Table of Contents (All Chapters)
Table of Contents (Chapter Three)
CHAPTER THREE
The Human Environments of China: A Diversity of Scales, Frames of Reference, and Study Areas
Introduction (back to top)
The present work is concerned with ecology, or the relationships between organisms and their environments. Most important, these environments include not only natural environments (e.g., grassland ecosystems), but also the social, economic, cultural, and political environments (e.g., pastoral livelihoods, political ideologies, approaches to development) that surround and impact biodiversity on the Tibetan plateau. The dynamics of each of these environments operate at a variety of geographic scales, from the local to regional and even international scales.
At least four scales of analysis must be examined to discuss adequately and comprehensively the important issues that impact grasslands and grassland conservation in Qinghai, China. Each scale provides the basis for a variety of objective viewpoints (e.g., physical geography, population, biodiversity) as well as for more subjective frames of reference (e.g., how objective facts and “science” are understood and practiced differently by local pastoralists, national leaders, international development practitioners, and academic researchers).
The four most important
geographic scales include the nation as a whole (China), the large
biogeographic region (the Tibetan plateau), the administrative area (Qinghai),
and the intersection of all three previous categories (the alpine grasslands of
Qinghai, China). This second background chapter attempts to elucidate the broad
patterns of grassland utilization that operate at each of these scales of
analysis, and thus to expand upon the framework presented in the previous
chapter. This expanded framework, both ecological and geographic in nature,
will help to address many issues pertinent to grassland conservation in Qinghai,
China. Together, these two background chapters provide much of the background
information necessary to understand properly the basic premises – or the
propositions upon which arguments are based and from which conclusions are
drawn – that underpin much of the subsequent analytical chapters in this
dissertation.
The People’s Republic of China (back to top)
Physical and human geography (back to top)
With a land territory over 9.6 million square kilometers, or one-fifteenth of the Earth’s land surface, the People’s Republic of China (or China for short; Appendix I) is the third largest country in the world (after Russia and Canada; Yang 1989, Yang 1992a). With one-fifth of the world’s population, around 1.2 billion people (estimated to stabilize at around 1.6 billion people by the year 2050; Brown 1995), China also is the most populous nation in the world (MiningCo.com 1999, Zhao 1994). The country is divided into 32 administrative units: 23 provinces, 5 autonomous regions (Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet, Xinjiang), and 4 municipalities (Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, Tianjin) (Figure 1). Each province or region is further divided into prefectures, counties, townships, villages, and natural villages. In pastoral areas, villages and natural villages usually are referred to as production brigades and production teams, or pastoral associations and cooperatives, depending on whether commune era or modern terms are used (Appendixes I-III). Finally, six political regions also are recognized: the Northwest, North, Northeast, East, Central South, and Southwest China (Wang 1985, Li 1987; Figure 1).
Figure 1. China’s administrative units: macro-economic (political)
regions, provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities (adapted from
Pannell and Ma 1983, China Data Center 2000)
China’s topography is complex and includes high mountains, extensive plateaus, arid and semi-arid lands, rolling grasslands, large basins, and vast coastal plains. With elevations ranging from 154 meters below sea level in the Turpan Basin (in Xinjiang) to the 8,848 m summit of Mount Everest (on the border of Tibet and Nepal), China can be divided into three great topographic steps (Zhao 1994). The westernmost and highest of these steps is the Tibetan plateau, situated on average over 4,000 m above sea level. The second great step is the Central Mountains and Plateaus situated north and east of the Tibetan plateau, between 1,000 and 2,000 m above sea level. This region includes the Tarim and Junggar basins of Northwest China, the Mongolian Plateau, the Loess and the Ordos Plateau of North China, the Sichuan Basin, and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau of Southwest China. The third topographic step is comprised mainly of the extensive East China Coastal Plains that generally lie below 500 m above sea level. The three steps can be seen clearly in the digital elevation model produced by the Forage Information System, Oregon State University (1999) (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Digital elevation model of China, with demarcation of the
three main topographic steps and Qinghai province (adapted from Oregon State
University’s Forage Information System 1999)
Based on geographic location, geology, climate, and long-term human impact, as well as topography, China also can be divided into three main natural realms (Yang 1992b, Zhao 1994; Figure 3). Eastern Monsoon China is the country’s largest realm, covering around 45 percent of its land area, 89 percent of its farmland and 95 percent of its population. Northwest Arid China also covers a large portion of the country (around 30 percent) but comprises only 10 percent of its farmland and 4 percent of its population. Similarly, the Tibetan Frigid Plateau occupies around 25 percent of China’s total area but has very little farmland and a small human population (less than one percent each). Magellan Geographix (1999) has compiled and digitally enhanced satellite photographs of China to gives a realistic overview of the country’s natural realms (Figure 3).
Figure 3. China’s main natural realms (adapted from Magellan
Geographix 1999)
The majority of China’s people, Han Chinese comprise around 92 percent of its total population (MiningCo.com 1999). Although over 400 ethnic groups formally applied for special recognition as distinct nationalities (minorities) shortly after the creation of New China, only fifty-five were officially recognized in the late 1950s (Ramsey 1987, Gladney 1998, Safran 1998). According to the most recent national census in 1990, large minority groups include the Zhuang (15.5 million), Man (9.8 million), Hui (8.6 million), Uygur (7.2 million), Mongol (4.8 million), and Tibetan people (4.6 million) (Consultants for International Management 1998, Gladney 1998; Figure 4). However, as Zhao (1994) explains, the Zhuang “acculturation and assimilation processes with the Han have been nearly complete [and] it is now rather difficult to distinguish a Zhuang from a Han.” Zhao (1994) also explains that the Man (Manchu) “have now nearly lost their identity and have become culturally absorbed into the Han,” and that Mongolians “have been gradually adopting Han culture and getting closer and closer to the Han.” Such observations are clearly both descriptive of the present-day situation in China (as seen through Han eyes), and, as the implied inevitability and even desirability of acculturation and assimilation lead us to note, also informative of a general belief in Han cultural superiority over other ethnic groups in China. This attitude is not new. In fact, as Heberer (1989) has noted, “Confucianism, the ideology of the state throughout all the Chinese dynasties, [has always] called for a policy of nonviolent assimilation through the imposition of Han-Chinese values… These Confucian ideas run consistently throughout the history of nationality relations in China.” Political ideology and cultural relations are equally important today, in communist China, as they were last century in imperial China (Wang 1985).
Figure 4. China’s main nationalities (adapted from Mackerras 1995)
Particularly relevant to modern China’s national development is the uneven geographic distribution of its human population. According to He (1991), 83 percent of the population lives in only 36 percent of the territory (in the east), while only 17 percent of the total population inhabits the remaining 64 percent of the land (in the west). Heberer (1989) makes the same point even more dramatically by dividing the country in two nearly equal halves: 96 percent of the population lives in eastern China while only 4 percent lives in western China (Table 1). The very unbalanced distribution of people has led to numerous proposals for the resettlement of Han (from eastern China) to the sparsely populated western regions. Indeed, resettlement, or internal migration, has become a normal and, it is argued, even a necessary part of the country’s overall population policy (Heberer 1989; Figure 5). However, as already noted, China’s western regions traditionally have been inhabited by a high proportion of local minority (non-Han) ethnic groups.
The main reasons behind much of the internal migration observed in China in recent decades are found in the basic characteristics of western China: its abundant natural resources, its sparse human population, and its proximity to several strategic neighboring countries. As Heberer (1989) explains, “the outlying and border regions [inhabited by ethnic minorities] are as important for their rich deposits of raw materials as they are for defense” (Heberer 1989). Indeed, nearly 90 percent of China’s pasture lands lie in minority areas, and Tibet, for example, “has proven deposits of some 60 mineral products: chromite the richest, and such others as lithium, copper, molybdenum, cobalt, gold, and silver” (Mackerras 1994). Another important reason given for Han migration is that nationality areas are on the whole much less densely populated than eastern China, and internal migration could relieve some of the burden on the latter to the benefit of both areas (Heberer 1989). The case for strengthening the defense of its borderlands also cannot be ignored. As Mackerras (1994) explains, the “government is undoubtedly concerned about its borders, and for all the rhetoric about the united family of nationalities no doubt feels more trust and confidence in the loyalty of Han people than in the commitment of Uygurs, Kazaks, Tibetans, Mongols” or any other of its minority nationalities. Heberer (1989) likewise notes that “the country’s internal stability and its defense capacity are to a large degree dependent on the behavior of minorities.” Han migration therefore is meant, at least in part, to increase “military security in the border regions [by facilitating] integration of minorities and their regions into the Chinese mainstream.” However, the argument advanced most often and most overtly for large Han migration to minority areas is that it assists the minorities in their overall “economic construction.”
Table 1. China’s population distribution (Heberer 1989)
Region of China Population (percent) Land area (percent) Population density
Eastern zone 1,001,090,000 (96 %) 4.6 million km2 (48 %) 207 people / km2
Western zone 44,230,000
(4 %) 5.0 million km2 (52 %) 6 people / km2
Note: The western zone includes Xinjiang, Tibet, Gansu, Qinghai, and Ningxia.
Figure 5. Chinese internal migration (Heberer 1989)
While recognizing the importance of all the reasons given for developing western China, it is the latter reason – to assist the minorities – that will serve as the basic premise, or the starting point, of this work. Thus, while resource exploitation for the benefit of the whole nation is important, as is strengthening national security and relieving population pressures when and where possible, it is the well-being of local, mainly minority, people that will be kept at the forefront of this dissertation. “Assisting the minorities,” alone and unencumbered by the other rationales for development, at least provides a solid foundation and some common ground for meaningful discussion on long-term sustainability and grassland conservation in Qinghai, China.
Reality, however, quickly resurfaces, because local needs and aspirations do not always coincide with national economic goals. This inequity is where most rhetoric on local autonomy truly is put to the test. Heberer (1989) continues:
“While the state [has] a legitimate interest in developing the minority regions and in utilizing their resources, the minorities [remain] apprehensive of being inundated by the Han. … The Han Chinese complaint that a ‘commodity economy’ has not developed in these areas and that the inhabitants are not interested in ‘production for the market’ has little impact on these peoples. Progress is therefore often rigorously imposed from above….”
