Settlement vs. Resettlement

Some people responded to my last blog post with more information that I want to share with readers.

1. There are many kinds of housing projects that are being built for herders and farmers on the Tibetan Plateau. So unless someone cross-checks the numbers on the ground, it is difficult to figure out exactly how many herders have been resettled.

2. A couple of friends (Thanks again!) brought to my attention that the Reuters article discussed in my previous blog post talks about 'settlement' (ding ju) of herders, which is different from 'resettlement' (yi min) of herders. Settlement likely means simply building permanent houses at the winter pastures where villagers live -- which is not in any way as serious as "resettlement" or "ecological migration" where herders are removed to new areas as in the case of the Three Rivers Headwaters Nature Reserve.

4. Speaking of 'ecological migration,' What happens to all the yaks when the nomads are forced to resettle? It seems like many sell the animals as they are suppose to do, while others leave their yaks with relatives for keeps. I don't have any credible or interesting story about the fate of these animals. Please share any information you may have on this issue.

3. Some housing projects are simply replacing traditional mud houses with houses made of bricks. This project is more prevalent in Tibet Autonomous Region, where, in total, 860,000 farmers and herders from 170,000 families have moved into the new houses by the end of 2008. According to this Xinhua article , "another 312,000 farmers and herders from 57,800 families moved from shanty homes into new solid brick houses in Tibet [Autonomous Region] this year under a government-subsidized housing project aimed at improving living conditions."

As much as I think this is a tragedy in terms of losing traditional architecture (its cheaper, locally more suitable, environmentally more sustainable, better insulation for Tibet's cold winter, aesthetically more beautiful, etc, etc.), these brick houses are popular among Tibetans. I have seen this trend among Tibetan Buddhist farmers of Ladakh and in Spiti Valley in India. While many of these farmers tend to prefer houses made of bricks with corrugated tin roof as modern and reject their traditional mud houses as pre-modern, many local leaders are clearly concerned about implication of these changes.


[Traditional Tibetan architecture in the Western Himalayas. Photo: Tashi Tsering]
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Snuffing out the nomads?

A friend brought this Reuters article to my attention. He was baffled by the sheer number of Tibetan herders that the article says will be relocated. According to the article, there are 530,000 nomads in Western Sichuan Province, out of which 470,000 herders will be resettled in the name of environmental protection. If these numbers are true, that's the last of the nomads in Sichuan. He said this is effectively "a kind of nomad genocide.” Although I never thought of this as such, I was pleased to see that at least someone was paying attention to this issue.

As evident from my earlier postings, I have been very concerned about the many large scale ecological resettlement projects going on in Tibet. To me, this is a far more serious issue than the high profile topics such as Hillary Clinton’s China visit or the arrest of monk protestors. Precisely because the resettlement project is a low profile, politically-correct sounding policy in the context of environmental protection, I think it is one of the most far-sighted strategies of the Chinese state to deal with several serious problems on the Tibetan Plateau at the same time. As the saying goes, "Kill many birds with one stone".



China has designated many areas on the Tibetan Plateau for different environmental protection goals. Local people living in these regions are usually forced to sell their yaks and then resettled somewhere. I haven’t dug into the numbers yet, but it is clear from Xinhua and other official reports that several hundred thousand people, mostly nomads and pastoralists, are being resettled from these “protected” areas. This Science magazine article, for example, talks about government plans for the “ecological migration” of nomadic herders living around Kokonor Lake (Tso Ngon) to restore the region’s “degraded” ecology. The power of scientific and environmental discourse makes these projects sound like noble endeavors. How could anyone oppose protection of wetlands, lakes, and endangered animal species?

There are other benefits of resettling Tibetan herders. The government wants to provide access to education, health, postal system and other development schemes in every corner of the country. Promotion of economic development, especially in politically volatile regions, is an important technique for promoting state legitimacy. The Tibetan herders have been a major problem to state policy makers in this regard. Statistics reflect these people poorly on both economic and human development scales, for which the government receives a lot of criticism, but it is difficult for the government to provide them access to development due to their nomadic and subsistence lifestyle. So settling them in housing colonies is one obvious way of dealing with this problem.

