TRIN-GYI-PHO-NYA: TIBET’S ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT DIGEST
Vol. 3, No. 1
By Tashi Tsering*
China is implementing a program allegedly to protect the source of Asia’s three major rivers – the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong – on the Tibetan Plateau, known as the Three Rivers’ Headwaters Park or “Sanjiangyuan” in Chinese. While this is certainly a worthy and urgent goal, the actual environmental conservation plan that is being proposed has several serious flaws.
First, the plan relies on the strategy of population relocation, claiming that the presence of local pastoralists and herders is harmful to the goal of land conservation. The plan is to protect the 152,300 square kilometer park from human and animal activities by forcefully relocating local herders and nomads who have the most intimate knowledge of the local ecosystems and have lived in the area for hundreds of years in a sustainable manner. In the plans to make the core area of Three Rivers’ Headwaters (TRH) a complete “non-human zone in 5 years” (China Ethnic News), reports indicate that a total number of 1,738 local households have already been moved, most of them unwillingly, into newly built houses as early as September 2004. Many more will likely be displaced as the actual relocation plan involves as many as 7,921 households, or 43,600 people and their livestock, of the Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
This situation demands that the Government of China look into a strategic environmental policy question: whether excluding the local indigenous population of Sanjiangyuan is a positive or necessary step to protect the local environment, keeping in mind that the environment in this area has thrived for thousands of years alongside the farming and herding practices of this population.
The current plan is based on the assumption that the human and livestock populations are the main threats to the ecosystem integrity of Sanjiangyuan. Yet, local conservationists cite the government’s development policies as the chief cause of the area’s deteriorated environmental condition. For example, the national policy of increasing productivity in the 70’s and the animal husbandry policies of the 80’s encouraged more nomads and herders into intensive grazing in the headwaters area. More recently, increasing numbers of mineral extraction projects to prospect gold, silver and copper have been allowed in the area. The government also has plans to build some of the highest dams in the world in the same “protected area” after Three Rivers Headwaters becomes a “non-human zone.”
The Chinese government still subscribes to an outdated notion of ecology that sees humans as fundamentally separate from nature, and so parks and protected areas must be separated from humans. Yet there is a growing body of scientific literature that advocates alternative approaches to park management that are particularly suitable for developing countries that still have large, indigenous rural populations. In many developing countries, protected areas and local people need each other for their survival in so far as the traditional bureaucracies tasked with managing nature parks are often corrupt and ineffective. In contrast, local people who are connected to protected land have an innate interest, as well as a proven capacity, in maintaining the integrity of local ecosystems. In the case of Tibetan pastoral nomads, experts have actually observed that traditional pastoral strategies for herding, including rotating between different grazing lands, have an inherently sustainable component.
The Chinese government’s current plan to uproot the local pastoral population and to develop the park for mining and hydropower will only destroy the ecological integrity of the world’s most important “Water Tower.” Before it is too late, the Government of China must return the control and management of Sanjiangyuan to its historical stewards – Tibetan pastoralists. Through experience, traditional practices and oral teachings, Tibetan nomads have preserved a vast body of indigenous knowledge about Sanjiangyuan’s alpine rangeland ecosystem. Villages like Mochun in Dritoe County (Zhiduo Xian), for example, have centuries old environmental protection regulations and customary herders’ agreements to manage the alpine grassland. Unfortunately, Mochun’s people and their livestock will have to leave their ancestral lands in the name of environmental protection, while Inter Citic, a Canadian company has been allowed to prospect gold near their village at Chumarleb (Chinese: Dachang xian).
Editor: Trin-Gyi-Pho-Nya. Tashi Tsering is also the Environment and Development Program Director of Tibet Justice Center.