Furthermore, despite the national government’s enormous effort to develop the western regions, including huge investments in the way of finance, technology, manpower, and skilled personnel,
“the gap between minority [western] and Han [eastern] regions is growing. Eastern China, which is already more developed, has better conditions for economic growth (more integrated infrastructures, proximity to the coast, relatively well-developed industrial centers, technology, skilled manpower, etc.). It [also] has the most foreign contacts and receives the lion’s share of aid from Western countries” (Heberer 1989).
This gap translates into inequalities in industry and infrastructure, in health services, in education, and in many other areas (Mackerras 1994, 1995). Thus not only is China’s human population unevenly distributed across the country, but its entire infrastructure (transportation and communications network) and levels of social development (education, healthcare, household income) are unbalanced as well. With little technical, institutional, financial, or other capacity for development, the western region lags increasingly farther behind the coastal and central provinces. A vicious circle of development and underdevelopment thus ensues, resulting in a growing East-West divide both in terms of socio-economic development and of environmental protection (Edmonds 1994). Virtually all disparities are compounded even more for local minority people compared with Han people living in the same area (Mackerras 1994). All these imbalances (as well the absolute social and economic conditions themselves) have grave implications for social stability in minority areas, and hence for national security in China as a whole – which brings us back full circle to this most fundamental reason why China senses the need to develop its own Far West.
To compensate at least partially for the way in which national goals are met in China – such as promoting internal migration to western regions (Figure 5), which is sometimes resented by minority people – a degree of autonomy has been given to many national minority areas throughout the country (Heberer 1989, Safran 1998). Five regions (including Tibet), 30 prefectures (including six prefectures in Qinghai), 124 counties, and nearly 3,000 townships have been classified as “autonomous” in China (Heberer 1989, Administrative Centre for China's Agenda 21, 1994). These areas cover about 6.1 million square kilometers, or 64 percent of China’s territory, and comprise a total population of 142.5 million people, including over 62.5 million minority people. According to Heberer (1989),
“minorities have enjoyed an autonomy (zizhi) defined by territory and nationality since the fifties. At that time, regions inhabited by one or several minorities were united into a single administrative unit (be it autonomous region, autonomous prefecture, autonomous county, or autonomous township) and bodies of self-administration were established. … In these regions, the language(s) and writing(s) of the region’s autonomous nationality (or nationalities) should be used; administration must (or should) be in the hands of functionaries from the minority population; the regions can promulgate their own laws and regulations, draw up their own production plans (within the bounds of the central state plan), and choose their own path of economic and cultural development (within the lines of the constitution). Furthermore, the autonomous regions can administer local finances themselves (within the framework of financial planning for the state as a whole), and can have their own local security forces.”
Without such autonomy, whether purported or real, it is likely that minority people in China would feel disempowered, and hence that social discontent would increase. However, with an administrative system that allows for some local autonomy for minority people, China can better maintain the social stability that it needs for national economic development to continue, and also to ensure its own security.
Development and national security (back to top)
The combined spatial patterns of resource availability, transportation networks, population distribution, and ethnicity in China raises important questions about which development priorities the government should adopt. With uneven development (increasing disparities) within and between regions in China, internal risks to its national security clearly are on the rise. Indeed, it has not been long since economic development alone was at the forefront of most government leaders’ agendas. Yet as natural resources are depleted and environments degraded, and as ethnic tensions occasionally surface in some parts of China, the idea of an internal threat to national security has begun to gain wider recognition. The two main areas of internal threat are environmental degradation and nationality-related social unrest. Presently, virtually all plans in China are assessed first in light of their direct contributions to social stability, and then subsequently in light of other standards, including environmental impact. The state of the environment, however, impacts the livelihoods of many national minorities in China, including Tibetan pastoralists, and thus also affects their overall welfare, and, ultimately, their level of contentment within the present administrative system. The environment therefore should be given at least equal status with other potential internal threats (such as a lack of social stability, Dorje 1997) and perhaps greater importance even than many more traditional external threats (such as military confrontations) (Smil 1995, Renner 1996).
A brief overview of China’s development over the past two decades will help to clarify further some of the above linkages, in particular the politicizing effect that internal security issues such as social instability and environmental degradation have on the otherwise seemingly neutral arenas of grassland sciences, rangeland development and conservation, and the protection of biodiversity in China.
First, to set the stage, as noted in a short excerpt from a speech made by Hu Yaobang (the former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party) on 1 September 1982, the official purpose of development in China is to promote economic growth of the nation as a whole. As explained by Hu (cited in Wang 1985),
“the general objective of China’s economic construction for the two decades between 1981 and the end of this century is … to quadruple the gross annual value of industrial and agricultural production. This will place China in the front ranks of the countries of the world….”
This general objective stands in contrast to a more people-oriented “basic needs” approach to socio-economic development (Streeten 1979, Lélé 1991), a style or type of development that takes into account more localized needs as well as those of the larger national entity.
The present economic reforms, the foundation for almost all developments in China for over 20 years, began in late 1978 when the central government began to shift away from a Soviet-style centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented economy, though one still firmly under Central Communist Party control. The leaders’ first steps towards economic liberalization included the introduction of a “household responsibility system” which provides incentives for agricultural production instead of the former system of collectives; an increase in local autonomy at many government levels; an increase in the incentives for the growth of small-scale enterprises; and a greater openness for foreign trade and investment in China. The new economic system was officially termed a socialist market economy in 1993 (Barnett 1993, Consultants for International Management 1998).
The economic results of these changes have been stunning – China has quadrupled its per capital income over the past 20-year period (Woo 2000) – but, as already noted, there has been large variation in success between provinces and regions (Bramall and Jones 1993, Knight and Song 1993). For example, although overall gross domestic product grew over 10 percent annually between 1992 and 1995, this was due primarily to economic expansion in China’s coastal provinces, whereas inland China saw very little growth during the same period. It is only in the late 1990s that China truly began to shift its development focus westward (Consultants for International Management 1998, Fauna and Flora International 2000). Furthermore, large-scale efforts to focus the public’s awareness on this new shift westward (as opposed to continuing to develop the east only, with little hope for any significant “trickle-west” effect) became obvious only in late 1998 or early 1999 in Qinghai. Further, the national economic growth of the last 20 years has decreased in the last two to three years (Woo 2000).
Throughout the 1990s, one of the greatest challenges in Qinghai and elsewhere in China was to keep large state-owned enterprises afloat, most of which remained inactive or inefficient while the rest of the country saw huge economic expansion. Many of these enterprises finally were shut down or privatized in 1998 because of inefficiency or, in some instances, corruption. Although these closures were necessary, they had the effect to increase unemployment, the very problem the government had tried to avoid by providing large subsidies to keep these enterprises afloat in the first place. Even prior to closures of inefficient state-owned enterprises, the official unemployment rate in China was 4 percent in urban areas (though many analysts estimated the actual rates at around 8-10 percent), with substantial unemployment and underemployment in rural areas as well. Overall, 60 percent of the total labor force of around 688.5 million people works in agriculture and forestry, 25 percent in industry and commerce, 5 percent in construction and mining, 5 percent in social services, and 5 percent in other occupations (MiningCo.com 1999).
China’s migrant population also is enormous, estimated at over 100 million people and comprised largely of unofficially employed people (e.g., many street vendors). The presence of such a migrant population, like unemployment, is cause for considerable concern in a control state like China.
Equally challenging, and possibly even more of a threat to national security because of its subtle, sometimes insidious character, is environmental degradation (Goldstone 1996). Air pollution, soil erosion, and the steady fall of the water table continue to worsen living conditions in northern China, and the amount of arable land continues to decline because of soil erosion and rapid urban development (in total, by over 15 percent nationwide since 1949) (Smil 1993, Edmonds 1994, Brown 1995, Becker 1998). Environmental tensions of all sorts – almost all tied to China’s development – are likely to continue rising over the next few years in the country’s highly centralized system (Consultants for International Management 1998).
That China’s environmental degradation is in some cases most severe in its ethnically diverse hinterlands only adds to a growing sense of unease. Now not only must these regions supply their raw materials for the development of China’s eastern coastal zone (where the majority of the population lives), they even are losing the very foundation of their local economies and hence their ways of life because of widespread environmental degradation. Some Chinese researchers and government leaders have even begun to talk of “ecological refugees” in degraded grassland areas. A price clearly is being paid for China’s development, but the burden is not even. And tensions, ethnic this time, continue to rise.
Ironically, then, it is the ethnic (or minority) question that may equally provide China with one of its strongest motives to promote rapid economic growth. Not only must authorities expand their ability to feed a rapidly growing population (estimated to stabilize at around 1.6 billion people in the year 2050; Brown 1995), they also must pay special attention to providing real improvements in the quality of life of minorities in order to offset some of their possible discontent or unrest, and preferably even to shift their thoughts toward entirely new hopes and aspirations and a more materialistic (versus ethnicity-based) future.
As discussed in the previous chapter, quality of life includes not only economic prosperity but levels of educational attainment, health status, and several other basic rights as well. It is well understood in China, though, that poverty alleviation will continue to play a key role in achieving social stability. Indeed, promoting social stability through poverty alleviation is an explicit goal at the national level, and it is further refined at the provincial and lower levels as specific plans, programs, projects, and activities (Dorje 1997). Thus the crucial question now is whether or not such plans will lead to sound environmental practices. And if not, the most important work ahead may be to find how these plans can be improved and made to contribute to, or even be integrated with, an ecologically sound notion of sustainability (Johansson 1993).
Environmental protection (back to top)
Fortunately, national leaders and the public in general have begun to recognize the need for environmental protection (nature conservation) in China (Qu 1987, United Nations Environment Programme 1990, National Environmental Protection Agency 1992, 1994, Smil 1993, Administrative Centre for China’s Agenda 21, 1994, Edmonds 1994, Maxey and Lutz 1994, State Planning Commission and State Science & Technology Commission 1994, Carey 1996, Drake 1997, McElroy et al. 1997, Yan 1997). It is especially significant that China’s Premier Zhu Rongji and several other prominent leaders now are beginning to gain a better understanding of the relationship between development and the environment, and hence of the importance of protecting China’s biodiversity. At a recent meeting of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, Premier Zhu stated unambiguously that although many priorities had taken precedence over environmental protection in the past due to historic and economic reasons, now the environment is a “key priority” for China (China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development 1999c). This is extremely important because to date most development activities and policies in China have been implemented with little consideration of their environmental impacts. Already this has given rise to substantial environmental harm, to the detriment of both the environment itself as well as for future development potential (Pannell and Ma 1983, Smil 1984, 1993, He 1991, He 1997, Jahiel 1997, Muldavin 1997, Liu 1998, McCarthy and Florcruz 1999).