The Tibetan nomadic lifestyle is the heart of the traditional Tibetan economy, which is reliant on herding of yaks, goats and sheep. The nomadic lifestyle represents the symbolic spirit of Tibet to many people. Romantic notions of Tibetan nomadic life are popular not only among Tibetans and Western sympathizers but also among Chinese people. The government could not have settled the nomads by calling their lifestyle “backward” or “primitive”, as it was done in the past. The perfect excuse to do this, thus, is within the context of environmental protection. Rallying support for environmental protection on the Tibetan Plateau is easy. Tibet is known for its “biodiversity hotspots”, pristine lakes, old growth forests, “fragile grasslands”, and for being “China’s Water Tower.” And resettling people from nature reserve parks is not a new idea but a well tested strategy. States around the world have declared many areas inhabited by troublesome indigenous peoples as nature reserves in order to control and assimilate them into the political economy.

The real issue is not about a clash between romantic notions of the Tibetan nomadic lifestyle and state development. It is about choices, whether the herders have a say in the policies that shape their lives. Do the herders have a choice whether to resettle or not? The issue is also about scientific management. Is it scientifically appropriate to remove herders and halt grazing on the Tibetan Plateau? Julia Klein, a scientist who specializes in climate change impact on grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau, says that the ecology of the region “is a system that has evolved with grazing; the removal of grazing from the system could have profound ecological consequences.”

Going back to the topic of “nomad genocide,” I wonder if anyone has actually done some research on the numbers. I can only hope the figures quoted in the Reuters article are inaccurate or exaggerated. I wonder how many people have really been resettled so far, and how many more are yet to be resettled? If any of you readers have any information, please share. Thanks for reading this, and spread the word!

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5.8 billion US$ to displace more Tibetans

I re-subscribed to TIN updates yesterday and this morning I saw their latest news digest in my inbox. The updates were full of grim news: more protests and arrests on the Tibetan Plateau. Yesterday I learned that one of my best friends is unable to enter Kham (Eastern Tibet) from Chengdu. He may have to return to North America and postpone his work related to hospital and school building projects in the region. Authorities have closed off (many parts of) Eastern Tibet to ensure "stability" apparently because "March 10" is around the corner.

There was a different news piece that struck me. It directly relates to the questions I raised in an earlier post. The government has allotted 5.8 billion US$ to displace even more Tibetans in the name of environmental protection. How I wish people paid more attention and probed deeper into these issues. Here's the brief update from TIN:

"Tibetan nomads, farmers may be losers in China's ecology protection plan (Xinhua) More Tibetans are set to be displaced, losing their ancestral land, homes and way of life, as China spends 20 billion yuan (UK4.1 bn; $US5.8 bn; EUR4.5) during its eleventh Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010) to build a State Ecological Safe Shelter Zone on the Tibetan Plateau, reported state-run Xinhua. "Problems such as grassland degradation, land desertification, glacier meltdown, soil erosion etc. are affecting the whole ecological environment in China" because of the deterioration of the environment on the plateau, it said. Three shelter zones will be constructed from 2008 to 2030. The report said measures will include returning grazing land to pastures, controlling rodent and pest damage, standardising construction of five regional nature reserves and rural biogas construction."

On a different note, the High Peaks Pure Earth blog has an interesting story about Angry Tibetan Netizens over continued use animal fur by Tibetans on their ceremonial dresses.

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Tibetan Language Maps of Three Rivers Headwaters region

A kind supporter of Tibetan Plateau donated some photos of Tibetan maps showing Yushu, Nangchen, Drito, Zato, Chumarleb and other areas of SNNR. The maps were published by Tibet Information Network, a reproduction of "བོད་རང་སྐྱོངས་སྲིད་འཛིན་ས་ཁུལ་གྱི་ས་བཀྲ་", a set of nine maps made by the Chinese authorities in 1981. Since Tibetan language maps are quite rare, I hope these will be of interest to many people, especially Tibetan readers.














