Tibetan plateau in the early 1990s is analysed in this paper. Among the framework conditions which promoted the revival was the return of the livestock as family property. Some revived features of nomadism are identical to the pre-Collectivisation period. Other features were adapted to changed contexts. The revival had further a different impact on those groups which rely exclusively on animal husbandry and those which combine livestock breeding with field cultivation. However, the re-emerged nomadism is already disappearing again. In order to put the issues of mobile animal husbandry into a larger context, some comparative aspects of recent mobile animal husbandry in the pastoral regions of Sichuan province and Lapland are discussed.

Cattle and the Cash Economy: Responses to Change Among Tibetan Nomadic Pastoralists in Sichuan, China

This paper discusses how Tibetan pastoralists living in Sichuan Province, China, have responded to recent state-initiated economic reforms. Individual households have increased their involvements in the new market economy, although the nature and extent of those involvements have been conditioned by local resource availability and proximity to markets. People have begun purchasing a varied array of modern consumption goods, they have increased their sales of pastoral products and sold more products whose prices have risen. Younger men also have begun working for wages in local towns. However, households have continued to resist government outreach offices' directives on herd management and marketing, to treat animals as commodities to be bought and sold to achieve some target herd size. The paper evaluates these findings in light of longstanding anthropological debates about the economic rationality of pastoralist practices.