While China is known as a “treasure house” of many rare wildlife species, with more than 2,100 species of terrestrial vertebrates and an estimated 27,150 species of plants (Li and Zhao 1989, Zuo and Xing 1992, Edmonds 1994, Carey 1996, MacKinnon and Hicks 1996), government-supported environmental protection began in earnest only quite recently. The first nature reserve in China was established in Guangdong in 1956, and active wildlife management began with protection of the giant panda, the golden monkey, and a few other rare animals in 1959 (see Appendix IV for the scientific names of animals mentioned in the text; also see Tables 20 and 21). Furthermore, it is only in 1973 that the Provisional Articles for Natures Reserves was passed, and it was only in 1975 that China’s State Council outlined specific plans for the establishment of nature reserves (Wang et al. 1989). Substantial development of China’s nature reserves therefore did not truly begin until after 1979. Edmonds (1994) continues:
“With the total area of nature reserves equaling only 0.17 per cent of the national territory in 1980, China was way behind the leading nations. [Furthermore] as the country was embarking on new economic policies at this time, nature reserves were often seen as burdens on local budgets. In particular, people living around the reserve areas felt burdened as the state did little to compensate them for their loss of resources when a reserve was established. However, the state soon became aware of the problem and began to work on methods for compensation.”
As Table 2 shows, the total number of nature reserves increased rapidly from the late 1970s to a total of 708 reserves by the early 1990s, covering nearly 6 percent of the national territory (Edmonds 1994, Carey 1996). However, the regional coverage of these reserves remains very uneven, with the Tibetan plateau region the least well represented (Figure 6). The administration of reserves also is not uniform with different reserves administered by different organizations at a variety of government levels. There is therefore a great variety of emphases and styles of administration among nature reserves, with some bureaus administering reserves only to “protect those aspects of the environment which are beneficial to their own bureau’s interests” (Edmonds 1994), and others providing no management at all. Some reserves exist in name only (Wang et al. 1989).
Table 2. Development of China’s nature reserves (Edmonds 1994)
of Reserves Reserves
Reserves (km2) National Area
1965 19 n/a n/a 6,500 0.07
1978 34 n/a n/a 12,600 0.13
1980 72 12 60 16,000 0.17
1983 262 9 253 156,000 1.62
1985 310 10 300 167,000 1.74
1987 481 31 450 237,000 2.47
1991 708 61 647 560,000 5.83
Figure 6. China’s nature reserves (adapted from Edmonds 1994)
One obvious hindrance to environmental protection in China is the lack of adequate financing to help integrate longer-term conservation goals with more immediate socio-economic needs. During the 1980s and early 1990s, China spent less than 1 percent of its gross national product on environmental protection. Therefore many nature reserves have had to search for ways to make money themselves, such as through tourism. To date, however, the experience of integrating nature conservation and tourism (ecotourism) has been mixed at best (Edmonds 1994, Gunn 1994, Barkin 1996, Rai and Sundriyal 1997, Mowforth and Munt 1998). In some remote areas, though, few alternative income generation strategies have been found.
On a more positive note, there are several contemporary trends in China that demonstrate its awareness of both the need for and many of the challenges facing the integration of conservation and development. Indeed, China is one of the first countries of the world to implement its national Agenda 21 following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Administrative Centre for China’s Agenda 21, 1994; see, e.g., Chapter 14: Conservation and Sustainable Use of Natural Resources, URL: http://www.acca21.edu.cn/chnwp14c.html). At least nationally if not at all lower levels, China now recognizes that conservation and development will either succeed together or fail together – that is, in the long-term they are inseparable.
Considering the Tibetan plateau in particular, an early version of the Action Plan for Protected Areas in East Asia (drafted by the Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas, a branch of IUCN - The World Conservation Union) highlights the need to initiate “eco-development” projects around conservation areas, and to promote applied research programs to help develop and implement sustainable use of the rangelands of the plateau. The action plan also draws attention to the need to restore degraded habitats, to reintroduce wildlife, and to expand existing protected areas (Wang 1995). The China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development also has begun to provide a framework to facilitate cooperation between China and the international community in the fields of environment and development. Premier Li Peng indicated his willingness to listen to the China Council’s advice and recommendations and stated that “China will put more emphasis on environmental protection in drafting its Ninth Five Year Plan (1996-2000) and its 2010 long-term plan for social and economic development” (China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development 1995). Significantly, one branch of the Council, the Biodiversity Working Group, has specifically indicated that protected areas should be established in China’s grasslands in localities accessible for ecotourism and used as demonstration projects “with returns to local pastoralists to pay for reduction in stocking rates of livestock” (Biodiversity Working Group 1995). The Priority Programme for China’s Agenda 21 (State Planning Commission, and State Science & Technology Commission 1994) similarly emphasizes the “conservation of special habitats and ecosystems and coordinating conservation needs with sustainable use of living resources,” as well as the need to “establish demonstration projects that consider both protection of biological resources and … sustainable utilization [of] species, protected areas, and ecosystems.”
A final way in which the Chinese national scene impacts grassland biodiversity is through government legislation. From a conservation perspective, the Rangeland Law, promulgated in 1985, is one of the most important laws since it directly affects over half of China’s vast territory. Specifically, it forbids farming (cultivation) and any other land use that damages the rangeland. According to Reardon-Anderson and Ellis (1990), the law should be implemented as a policy unfolding in four broad steps:
· the distribution of livestock among individual households (now complete);
· the distribution of grazing lands among individual households (still in progress);
· the assignment of “optimal carrying capacities” for each piece of land (in progress); and
· the implementation of incentives and sanctions to persuade pastoralists to limit their herds to the assigned carrying capacities (in the future).
The key feature of the Rangeland Law purportedly is “to find and maintain a balance between animals and vegetation, and to arrive at this balance through local decision making and market mechanisms” (Li Yutang, Chief of the Grasslands Division, Ministry of Agriculture; cited in Reardon-Anderson & Ellis 1990). It is debatable, however, whether the privatization of semi-arid grassland, or at least a compartmentalization of the land, is a measure that truly will benefit local pastoralists in the long-term. It also is questionable whether the law itself was determined with or without local consultation or the active participation of all stakeholders. Climatic variability is intrinsic to many grassland systems, and pastoralists often have found ecologically sound and practical ways – other than privatization or individual land leases – to live in such contexts. It is extremely important, therefore, to consider local realities and perspectives, both about the regional ecology and the local cultures and livelihoods in the target areas where conservation and development is planned (Ghai and Vivian 1992, Friedmann and Rangan 1993, Johansson 1993, Miller 1995, Bernard and Young 1997, Miller and Craig 1997, Carpenter 1998).
The Tibetan Plateau (back to top)
Biogeography of the Tibetan plateau (back to top)
The Tibetan plateau is the highest, most extensive, and youngest plateau in the world (Molnar 1989, Harrison et al. 1992, Yang 1992b). The Himalayas, Karakoram, Kunlun, Qilian, Hengduan, and other mountain ranges surround the plateau on all sides, and the continental Taklimakan and Gobi deserts border it to the north (Figure 7). With an average elevation 4,000 - 5,000 meters above sea level and many mountain ranges over 7,000 meters, the climatic conditions on the plateau’s 2.5 million square kilometers (about one-fourth of the total land area of China) generally are too severe for agriculture.
Figure 7. Main mountain ranges and deserts of the Tibetan plateau and western China
Nearly 70 percent of the Tibetan plateau is rangeland (Miller 1995). However, intense cold, high winds, seasonal unavailability of water (due to freezing as well as aridity), limited primary productivity, and lack of oxygen all combine to render survival precarious at best. In most areas, the local environment is favorable only to nomadic pastoralism (Hu et al. 1992). However, despite the inclement weather and extremely scant vegetation (Walter and Breckle 1985), the grasslands also support an astonishing array of native wildlife species, many of them endemic to the Tibetan plateau (Hoffmann 1991, Schaller 1998).
Overall, little scientific attention has been given to the Tibetan plateau region because of its inhospitable environment, remoteness, and rigid geopolitical situation (Jackson and Ahlborn 1996). The first detailed botanical study was conducted in 1974-76 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. During this and subsequent expeditions, the harsh ecological realities faced by every living organism on the plateau were documented. A few simple facts can help to better grasp the extreme environmental conditions of the Tibetan plateau:
·
the mean annual temperature on the
plateau is between -2o and 0 o Celsius;
· the temperature of the warmest month of the year is between 6 o and 10 o Celsius;
· there is frost for 6 to 7 months of the year;
· permafrost is widespread in the northern parts of the plateau;
· there is a wide diurnal range of temperature, up to 40o Celsius in a single day;
· only 100 - 300 millimeters of precipitation falls in a year, most of it in hailstorms; and
· winds are frequent and strong, with mean speeds of 15 meters per second.
Beyond the intrinsic value of the region’s native biodiversity, its ecosystems also are important because they form the headwaters of many of Asia’s major river systems, including the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra), Salween (Nujiang), Mekong (Lancang), Yangtze (Changjiang), and Yellow (Huanghe) rivers; they provide unique habitats for many nationally and internationally important wildlife species; they are the natural resource base for millions of domestic animals, the main livelihood of Tibetan pastoralists; and they are home to several million people who to date have largely been neglected by development efforts because of their remoteness and nomadic pastoral way of life (Miller 1995). Unfortunately, some experts believe that the Tibetan plateau (and the Himalayan region in general) may comprise some of the most actively degraded ecosystems in the world (Ives and Messerli 1989, Cai et al. 1990). It is therefore exceptionally important to ensure that all natural resources of the Tibetan plateau be used sustainably and that concrete actions for biodiversity protection are adopted and implemented as soon as possible.
Moving in a clockwise direction, the Tibetan plateau is bordered to the south and southwest by the massive Himalayan Range, to the west and northwest by the Karakoram Mountains, to the north by the Kunlun Range, and to the northeast by the Qilian Range. The east and southeast of the plateau is more difficult to delineate, but it generally has been defined as running along the “snow mountain” complex formed by the Hengduan Range, the collective name given to a series of north-south ranges and gorges which encompass the upper reaches and tributaries of the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze rivers. This complex generally is considered to extend to and encompass the alpine grasslands in the vicinity of the upper reaches of the Yellow River and Qinghai Lake. Another important range situated in the middle of the Tibetan plateau is the Gangdise-Nyainqen-Tangula Range in southern Tibet, a series of mountains that extend around 1,600 kilometers east to west and divide the Yarlung Tsangpo watershed in southern Tibet from the internal watershed of the Chang Tang in northern Tibet. Similarly, the eastern portion of the Kunlun Range (in Qinghai) separates the Qaidam Basin from the rest of the plateau and several key out-flowing rivers that wind through the Hengduan Range to Southeast and East Asia.