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Update on SNNR map and related China Beat Blog article

Update: SNNR subarea #7 Zhaling-Eling Hu (མཚོ་སྐྱ་རིང་སྔོ་རིང་)་extends into Dulan County, Haixi Mongolian & Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. This news wasn't too surprising as mentioned in SNNR Map Description that SNNR subarea boundaries cross administrative borders. Map in previous blog entry has been updated. We are working on further improvements.

An excellent article related to SNNR on The China Beat blog by Ken Pomeranz . Here's an excerpt focusing on Tibet's water:

[The] state has chosen a massive three-pronged effort to move water from South to North China – by far the biggest construction project in history, if it is completed. Part of the Eastern section began operating this year, and the Central section is also underway (though the December 31Wall Street Journal reported a delay due to environmental concerns). The big story in the long run, however is the Western line [in SNNR], which will tap the enormous water resources of China’s far Southwest – Tibet alone has over 30 percent of China’s fresh water supply, most of it coming from the annual run-off of some water from Himalayan glaciers. (This is an aspect of the Tibet question one rarely hears about, but rest assured that all the engineers in China’s leadership, including Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, are very much aware of it. Tibetans, meanwhile, not only see a precious resource going elsewhere when their water is tapped: they regard many of the lakes and rivers to be dammed as sacred.) The engineering challenges in this mountainous region are enormous, but so are the potential rewards, both in water supply and in hydropower – the electricity water can generate is directly proportional to how far it falls into the turbines, and the Yangzi, for instance, completes 90 percent of its drop to the sea before it even enters China proper. The risks, as our two stories make clear, are social and political as well as environmental…

Call the two news stories the “double glacier shock.” On December 9, Asia Times Online reported that China was planning to go ahead with a major hydroelectric dam and water diversion scheme on the great bend of the Yarlong Tsangpo River in Tibet. The hydro project is planned to generate 40,000 megawatts – almost twice as much as Three Gorges. But the water which this dam would impound and turn northwards currently flows south into Assam to form the Brahmaputra, which in turn joins the Ganges to form the world’s largest river delta, supplying much of the water to a basin with over 300 million inhabitants. While South Asians have worried for some time that China might divert this river, the Chinese government had denied any such intentions, reportedly doing so again when Hu Jintao visited New Delhi in 2006. But when Indian Prime Minister Singh raised the issue again during his January, 2008 visit to Beijing, the tone had changed, with Wen Jiabao supposedly replying that water scarcity is a threat to the “very survival of the Chinese nation,” and providing no assurances. And so it is – not only for China, but for its neighbors. Most of Asia’s major rivers – the Yellow, the Yangzi, the Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Sutlej, and Indus – draw on the glaciers of the Himalayas, and all of these except the Ganges have their source on the Chinese side of the border. Forty-seven percent of the world’s people, from Karachi to Tianjin, draw on those rivers.
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Mapping Three Rivers Headwaters Nature Reserve (Updated)

In May 2000, China declared the establishment of its largest nature reserve on the Tibetan Plateau: the San Jiang Yuan (Three Rivers Headwaters) National Nature Reserve (SNNR). Since then, China’s plans to protect the headwaters of the Yangtze (Drichu), Yellow (Machu) and Mekong (Zachu) rivers have received a lot of media attention. This recent BBC story, for example, highlights the relocation of '100,000 nomadic Tibetans.' However, there is very little information about the specifics of the plan in all of the published sources that I have come across. There isn't a single definitive map of SNNR. So I collaborated with some colleagues, who wish to remain anonymous, and prepared a new map of SNNR area using information compiled over the last few months. I am pleased to release the map here.