Based on the above physical geography as well as biological criteria, the Tibetan plateau has been divided into three or four main biogeographic regions. Vaurie (1972), for example, recognized the Northern Plateau (including the Chang Tang in northern Tibet and the Qaidam Basin and Qinghai Lake areas in northern Qinghai), the Outer Plateau, and the Southeastern Plateau. This classification scheme parallels the general distribution of the plateau’s native wildlife, which many years earlier had led Schäfer (1933) to name these same regions Yak Steppe, Kiang (Wild Ass) Steppe, and Gazelle Steppe. It is Hoffmann’s (1991) synthesis of many previous classifications, however, that I have followed most closely. The sub-regions recognized in this work are the Northern Plains (or Chang Tang), the Outer Plateau, the River Gorge Country (sensu Ward 1913), and the Qaidam Basin (Figure 8). Both the Outer Plateau and the River Gorge Country have external drainage systems, while the Northern Plains and the Qaidam Basin have internal drainage systems. The Northern Plains also is the highest, coldest, and by far the most arid of the four sub-regions. Several deep river valleys that allow the monsoon rains to move up toward the plateau, on the other hand, dissect the River Gorge Country. The Outer Plateau is much more part of the Tibetan plateau proper (compared with the River Gorge Country), but it also is affected to some degree by the monsoon. Finally, the Qaidam Basin (as well as a smaller area north of the Kunlun Range in Xinjiang) is an important transition zone between the grasslands and mountains of the Tibetan plateau proper (i.e., the Northern Plains and the Outer Plateau) and the lower, super-arid Central Asian deserts (i.e., the Taklimakan and Gobi deserts) situated to the north.
Figure 8. Biogeographic sub-regions of the Tibetan plateau (adapted from Vaurie 1972, Hoffmann 1991)
Tibetan wildlife (back to top)
The Tibetan plateau supports a truly unique biodiversity. Several historic accounts give an indication of the former abundance of native wildlife on the plateau. Hillsides were “literally black with yak, they could be seen by the thousands” (Rockhill 1891). Grasslands had “a tremendous lot of wildlife … yaks, wild asses and gazelles … all quite easy to get near” (Migot 1957). “Antelope and yak in incredible numbers were seen” (Bower 1894). “As far as the eye could reach...were thousands upon thousands of doe antelope with their young … there could not have been less than 15,000 or 20,000 visible at one time” (Rawling 1905). Prschewalski (1884), Deasy (1901), Kozloff (1910), Schäfer (1933), and other authors all give similar accounts.
According to Zhang (1991), mammals distinctly characteristic of the high plateau include two carnivores (snow leopard, sand fox), a perissodactyl (Tibetan wild ass), seven artiodactyls (white-lipped deer, musk deer, blue sheep, wild yak, Tibetan gazelle, Tibetan antelope, argali), many lagomorphs (woolly hare and many pika species), and several rodents (Himalayan marmot, Tibetan hamster, a zokor, and a vole or field mouse), although several of these species do extend beyond the reaches of the Tibetan plateau proper.
Of the larger charismatic fauna, the Tibetan plateau’s ungulate assemblage is said to be ecologically analogous to that of East Africa’s Serengeti plains (Schaller and Gu 1994). However these ungulates and the predators that feed on them remain abundant only in very remote parts of the Tibetan plateau. Elsewhere they survive only in small numbers in isolated, inaccessible patches (Miller and Bedunah 1994). In Qinghai, the Tibetan antelope is now extinct in the eastern part of its range (Schaller et al. 1991). In many areas the snow leopard has been decimated or locally eradicated. Tibetan gazelle, perhaps once the most abundant ungulate on the plateau, survive only as remnants. Blue sheep, though still the most numerous and widespread ungulate, and argali, once common in rolling terrain, are both seriously threatened. Tibetan wild ass have been almost exterminated in the eastern third of the province and wild yak now occur only in low numbers in north-central Qinghai and in the Kekexili (Schaller et al. 1988, Schaller and Liu 1996). Further, musk deer populations have declined during the past decade (Harris 1991) and the distribution of Przewalski’s gazelle has shrunk to a small area around the northern half of Qinghai Lake. With less than 200 individuals surviving, Przewalski’s gazelle is the most endangered ungulate species in China and possibly the world (Jiang et al. 1994).
It is also noteworthy that more than two-thirds of the world’s pika species occur on or around the Tibetan plateau (Smith et al. 1990). Pikas, along with marmots in summer, serve as important food resource buffers for carnivores such as the wolf, Tibetan brown bear and snow leopard (Schaller and Gu 1994, Schaller et al. 1988, Schaller 1998). The black-lipped pika (or plateau pika) is a keystone species of the plateau grassland ecosystem (Smith and Foggin 1999).
Our knowledge of the Tibetan plateau avifauna is even sparser than that of the mammal fauna. There are many birds that are endemic or highly characteristic of the high plateau (e.g., Himalayan griffon, upland buzzard, Tibetan snowcock, Tibetan sandgrouse, black-necked crane, Hume’s ground jay, and a variety of redstarts, rose finches, snow finches, buntings, wagtails, larks, accentors, and shrikes). However, little more than mere physical descriptions and distribution notes are provided in the relevant literature (Vaurie 1972, Fleming Sr. et al. 1984, DeSchauensee 1984, King et al. 1995).
According to Carey (1996), major threats to biodiversity on the Tibetan plateau include especially the poaching of snow leopard, gray wolf, red fox, blue sheep, Tibetan antelope, and brown bear for their skins or their medicinal value. Fuel wood collection by the increasing human population also is resulting in serious damage to the sparse bush cover on the plateau. In Qinghai specifically, the white-lipped deer and wild yak also are endangered, as well as “a number of narrowly distributed [bird] species adapted to steppe and dessert habitats such as Pheasant Grouse Tetraophasius obscurus, Chinese Hazel Grouse Tetrastes sewerzowi and Chinese Monal Pheasant Lophophorus ihuysi [and] Black-necked Cranes Grus nigricollis.” While many wildlife species are officially protected in China, this does not always translate into practice. Further, there is also a strong bias in official conservation legislation toward protecting primarily large charismatic wildlife species (Edmonds 1994).
Turning now to the plant formations of the Tibetan plateau, the most extensive vegetation type in the arid Northern Plains is the high-cold Stipa purpurea steppe, often with cushion plants (e.g., Arenaria musciformis, Androsace tapete, Thylacospermum rupifragum) also present in the community. Typically the plant coverage is less than 20 percent. In the northern part of the Chang Tang, high-cold desert-steppe plants (e.g., Carex moorcroftii, Ceratoides compacta) are dominant. Kobresia meadows also are present in some of the mountain ranges, and K. pygmaea and several mesic forbs also are common in the transitional zone between the high-cold steppe of the Northern Plains and the high-cold meadow of the Outer Plateau (Chang 1981, Wang 1988, Miller and Schaller 1996).
The Outer Plateau, on the other hand, including a large area of Qinghai (see Figure 8), consists mainly of
“low-growing Kobresia pygmaea and K. humilis, usually associated with Polygonum sphaerostachyum and other forbs, including Thalictrum alpinum, Anaphalis xylorrhiza, Leontopodium pusillum, Carex atrata var. glacialis, Meconopsis horridula, Polygonum viviparum, Potentilla stenophylla, Pedicularis, Gentiana, and cushion plants such as Arenaria musciformis and Androsace tapete. High-cold evergreen sclerophyllous scrub, composed of microphyllous Rhododendron, R. cephalanthus, and R. setosum on northern slopes, and deciduous shrubs of Salix spp., Potentilla fruticosa, and Caragana jubata in valleys or on southern slopes, are always found in conjunction with the high-cold meadow. In level areas and swampy valleys there occur high-cold swampy meadows with a mound-like growth-form of Kobresia littledalei” (Chang 1981).
Furthermore, Chang (1981) also notes that
“the high-cold Kobresia meadow [of the Tibetan plateau] differs in floristic composition, community structure, and other ecological features from the humid dicotyledonous alpine meadows of the Alps or other moist-temperate mountains, and the alpine tundras of higher latitudes. This vegetation is referred to as ‘Tibetan high-cold meadow.’ It has evolved under drier and harsher high mountain and plateau conditions with continental climates.”
In the southern section of the Outer Plateau, drier and warmer conditions along the Yarlung Tsangpo permit “the cultivation of some crops and vegetables such as barley, wheat, buckwheat, peas, potato, rape, cabbage, turnip, and carrot” (Chang 1981). As elsewhere on the Tibetan plateau, the natural vegetation here is influenced greatly by altitude and a clear vertical zonation is present (Zuo 1990).
The unique character of the River Gorge Country lies in its high, parallel mountain ranges dissected by deep valleys. Many parts of this sub-region are forested. Main tree species include Pinus, Quercus, Picea, Abies, and Juniperus. Rhododendron scrub is common in the transitional zones between forests and alpine meadow, and Kobresia is common above the treeline (Chang 1981, Zuo 1990).
Finally, the Qaidam Basin region includes elements from the Northern Plains and Outer Plateau as well as from the Central Asiatic Temperate Desert (Cai et al. 1990, Zuo 1990). According to Cai et al. (1990),
“major plant species [are] Achnatherum splendens, Ceratoides spp., Salsola collina, Nitraria vannoides, Tamarix spp., and Ephedra przewalskii. Some low marshy alkaline areas support reeds (Phragmites communis). The eastern part of the basin is not as dry as the western part and supports more vegetation. The western part of the basin has large expanses of nearly barren land, salt marshes, and salt domes (Zhu 1985).”
Obviously, more research still is needed on the wildlife (including vegetation) of the Tibetan plateau, as well as a proper assessment and ranking of conservation needs in the region. At present, one of the most comprehensive descriptions and literature reviews of the mammals of the Tibetan steppe (with a strong focus on the Chang Tang), including overviews of their present distributions and status, is given in Schaller (1998) (also see Harris and Miller 1995 and Harris et al. 1999 regarding the current status of large mammals in Wild Yak Valley in western Qinghai). The World Wide Fund for Nature (Carey 1996) and MacKinnon and Hicks (1996) also have provided a broad overview of biodiversity conservation needs. However, the most comprehensive attempt to date to prioritize conservation and wildlife management needs on the Tibetan plateau (though focused mainly on Tibet, not Qinghai, Sichuan, or Yunnan) was organized jointly by the Tibet Forest Bureau and World Wide Fund for Nature (World Wide Fund for Nature 1998). It is obvious, though, that much planning, research, ranking, and other conservation work still are needed urgently to safeguard the unique biodiversity of the Tibetan plateau.
Qinghai Province (back to top)
Physical and human geography (back to top)
Comprising the northeastern part of the Tibetan plateau, Qinghai is in an important Tibetan area of China (Figures 1, 4, 7). With a land area around 720,000 km2, the province can be divided into three main zones (Zhu 1989). The agricultural zone in the northeast includes most of Haidong (Figure 9), which has an average population density of 10 people/km2. However, in some counties near the capital, Xining, the population density can reach much higher, for example, 162 people/km2 in Huangzhong. Although Haidong covers less than 5 percent of the provincial land area, it comprises over two-thirds of the provincial population. The Haidong agricultural zone has received most development assistance to date because of its geographic accessibility and the national emphasis on agricultural development (as opposed to pastoral development).
Figure 9. Qinghai’s prefectures and counties
The Qaidam Basin lies in the northwest of the province and includes most of Haixi. Average population density in this zone is less than 1 person/km2. It is to this desert part of the province that many provincial leaders are looking for the future economic development of Qinghai because of its abundant mineral, petrochemical, and other natural resources (Wang 1994). To encourage such development, the government has given large agricultural subsidies and enormous investments for infrastructure, yet almost all the benefits of development (e.g., company profits, jobs, and salaries) either have returned to urban economic centers in eastern China (Kelliher 1992) or to relatively recent immigrants to the province, most of which have come from Henan in the east (Heberer 1989). Few of the benefits of large-scale resource development have been directed toward local communities that, until recently, were comprised almost exclusively of Tibetan, Mongol, and Kazak pastoralists. Most resource development in Qinghai still aims to benefit urban centers and East China over and above the rural regions themselves (Chen 1992), even though the latter always will form the backbone of the provincial and national economy (Kelliher 1992).
Qinghai’s third zone is comprised of the extensive alpine grasslands that are found in the north-central area and the entire southern area of the province. This zone covers the largest portion of the province (grasslands constitute 54 percent of the province’s area; Jing 1986) and includes some of Haixi and virtually all of Haibei, Hainan, Huangnan, Guoluo and Yushu prefectures. Eighty percent of Qinghai is situated over 3,000 meters, and 60 percent is over 4,000 meters above sea level. The grassland region is inhabited mainly by Tibetan pastoralists, with a population density between 1 and 10 people/km2 in the east and less than 1 person/km2 in the west. Herds total over 22 million head of livestock, mostly yak and sheep (Drandui 1996). The main development pursued by the government in this area is to encourage pastoralists to “give up their traditional nomadic herding and turn to modern production methods” (Xie 1997). Thus the specific needs and desires of Tibetan pastoralists again largely are ignored in favor of provincial and national (predominantly Han) interests, expressed as externally-designed development goals (but see ‘New reserves…’ 2000, ‘Qinghai to build…’ 2000). It is this grassland zone that constitutes the geographic focus of the present work.
A cultural crossroads (back to top)
For many centuries, Qinghai has been a borderland for at least four great cultural spheres: the Tibetan, Mongol, Hui, and Chinese empires or spheres of influence (Ekvall 1939, Lattimore 1951, Schram 1954, 1957, Stein 1972, Sinclair 1987, Chen 1990, Geoffrey 1993, Smith 1996). This amalgamation has translated into many different people groups being represented in Qinghai today. Except for four counties (Ledu, Ping’an, Huangzhong, and Huangyuan), all the counties and towns in Qinghai are nationally recognized autonomous areas, accounting for 98 percent of the provincial area (Wang 1994).
The main national minorities present in Qinghai today are the Tibetan, Mongol, Hui, Tu, and Salar people. The Tibetans in Qinghai include the Amdo, Golog, and Kham Tibetans, each group speaking a very different dialect or language (Ramsey 1987, Geoffrey 1993, Smith 1996). Mongols include the Oirats in Haixi, the descendants of a tribe that moved from Xinjiang and Central Asia to greater Tibet in the 16th century (the Oirat are also known as Kalmyks; they are a different group from the Khalkh Mongols of present-day Mongolia) (Schwarz 1984, Smith 1996). A second group of Mongols lives in Henan, the southernmost county of Huangnan prefecture, though these Mongols have adopted many local Tibetan customs and now speak Amdo Tibetan. The Hui are a Chinese people who converted to Islam several centuries ago. Although they do not have their own distinct language, dress, literature, or music, they are a clearly recognized cultural group based on religion and their own self-identification (Gladney 1998). Hui people often are Qinghai’s main businessmen, traders, truck drivers, and sometimes, along with the Salar, wildlife poachers. Almost invariably the Hui also are the most numerous restaurant operators in Qinghai, as in Ningxia and elsewhere in China. The Tu people are thought by some experts to be the descendants of the Mongol Army which once ruled much of China, while others believe that they actually are the original, indigenous people of Qinghai (Schram 1954, 1957, Schwarz 1984). Chinese authorities in the Qing Dynasty encouraged the Tu people to serve as border guards to protect Xining and the surrounding region from Mongol and Tibetan invaders. Therefore many Tu communities were relocated to their present locations at the base of strategic mountain passes in the Datong and Laji mountains to the north and south of Xining, respectively. The Salar people are a small Muslim group that migrated from Samarkand in Central Asia to present-day Xunhua in the 14th century (Schwarz 1984, Ma and Stuart 1996). Finally, some Dongxiang and Baoan people also live in Qinghai, though both of these people are much more numerous in neighboring Gansu, and several decades ago many Kazaks moved from Xinjiang to Haixi prefecture in northwestern Qinghai (Schwarz 1984, Gladney 1998).
The Qinghai Han also are recognized as distinct from Chinese people elsewhere in the country, in their customs as well as in their language (dialect). According to Dwyer (1998), the local provincial dialect
“is a compromise, non-standard Standard Chinese which partially incorporates the sound system and vocabulary of the Qinghai vernacular (tuhua) into Standard Chinese. It is a local adaptation of Standard Mandarin Chinese that enjoys quasi-official sanction in the local broadcast media and state enterprises (including educational institutions), which refer to it as Qing(hai) Pu(tong)hua, ‘Qinghai’s Common Language’. … The existence of Qingpuhua constitutes a statement about the local identity and the limits of central government control.”
Qinghai’s population is now approaching 5 million people, of which 42 percent is comprised of national minority people (Wang 1994, National Census Bureau 1994). According to the 1990 population census data, there are 916,000 Tibetans, 642,000 Hui, 164,000 Tu, 77,000 Salar, and 72,000 Mongols that reside in Qinghai. Tibetans thus comprise about 20 percent of the total provincial population. Almost 90 percent of Tibetans are engaged in agricultural activities such as crop cultivation, animal husbandry, and forestry (Qinghai Census Bureau 1994). There also are major differences between agricultural and pastoral Tibetans (Ekvall 1968, Geoffrey 1993, Smith 1996). Although no data are available on the breakdown between different agricultural occupations by nationality, the proportion of the total workforce (all nationalities combined) engaged in each occupation is known for each county. Thus it is known that the proportion of the total working population (with 95 percent confidence intervals) engaged in animal husbandry is 53.1 (±10.6) percent in the alpine grassland zone, compared to only 8.6 (±8.8) percent and 0.7 (±0.4) percent in the Qaidam Basin and Haidong district, respectively (Qinghai Census Bureau 1992). Clearly, then, most Tibetans – the most numerous people in the alpine grassland regions of Qinghai – are engaged in a distinctly pastoral livelihood. In terms of livestock, Qinghai has 22,101,500 head of domestic animals, excluding pigs. Of these, 5,751,000 are large livestock (cattle, yak, horses) and 16,350,500 small livestock (sheep, goats) (Drandui 1996).
Poverty alleviation and development (back to top)
In order to improve the well-being or “quality of life” of its rural population, the Chinese government launched a national poverty alleviation program in 1985 that focused on the country’s mountain and pastoral areas, home to around 45 million people who still live in extreme poverty (Liu and Wang 1998). In line with this initiative, many provincial and regional governments have similarly made the alleviation of poverty one of their highest priorities (Liu and Wang 1998). Every province, including Qinghai, is now encouraged to include in its plans as many of the following poverty alleviation components as possible:
· the provision of small loans to poor families (micro-credit schemes);
· a reorientation from emergency relief to long-term development assistance;
· a focus on households (families) as basic units for assistance and training;
· the improvement of infrastructure (transport, communication, rural health, etc.); and
· resource protection and the establishment of resource-based sustainable development.
The specific implementation
of these proposed priority actions, however, including their interpretation and
application to each local context, remains the exclusive responsibility of provincial
and lower levels of government. Thus many principles of ecologically sound and
sustainable development and social equity may be missed as remote, poor, and
sometimes less educated regions pursue rapid (short-term) economic development,
often with little thought to the multitudinous factors that affect long-term
sustainability. Overall, the alleviation of poverty (or income generation) is
planned and implemented in China following a very specific administrative
structure, at multiple levels, as illustrated in Figure 10.
Figure 10. Administrative structure for poverty alleviation in pastoral
areas of China (adapted from Liu and Wang 1998)
Although Qinghai covers 7.5 percent of China’s territory, it accounts for only 0.2 percent of the country’s total agricultural output, and thus ranks 26th among China’s thirty provinces in terms of average rural net income (Ho 1999). Almost every development project in the province therefore has poverty alleviation as its main focus. This thrust is the case in agricultural as well as pastoral areas of the province. According to Liu Guanghe, a provincial vice-governor, the government is seeking international support for its poverty alleviation program as well as to invigorate the provincial economy, education, and environmental protection (Wu Y. 1997). Over half the counties and 221 townships in Qinghai are designated as poverty areas with per capita incomes of less than $ 70 USD per annum (Qinghai People’s Government 1999). Even more townships are classified as poor at the provincial, prefecture, and county levels as well.