[Click on the image to view/download this (updated: Feb 20, 09) copyright free map]

This map is the most accurate and informative publicly available document of its kind on SNNR to date. It throws new light to the debates about SNNR and other nature reserves on the Tibetan Plateau. We have taken every possible step to ensure its accuracy, including crosschecks between different maps, reviews by experts who work in the region, and consultations with people from this region. Information we are currently doubtful are mentioned in a detailed description that should be used alongside with the map. There are no copyrights to the map, so please feel free to use it for educational purposes. We hope to produce better maps and reports on SNNR both in English and Tibetan languages in the future.

[Counties covered under the Three Rivers Headwaters Region. Maps are copyright free.]

To me, the establishment of SNNR and other nature reserve parks in Tibet raises many questions. According to a Chinese white paper on the environment of Tibet [Autonomous Region (TAR)], the government has established 70 nature reserve parks in the region between 1980 and 2003. The white paper states that 33.4% of TAR’s total land area is covered by nature reserves and that the government will increase the number and size of nature reserves in the region. So the first set of questions, leaving aside the rhetoric of conservation, pertains to the underlying economic and strategic purpose of establishing nature reserves in Tibet. What are the political and economic goals of establishing so many parks in Tibet?

The second set of questions concerns the politics behind scientific discourses of conservation and the relevance of "protected" parks in Tibet. Protection of mountains and grasslands from the nomads and their yaks? The ideas behind nature reserve parks that are applied in Tibet are based on Western ideas and approaches. How appropriate are these in Tibet? Why do governments and scientists continue to treat indigenous perspectives as irrelevant and unsophisticated into the 21st century? After all, these nomads and pastoralists have a proven capacity in maintaining the integrity of their local ecosystem. Their livelihoods depend on it and they have been living there for thousands of years!

I have pointed out elsewhere that the current top-down management approach of exclusion is unfit for nature reserve management in Tibet and developing countries in general. As Dr. Andreas Schild, the Director General of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development has said in a recent interview that “Mountains without mountain people will be not sustainable.” Surely enough, Tibetan nomads and pastoralists who have been uprooted from their ancestral lands and made to live in concrete houses (see photos below) are facing serious economic and social problems that many have chosen to return to their traditional lifestyle.

[San Jiang Yuan resettlement housing blocks]

My final set of questions is about China’s commitment to environmental protection in relation to its development goals. Does the creation of nature reserves with new laws and regulations lead to environmental protection? How strong are China’s environmental laws? It appears that these laws exist mostly on paper and very little in practice. 

The Government has allowed several mining companies to operate in the "protected" area, including a Canadian company in one of the SNNR wetland conservation subarea of Chumarleb (Chu dMar Leb) county. The Three Rivers Headwaters area is also the site for a major river diversion project which involves construction of least three large dams (wall height of the dams are 175 meters, 295m, and 305m!) on the headwaters of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, connected by a series of several hundred kilometres long tunnels through a mountain range that separate the two rivers.

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A Call for Help to Stop Logging in Khyung mChu

Here is an English translation of another Tibetan language blog post related to Tibet's environment. This post is a letter providing news and calling for help to stop the deforestation, which, according to the letter, has been secretly going on for over a decade in Khyung mChu township area of Hongyuan county in North-Western Sichuan's Ngawa Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (see map below). Although posted on the blog of Tibetan writer and singer Jamyang Kyi, the letter is written by a person named Mindruk. Jamyang Kyi says she is merely posting it on her blog as per the author's request.




[begin translation]

Dear Readers:

As everybody knows, protecting the environment is protecting one's own life and prolonging the future livelihood base for humanity. Therefore, we ask how can we protect the earth and how can we ensure future security and benefit existing livelihoods.

However, at the present time, in some places, pristine areas with beautiful hills and forest are being extensively destroyed and harmed for economic benefits. Major environmental pollution and destruction are taking place in the name of regional development and construction of suburbs. For example, in Zangkar [Zangs dKar] area of Kyungchu [Khyung mChu] (Hongyuan) county, tremendous destruction is being done to the land by gold mining activities. The residents of the area repeatedly complained to the government and made every effort to stop the mining. Some local monks even left the area in protest. Their efforts were able to stop the mining activities but only for a brief time.

I wanted to write about this issue for a long time, but I was unable to do so for some time due to other reasons. Zangs dKar is a beautiful region, blessed with ten natural qualities of soil, pristine natural forest with streams flowing down from the rocky mountain, with all kinds of life forms making the place their habitat. One third of the region used to be covered by forests. However, today, mining and logging activities have inflicted irrecoverable environmental damage upon the region. In this region there is a place called Thang Lung, which is rich in natural forests. Though some of the forests are under national level protection, the majority of the forests are under regional level protection. However, local authorities and offices do not have the power to independently cut down the forests.

According to the State Forest Protection Law, logging and other activities in the forests are not allowed unless one obtains necessary permits from the provincial, prefectural and city (local) level offices of the Department of Forest. The law also clearly outlines that consumption of forest resources must be lower than the natural growth rate of the forest. The State Forest Protection Law of the People's Republic of China clearly states that one must undertake verification with concerned local authorities and obtain the permit from the State authority for any kind of activities in the forests. In the last twelve years, large scale deforestation and widespread grassland degradation have taken place. Today, this area is so barren and horrific that people do not dare to catch a glimpse of the site.

According to the testimony of local people, these irrecoverable environmental damages are caused by the local and regional Forest Department offices. Every year, between Spring and Summer seasons, the local forest department undertakes extensive logging activities. They undertake these activities deep in the forest so that the public will not notice their actions. During the festive seasons when many people travel through the area, they halt the logging activities so that public will not know. Moreover, to fool the public, they have intentionally kept the forests near highway and bridges in its natural form. It is clear from their actions they are not in accordance with the law.

The local people and their representatives have repeatedly lodged complaints about the destruction of forests, and requested the authorities to stop these activities. However, authorities have never heeded these calls. This area is rich in old growth forest, it has all kinds of trees like pine, Juniper, fir and so on. Some of the old growth are believed to be over one thousand years old.

Just like scavenging vultures driven by an insatiable desire to eat flesh, they have been destroying the region's ancient forests without the slightest concern for many years. This is a very tragic scene. The place looks like a man without any clothes, standing naked to be humiliated. People believe it is because of this destruction and the resultant imbalance of the four elements that there were disasters like earthquake and landslides in the region. In order to protect Zangs dKar from this kind of continued disaster, I request my kind brothers and sisters, officials and journalists to help save the region from destruction.

Thank you.

From Mindruk, 2009/01/16.

Note: As requested by the writer of the article, I have put it as blog on this site.

[end translation]

Translated by Thinley Norbu of www.ecotibet.org
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Village headman's home attacked

Following is translation of a Tibetan language blog entry about "An incident near Kokonor Lake (News)" that was posted on January 22, 2009. Lake Kokonor is called མཚོ་སྔོན་ (Tso Ngon) in Tibetan. Tso Ngon means Blue Lake. The Chinese also has the same name in their language, which is Qinghai for Blue Lake. Lake Kokonor is the largest lake on the Tibetan Plateau (and in China). Reports indicate that the lake is shrinking due to climate warming, desertification and human encroachment.

[Photo courtesy of Wikipedia]

"An incident near Kokonor Lake (news)"
by Samten la



In recent years, an increasing number of fishermen around Amdo's Lake Kokonor have been catching a lot of fish and occupying pastures around the lake which belong to the region's nomads. So recently, the headman of Mogra village told the fishermen that they cannot fish here anymore and must immediately go away from the region. That night around seven to eight men, carrying different weapons with their faces covered in black cloth, came to the headman's house. Luckily the headman was not home that night. But the masked men severely assaulted the whole family and damaged their motorcycle and car and ran away. Next day on hearing the news, more than a thousand local people gathered and called for the fishing activity to stop immediately and asked them to go back. When a fight was about to break, the police came and arrested the suspects who came to kill the headman and the local nomads went home.

[end]
Translated by Yungdung Nyima of www.ecotibet.org
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