The Alpine Grasslands of Qinghai Province (back to top)
General development plans and priorities (back to top)
China’s foremost priority, as already discussed, is to maintain overall social stability and national security. Furthermore, the most effective way to ensure overall stability is to engage in rapid economic development and poverty alleviation. In an extensive study recently published by the Tibetan Studies Center in Beijing, some of the country’s foremost researchers explain:
“If the majority of people in a region are in poverty and cannot help themselves, this de facto inequality will threaten overall economic development and social order will be difficult to maintain. … Backwards regions and people in poverty therefore should be supported as much as possible” (Dorje 1997).
The Chinese government therefore recognizes that “the foundation of … stability is farm [agricultural] land” (Gao and Chi 1997a). However, despite this, attention is given to the agricultural sector mainly for the benefits that can be derived for large urban centers, not for the rural areas themselves (Kelliher 1992). Furthermore, agriculture is still the weakest part of the economy. Some leaders believe that “if this trend continues, then not only will a solid foundation be lacking to ensure rapid overall economic development, but there also will be sharp social conflicts that will seriously influence national economic development and social stability” (Gao and Chi 1997b). Thus the pursuit of economic development and the alleviation of poverty in China are explicitly linked tightly with the pursuit of overall national stability.
A provincial leader in Tibet similarly emphasizes that “historical evidence [has proven] repeatedly that agricultural stability brings economic stability, with economic stability bringing national stability, and national stability enabling smooth promotion of reform and opening [and] faster development” (Holzner and Kriechbaum 1999). Although stability is important everywhere, it is even more important in minority areas where the cultural distance between the government and local people can be large. In such places, if the local population feels both political and economic disenfranchisement, powerless or without adequate sustenance or a satisfactory livelihood, then poverty could be the little spark that leads to vocal criticism and active discontent. This threat can be especially acute in remote mountain and pastoral areas of China where minority populations and poverty often coincide, areas that also may be situated in already sensitive border regions of China.
Table 3. Pastoral development
priorities (or main types of development presently pursued) in Qinghai’s alpine
grasslands
Since it may be some of the types of development activities or
policies described in Table 3 that are in fact causing the greatest or most
significant changes in Qinghai’s alpine grasslands, each of these categories
will now be discussed in turn.
The Household Responsibility System (back to top)
The Household Responsibility System is a legal system (or contractual agreement) whereby individual families or households are made responsible for the land they operate and remuneration is linked to output (Gao and Chi 1997a, 1997b). Before this system was introduced, families simply had to meet government quotas and remuneration was not linked to production. According to Longworth and Williamson (1993), the Household Responsibility System
“was first tried in the early 1960s [in Gansu]. The system began to take shape in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture but in 1965 it was criticised and stopped. In 1979 when government policy was relaxed, the people in this prefecture quickly began to apply [the Household Responsibility System] once again. Indeed, the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, an agricultural area, was one of the first areas in all China to adopt [the Household Responsibility System] in 1979. The system was introduced in pastoral areas later than in agricultural areas.”
This “responsibility system” clearly is the “most far-reaching and progressive factor in China’s [modern] reform of the countryside… Through legal contracts families [are] made responsible for the land they [operate] and for the first time remuneration [is] linked to production. … In the past few years the contracting period [has been] extended [to 30 years] and property rights reform [now permits] the transference of land use rights” (Gao and Chi 1997a). Gao and Chi (1997b) describe the three major stages in China’s agricultural reform, from the end of 1978 to 1994, as follows:
“The first stage was from 1978 to 1984, when China set up and gradually implemented the contract responsibility system based on the household and with remuneration linked to output in the rural areas. The second stage was from 1985 to 1991, when China reformed the system of state monopoly purchase and quotas, and gradually lifted controls from the market and prices of agricultural products. The third stage was from 1992 to 1994, when the country started the transition to the rural market economy in an all-round way.”
In Qinghai, like elsewhere in China, the basic land contract now lasts 30 years without change. However, if land is used for agricultural purposes, or if reforestation or grassland seeding is undertaken to decrease the rate of desertification, the contract period will be extended to 50 years. By the mid-1990s, 48 percent of winter-spring pastures and 42 percent of summer-autumn pastures already had been contracted to individual households, and, in some instances, to whole villages. Estimates of the total grassland area in the province range from 358,209 km2 to 364,494 km2, and estimates of the grassland area that is used regularly (or the “usable” area) range from 240,000 km2 to 316,103 km2 (Wei 1993, Ma et al. 1995). The overall proportion of grassland classified as winter-spring grassland and as summer-autumn grassland is almost identical in the province (Wei 1993). Land has been classified by type and quality (and assigned for different seasonal uses) based on “comprehensive zoning” surveys conducted in the early 1980s, and some pasture surveys date as far back as the 1960s (Lang et al. 1997).
At the same time that the Household Responsibility System was being promoted throughout the country, the Rangeland Law also was introduced. The Rangeland Law is an important legislation that affects all grassland areas in China, forbidding the practice of land uses that damage rangeland (see above). In this way the law relates closely to one of the more pressing challenges that the Qinghai government is attempting to address, that is, the perceived “contradiction” between livestock numbers and forage availability (Lang et al. 1997, Wang et al. 1992).
According to Liu and Wang (1998), speaking of the situation in Dari, the implementation of the Household Responsibility System generally has followed the following pattern:
“During 1983-1994, the collective animals had been contracted to herder households, but the pasture was not. Since the pasture had … not been allocated to herders, there was a free access to the grass land, every herder want[s] their herd to graze on the luxuriant grass area, but there [are] no measures to protect them. After ten years [since] the decentralization, the environment was seriously deteriorated. … After 1994, … the winter-spring season pasture was allocated to herder households, and herders have started to manage them well… From 1994-1997, the summer-autumn pasture still [were] left as common goods. Starting from 1998, the summer-autumn ranch land is being allocated to herder households.”
Thus a quasi-privatized, small-scale (household) livestock production system already has been introduced in most of Qinghai’s grassland areas.
Restructuring production (toward a “ranching” system) (back to top)
Closely related to the issues of property rights and land contracts described above are the many other ways in which the government also is encouraging a shift from the extensive land use system currently practiced on the Tibetan plateau toward a more intensive form of grassland resource utilization. In this regard, many of the different types of development activities described below fall into the present category of a planned restructuring of the production system by means of government interventions and subsidies. These interventions or subsidies can take various forms from government support for poverty alleviation loans to building houses for nomads to the creation of artificial grasslands and massive fencing schemes.
Drandui (1996), for example, suggests that Qinghai’s pastoral economy could be improved significantly by strengthening “grassland management.” Liu and Wang (1998), Lang et al. (1997), Drandui (1996), Ma et al. (1995) and others suggest in particular that herd species composition, herd sex and age structures (with turnover rates geared toward markets), and the breeding and selection of livestock should become priority foci for action. Investment in infrastructure development (or “grassland construction”; see Gangcha County People’s Government 1997) also is thought to be exceptionally important by most government leaders (e.g., building or improving animal shelters, fencing, winter forage production, communications, and transport routes). Underlying most of these changes, however, is an assumption that the main (if not sole) purpose of animal husbandry is to produce commodities such as meat and wool. This focus is significant for regional to national level economies, but may be somewhat less important for local, mainly Tibetan economies where livestock also fulfill many other significant roles.
The Four-in-one Scheme (back to top)
The most important development program undertaken in the name of poverty alleviation is the Four-in-one Scheme, a nationally sanctioned program adopted widely throughout China’s pastoral regions. As one international development agency explains, this scheme aims “to provide each family with a permanent winter house, a barn to protect the animals, grassland which can be used to grow winter feed and fencing their own land” (Christian Action 2000). This scheme also has been described as comprising “four countermeasures for enhancing the risk [management] competence of the households” (Liu and Wang 1998). Theoretically, 50 percent of the investment is paid by the government and 50 percent by the poor households themselves (Liu and Wang 1998), although in reality the government sometimes subsidies over 80 percent of the total costs (Schaller 1998).
The Qinghai government spent $ 33.75 million USD between 1986 and 1990 to fence grasslands, build livestock sheds, and implement a variety of other (so-called) grassland improvements (Drandui 1996). The government also has invested considerable effort and funds in order to help herdsmen adopt a sedentary lifestyle (‘Old ways …’ 1994).
The Four-in-one Scheme is recognized to contribute positively to strengthening grassland management and improving infrastructure in Qinghai’s grassland areas, and thus to strengthen “sustainable development of animal production” in the region (Lang et al. 1997). The real long-term impacts of changing regional land use patterns, however, are not so easy to predict, and may not be as benign as assumed. The shorter-term changes, however, particularly improvements in living conditions, are positive and easy to grasp.
Building permanent houses for nomads
One of the four components of the Four-in-one Scheme is to build permanent winter houses for pastoral people. Now over 50 percent of herders in Qinghai are said to have adopted a sedentary lifestyle, or to have “settled down” (Yan et al. 1994). This is despite the fact that, traditionally, Tibetans neither had fixed sheds for their herds nor houses for themselves (Liu and Wang 1998). Winter houses are meant to help protect them in times of snow disasters and to improve general living conditions (Liu and Wang 1998).
One Tibetan social scientist found that
“many ethnic Tibetan herders have settled into winter quarters where they [spend] three or so months every year…. Young Tibetan adults appreciate the winter food stocks for the animals and the improved access to medical care and education their children have in the winter quarters. Older Tibetans [however] dislike the winter settlements, seeing them as a break with Tibetan traditions. … The old people and the children remain in the winter quarters for schooling when the younger adults move out and travel with herds during the warmer months” (Environment Science and Technology 1998a).
Nearly all the technological improvements introduced to Qinghai’s pastoral areas since the adoption of the Household Responsibility System in the 1980s focus on activities or constructions on the privately managed winter grazing area (Cincotta et al. 1992). Overall, the summer ranges now tend to receive much less attention and active management than the winter pastures, although the greatest risk of overgrazing is present in summer pastures where livestock graze the vegetation during the short active growing season. Building houses removes both attention and scarce financial resources from range management activities in winter and summer pastures, and also increases the probability of year-round grazing (with concomitant resource degradation) in the vicinity of the new fixed structures. This latter risk is common to all the components of the scheme.
Livestock shelters, forage crops, and grassland fencing
Livestock shelters, around 40 m2 each, help to protect herders’ livestock from the normal winter cold and from the periodic snow disasters that affect the Tibetan plateau (Liu and Wang 1998). According to Lang et al. (1997) animal shelters are proven to reduce energy loss in winter and hence to increase adult live weight (in some experiments by 2.1 kg), to increase lamb survival rates (by 11.7 percent) and to reduce mortality in adult sheep (by 4.5 percent).
Where winter forage crops are grown, they are planted on one-third to two-thirds of a hectare for each household (Liu and Wang 1998). It also is planned that around 20 ha of grassland will be fenced for each household so that they can harvest hay or graze their livestock in winter (Liu and Wang 1998). In total, fenced grassland covers an area in Qinghai of around 7,500 km2, virtually all of it enclosed since 1985 (Drandui 1996, Yan et al. 1994). Although it is mainly winter pastures that are enclosed at present (Schaller 1998), in the long-term fencing is planned for winter and summer pastures alike. Fencing is used both for range management (livestock herding) and to help rehabilitate degraded vegetation and thus to restore grassland primary productivity (Lang et al. 1997). Furthermore, the rate of grassland fencing in Qinghai is likely to increase rapidly in the near future. The Japan International Cooperation Agency, for example, is considering a large $ 300 million USD development aid package that aims to strengthen pastoral development and grassland construction in Qinghai, with a large portion of the funds to be used for extensive grassland fencing.
Grassland improvement, grassland restoration (back to top)
Many factors are known or assumed to cause pasture degradation in the Tibetan plateau region. Among the most important or frequently stated examples of factors contributing to this degradation are
· high stocking rates (Western Resources and Environment Research Center 1994, Miller and Craig 1997, Environment Science and Technology 1998b, Liu and Wang 1998, Ho 1999);
· changes in grazing patterns, such as decreased mobility and flexibility in pastoral practices (Williams 1996, Miller and Craig 1997, Holzner and Kriechbaum 1999);
· increasing aridity and associated changes in plant communities (species composition) and hydrological cycles (Miller and Craig 1997, Lang et al. 1997, Chen et al. 1998);
· agricultural reclamation (plowing and conversion of grassland into cropland) (Western Resources and Environment Research Center 1994, Environment Science and Technology 1998b, Ho 1999);
· forage competition and physical disturbance caused by small burrowing mammals and insects (Drandui 1996, Liu and Wang 1998);
· resource harvesting such as the removal of turf (Holzner and Kriechbaum 1999);
· resource management strategies with a lack of collective action (Ho 1999);
· traditional ideologies that focus almost exclusively on the numeric growth of livestock herds (Lang et al. 1997);
· inadequate extension services from technicians to pastoralists (Environment Science and Technology 1998b); and
· a large a human population, vis-ŕ-vis the underlying resource base (Ho 1999).
According to Wang et al. (1992) as well as the majority of leaders and researchers in Qinghai, the “contradiction between livestock and herbage is serious” and is increasing in severity. In order to counteract this loss of productivity, several measures are being taken in Qinghai’s pastoral areas. Almost all of these measures, however, attempt to address the mismatch between the availability of grassland vegetation and the forage and nutritional requirements of the current livestock population exclusively from the perspective of too little vegetation. The “contradiction” (mismatch) between forage availability and livestock numbers rarely is addressed from the equally plausible perspective of too many animals in a fragile and finite environment.
Several of the main factors contributing to grassland degradation can be subsumed into a broader category termed “overgrazing.” This category includes more than livestock numbers. As Holzner and Kriechbaum (1999) again make clear, the causes of overgrazing are
“complex and varied, and [are not so much] ecological but cultural, social and economic [and include an] increase of human population; changes in the pastoral system; loss of control or abandonment of the equilibrium between herd size/pasture size; change or abandonment of the seasonal grazing pattern (induced by changing political or administrative boundaries, or by stopping the migrations of nomads by low or economic stimuli like building houses).”
In order to avoid confusion about the exact meaning or implications of the use of the term “overgrazing,” these factors have been included in their own right in the list (above) of the contributing factors to grassland degradation.
The main activities undertaken by the government to improve natural grasslands or to restore degraded land include the “construction” of artificial and semi-artificial (seeded) grassland (Wang et al. 1992, Gangcha County People’s Government 1997) and the wholesale division, distribution, and fencing of the grassland, both in relatively small winter pastures as well as fencing larger tracts of land (Drandui 1996). Altogether over 8,000 km2 of grassland was seeded between 1986 and 1994 and, as has already been noted, almost as much land was fenced during the same period (Drandui 1996).
The other main category of grassland improvement or grassland restoration activities in Qinghai (and elsewhere on the Tibetan plateau) is “pest control.” This issue will be discussed at greater length in the next section. The main purpose of these control activities is to increase the amount of available forage for livestock, whereas the removal of important elements of the Tibetan plateau ecosystem (such as the pika, the main target of numerous control programs in Qinghai) will in the long-term instead lead to a decline in overall grassland productivity and ecosystem resilience. Indeed, a local overabundance of pika is rather a symptom of, and not the cause of, overgrazing (Liu and Wang 1998, Holzner and Kriechbaum 1999, Smith and Foggin 1999).
Finally, it also has been suggested that the low productivity of the Tibetan plateau could be counteracted (improved) through fertilization (Lang et al. 1997). Scientists at the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences (TASS) in Lhasa and at the Northwest Plateau Institute of Biology (NWPIB) in Xining also agree that “fertilizing the grassland to increase the primary productivity could be an important element in sustainable development.” However, the practicality of fertilizing immense tracts of high-altitude grassland (in terms of effort, expense, or efficiency) has not even been discussed. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, several of these scientists simultaneously affirmed that “the emphasis in high and cold areas must [always] be to preserve the existing grassland” because it is simply “not feasible to grow high quality grass from seed in this environment” (Environment Science and Technology 1998b). The simple reason is that, unlike many other pastoral systems, the Tibetan plateau system is temperature-limited, and there is little, if anything, that one can do to change this condition (Scott and Kong 1990).
Disaster prevention and “pest” control programs (back to top)
One of the fundamental characteristics of the Tibetan plateau is its severe and unpredictable climate. The type of climatic event that is most detrimental to pastoralists’ well-being is the periodic winter snowstorm that blankets large portions of the plateau. Up to one-third of a region’s livestock can be lost in a single season, varying at the household level from minimal losses to 100 percent loss of livestock (Foggin 1998b, Liu and Wang 1998, Environment Science and Technology 1998c). Snowstorms can and often do force herders to change from a pastoral way of life to a life of begging. Clearly, risks are now very high for pastoralists, as indeed has always been the case for pastoralists living on the plateau.
All other disasters tend to pale by comparison and are considered mainly with regard to their relation to past or possible snowstorms. Both direct competition for forage and the loss of forage due to land degradation affect livestock winter survival and therefore are serious concerns to pastoralists and government officials alike. Less forage means less energy intake by animals and poorer body conditions. In a harsh winter, weak animals have a much greater likelihood of dying from a combination of exposure to the cold and starvation.
Other “disasters” or perceived risks in the Tibetan plateau region include an overabundance of small mammals in some areas, particularly pika and zokor; insect infestations; grassland fires; and animal losses due to disease, wolf predation, and theft.
Preparations for snowstorms
Herders and government officials both rank snow disasters as posing the greatest risk in terms of economic losses and overall negative effect on the population (Liu and Wang 1998). Liu and Wang (1998) also note the differential impact of snow disasters on yak and sheep according to the timing of snowfall: “If the snow disaster occurs in winter, yak is the first affected animal because yak can not unearth the snow to get the grass, [but if] the snow disaster occurs in spring, sheep is the most serious suffering animal because the ewe give birth to lamb in this season.”
Furthermore snow disasters and poverty are a recurring theme in the lives of many pastoralists. For example, in Dari County nearly 25 percent of families that have lost all their livestock and are subsequently assisted by the government (i.e., given new livestock) “will [later] be returned to poverty” (Liu and Wang 1998).
The main way in which the government is assisting people in pastoral areas to prepare for snow disasters is to encourage and facilitate implementation of the Four-in-one Scheme: building houses and animal shelters, planting winter forage crops, and fencing the grassland. Many other “buffering” mechanisms are encouraged as well, such as household and regional economic diversification, the formation of self-help family groups and improved extension training and other community social services.
Pika and zokor control programs
According to Drandui (1996), nearly 75,000 km2 of Qinghai’s grassland was “controlled” (poisoned) between 1986 and 1994. The main target species of poisoning campaigns on the Tibetan plateau are pikas (not a rodent, but a lagomorph) and zokors. However, it is debatable whether small fossorial mammals are the primary cause of grassland degradation (the main reason given for conducting these campaigns) or rather one of the symptoms of this degradation. The repeated observation that “[in] undisturbed pastures pikas are practically missing [but in] pastures where … turf has been opened or destroyed by overgrazing, cutting or burning … they occur in high densities” (Holzner and Kriechbaum 1999) leads us to the latter conclusion (Smith and Foggin 1999). Furthermore, not only are the reasons given for control programs in question, the short- and long-term economics of such programs and their likely deleterious effects on other components of the local biodiversity (and on people) raise many concerns over their continued implementation (Smith and Foggin 1999).
Insect infestations and grassland fires
Other natural disasters include insect infestations and grassland fires. One species of caterpillar in particular is said to cause serious pasture degradation (Holzner and Kriechbaum 1999) and therefore is poisoned when possible. These caterpillars are said to be moving further northwest in Yushu prefecture each year, having originated in recent years in neighboring Sichuan. In the past natural events such as hail storms and local predators (e.g., corvids) sometimes have exterminated them in some regions (interview with an elderly pastoralist, July 1998).
Grassland fires also are known occasionally to consume valuable forage resources. Grassland fire prevention work (presumably awareness campaigns) have been reported in the northeast of the province (Gangcha County People’s Government 1997), and a grassland fire in the southwest of the province, purportedly a serious fire which destroyed a large area of grassland, was reported in the spring of 1999. In the latter case, township and county officials were actively involved in the fire fighting, and an ad hoc monitoring and information network was quickly established since fires are said to be a grave risk in the spring when grassland vegetation is very dry and high winds are common.
Animal disease, wolf predation, and animal theft
Finally, although animal losses due to disease, predation, or theft are not disasters in the same sense as regional snowstorms, they nonetheless can represent a significant degree of risk to herders’ livelihoods.
Although improved veterinary services (including extension training) would reduce disease and parasites in livestock, thus increasing both their productivity and the marketability of animal by-products, herders do not consider the risk of livestock diseases to be very important. Most government officials and technicians, however, disagree with the herders’ assessment.
Economically, wolf attacks can take a great toll on livestock production, even greater than the economic losses due to animal thefts. Yet it is the latter that rates highest in herders’ own perception of risk. This perception is probably due to the greater psychological effect that animal theft, and the social stress that it reflects, has on pastoralists. In Table 4, Liu and Wang (1998) report the relative risk attributed by government workers with herds (herders) and without herds (non-herders) to snowstorms, disease, predation, and theft.
Table 4. Rank comparison of risk
perception by different government officials (Liu and Wang 1998)
without their own herd their own herds
snow disaster 1 1
animal disease 2 4
wolf predation 3 3
animal theft 4 2
To combat all these risks, the government has adopted a simple,
four-point risk planning strategy (Liu and Wang 1998): (1) to organize local meetings
on risk management before winter; (2) to prepare fodder, medicines, clothes,
and other emergency relief materials before winter; (3) to organize
coordination meetings for emergency relief; and (4) to attempt to predict snow
disasters in advance.
Agricultural production (crop
cultivation) (back to top)
Until recently agriculture often was considered the most important
direction for rural development in China, even in arid and semi-arid grassland
regions. Although agriculture could be justified in part as a response to the
provincial and national drive to diversify and strengthen local economies, it
is not an ecologically sound option for the high grasslands of the Tibetan
plateau. Recent history has confirmed the fact that agriculture (crop
cultivation) is not sustainable in many areas of Qinghai, and it was even
decreed by Premier Zhu Rongji in the autumn of 1999 that one-third of Qinghai’s
cultivated land should (must) be returned to more productive use as natural or
semi-natural grazing land in the near future (personal informant, 25 November
1999). The Premier’s visit to Qinghai came as the country now shifts its focus
from the earlier development of its coastal provinces to the development of its
vast interior provinces (‘Development of West…’ 2000, ‘Top advisors…’ developing
Western China’ 2000).
Indeed, vast areas of Qinghai’s grassland have been converted to agriculture in the past. In the Qinghai Lake area alone, “[from] the end of the 1950s to the 1960s people began to plow endlessly. The total plowed area rose to [155 km2] although only [29 km2] were actually used. Most of the plowed land was quickly deserted. In the 1980s about [20 km2] of plowed land was restored to grassland [but] most still does not have much vegetation” (Western Resources and Environment Research Center 1994). In the province as a whole, considerable land was cultivated soon after Liberation (in 1949), and the total cultivated area was rapidly enlarged to 1,333 km2. Over three decades later, this area had risen to at least 5,789 km2, and another 4,773 km2 was classified as “reclaimable wasteland” (Zhu 1989). Researchers at the Northwest Plateau Institute of Biology (NWPIB) consider that the policy of “increasing food crop production during the late 50’s and early 60’s … by inappropriately demanding the conversion of grassland into cropland [was a serious] ecological disaster.” According to their estimates, “between 1956 and 1959, Qinghai Province turned 670,000 ha [or 6,700 km2] of grassland into cropland.” However, most of this cropland “was quickly abandoned because of inadequate water supply and temperatures that are inadequate for crop growth. Thirty years later, these abandoned lands have not yet recovered” (Environment Science and Technology 1998b). Overall, as Heberer (1989) notes, Qinghai has “suffered considerably at the hands of [the immigrants] who attempted to convert pastures into tillable fields. Pastureland retreated, the desert advanced, and the ecological balance was seriously disrupted.”
Unfortunately not everyone has learned from experience. Even one of China’s top economists has suggested recently that yet more “wasteland” should be “opened up” and privatized. He is of the firm opinion that “increasing the amount of cultivated land should be the focus for achieving agricultural growth and for developing the market economy [and that] policy and financial problems can be solved by offering outright land ownership or permanent use of the land to whomsoever transforms wasteland into cultivated land” (Baokan 1998). Fortunately, given China’s system of governance, this has been contradicted (and hence counteracted) by Zhu Rongji’s position, made public in October 1999, on the real value of Qinghai’s grassland and on the potential harm caused by inappropriate cultivation (also see ‘China to reduce…’ 2000).
County and township-level economic diversification (back to top)
As elsewhere in China, the development of local economies is extremely important in Qinghai. Already over one-third of Qinghai’s villages have set up various kinds of business enterprises (Ma et al. 1995). Further, “the central and local governments have [specifically] encouraged the semi-nomad herders [as well] to broaden their economic activity without increasing the intensity of grazing” (Environment Science and Technology 1998b). There are very few positive suggestions, however, of economic alternatives to livestock grazing. The most promising avenue may instead lie in developing further the processing (value-adding) and marketing sectors of the animal husbandry industry in Qinghai. Special attention should be given to building local capacity in the processing and marketing sectors and to developing local cooperatives and other social organizations (Liu and Wang 1998).
Forming collective economic groups (cooperatives) (back to top)
Collective economic groups (or cooperatives) are an example of an approved type of social organization. Pastoralists are being encouraged to form such groups at the township level. In this way, more expendable money is supposed to be made available and overall capital investment is expected to rise in the countryside. Already over $1.5 million USD have been invested by such cooperatives around the province (Ma et al. 1995).
Pastoralists also are encouraged to join together, several families per group, to jointly undertake in a variety of different animal husbandry practices. It is assumed that “consolidating herds [will] ameliorate hardship during bad snow spells. Therefore … nomads [are encouraged] to form five to eight family clusters with [joint] responsibility for livestock and grazing land; with common interest, they can help support each other and prevent grassland degradation” (Environment Science and Technology 1998b).
Further, similar to the discussion above on economic diversification, local cooperatives can also help with marketing since there are few non-governmental organizations or any other means for local herders to get fair prices on the market (Liu and Wang 1998). Herders usually do not sell their products in the city, but rather to Hui nationality middlemen. They are often unaware of current market prices. Establishing such social groups could help to increase economic returns and other benefits to pastoralists (Environment Science and Technology 1998a).
Provision of community social services (back to top)
The government also desires to improve the provision of social services in its remote pastoral areas. Already more than 900 local community service centers (of which 306 are veterinarian centers) have been established in townships throughout the province, in addition to 140 “cultural centers” and 19 larger community centers in the counties (Ma et al. 1995). Real and effective “extension” of technical and other information from these centers to the pastoralists is an area of special concern (Liu and Wang 1998). Recently, more participatory approaches to traditional extension work have begun to gain acceptance in the province, such as with the Qinghai Livestock Development Project’s participatory workshops that were held in Guoluo in October 1998.
Provision of basic education and adult literacy (back to top)
Finally, providing basic education also is a priority in China, including in its poor, remote areas. The level of education and literacy rates in Qinghai’s pastoral areas both are extremely low, much lower, for example, than the national illiteracy rate of 22.8 percent (Zhang and Huang 1996).
The main purpose of education in China, however, remains simply “integration” into national culture. Meng et al. (1999) give a quick overview of the history of education in Qinghai and state clearly its main purpose. According to them,
“modern education only began to develop from the 1950s, although for a very long time there were only mobile schools in the region. …After the founding of New China, the government formulated the principle that ‘the main purpose of education in the areas inhabited mainly by national minorities is to train cadres for the minority nationalities.’”
Meng et al. (1999) also state:
“It is common knowledge in educational sociology that education facilitates social integration. … Education can help to integrate a particular culture in a national minority area into the universal Chinese culture, that is, education helps to eliminate narrow-mindedness and makes it easier for people to accept the mainstream culture of the Chinese nation. … The development of education in these areas will therefore accelerate their social integration with the mainstream in terms of both ideology and cultural psychology. … Education … initiates changes in the social structure. Obviously, such changes tend to enhance the homogeneity and compatibility of these areas with mainstream society, thus facilitating the integration of native areas with the hinterland.”
Obviously, along with the other priority development activities described above, the government gives a high value to education. Two important challenges, however, are that parents in pastoral areas tend to have little enthusiasm (compared with farming areas) to send their children to school (Meng et al. 1999), and that the Chinese education system in general is not designed to encourage independent thinking.
Summary (back to top)
Many different factors affect the protection and conservation of Qinghai’s alpine grasslands. These include the nation’s socio-economic context, its political concern for social stability and security, and its commitment and capacity for environmental protection; the ecology and environmental conditions of the Tibetan plateau as a whole; the environment and cultural characteristics of the province; and the specific types of development that the government already is pursuing or planning for Qinghai’s alpine grassland areas, from property rights policy to risk management and disaster avoidance to the underlying goals for education and literacy. All these factors contribute directly and indirectly to the potential for success of conservation measures designed to protect the native biodiversity of the Tibetan plateau in Qinghai, China. With these realities in mind, and with conservation recommendations duly tailored around them, there will be a much greater likelihood of success since the more appropriate (or relevant) the recommendation, the more likely it will be accepted, adopted, implemented, and continued in the long-term. Ultimately, sustainability depends on gaining an appropriate understanding of ecology and culture, both traditional and modern, not only on (so-called) ideal solutions that may be perceived as detached from reality by relevant government decision-makers or local communities. In the next chapter, I will examine the natural and cultural characteristics of one specific grassland region, the Qinghai Lake area, in an attempt to better understand how the various socio-economic and other contexts described in this and the previous chapter are translated into the real world.
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Chapter Three
The Human Environments of China: A Diversity of Scales, Frames of Reference, and Study Areas
3.1. Introduction
3.2. The People’s Republic of China
3.2.1. Physical and human geography
3.2.2. Development and national security
3.2.3. Environmental protection
3.3. The Tibetan Plateau
3.3.1. Biogeography of the Tibetan plateau
3.3.2. Tibetan wildlife
3.4. Qinghai Province
3.4.1. Physical and human geography
3.4.2. A cultural crossroads
3.4.3. Poverty alleviation and development
3.5. The Alpine Grasslands of Qinghai Province
3.5.1. General development plans and priorities
3.5.2. The Household Responsibility System
3.5.3. Restructuring production (toward a “ranching” system)
3.5.4. The Four-in-one Scheme
3.5.5. Grassland improvement, grassland restoration
3.5.6. Disaster prevention and “pest” control programs
3.5.7. Agricultural production (crop cultivation)
3.5.8. County and township-level economic diversification
3.5.9. Forming collective economic groups (cooperatives)
3.5.10. Provision of community social services
3.5.11. Provision of basic education and adult literacy
3.6. Summary