THE LAST NOMADS OF THE TIBETAN PLATEAU - PULITZER BLOG

"I was forced to move here three years ago. Before, I was a nomad. I'm not happy with what has happened", explained Dhakpa to me as we stood on the dusty street corner.  The wind swept through the valley in which we stood, dirt and sand swirling around our feet. Nearby, large piles of refuse started to shuffle at the edges and as the wind picked up speed.

We were standing in the outskirts of the town of Zaduo, a bustling little Tibetan community in the south-east of Qinghai Province, on the border with the Tibetan Autonomous region. Surrounded by mountains and rolling green highland grasslands it was described in my guidebook as 'one of the remote [towns] on the plateau".

Before us lay dusty streets, flanked on either side by a series of one-storey yellow buildings that made up a 'relocation village', built a few years previously to house the new influx of Tibetan nomads from the surrounding grasslands.

Nestled deep in the Sanjiangyuan region of southern Qinghai, the highland grasslands are home to the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong Rivers. In recent decades however the grasslands on the 'roof of the world' have become progressively degraded, many scientists believe as a result of rising temperatures and drying caused by climate change. 

For five thousand years the nomads of the region have roamed these lands, freely moving their flocks of sheep and cattle with the changing seasons. Over the past decade however these people have been moved, often against their will, from the grasslands and into newly constructed towns and villages across the plateau.

In 2000, China's new 'Western Development Strategy' was introduced by central government, aimed at bringing improvements to the poverty stricken west through infrastuctural investment. As part of this strategy, it was deemed necessary to encourage the removal of the nomads of the highland grasslands, in order to protect the important headwaters region. 

"The basic premise of this policy is that a decade of respite from livestock grazing is necessary for degraded grassland to be restored to its natural state, and therefore domestic livestock (and herders) should be moved away", according to Dr. Marc Foggin in his paper 'Depopulating the Tibetan Grasslands', in the journal Mountain Research and Development. "However this premise remains untested at such large scales, and most grassland systems have in fact evolved over time as grazed ecosystems, with either wild or domestic grazers. Now, tens of thousands of families have been asked to move off the grassland and to adopt new livelihoods in farming or to live in new towns. In Qinghai, for example, 35 resettlement communities have already been built and 51 more are under construction. In 2007 a total of 61,899 herdsmen from 13,305 households will be resettled."

To date, it has been estimated that up to 100,000 'ecological migrants' have now been removed from nomadic communities on the grasslands.

Towns such as Zaduo saw an influx of these nomads in the mid to late 2000's causing local government to construct basic 'relocation villages' that would serve as new homes for the recently relocated nomads. Worries have arisen however as these communities have swiftly fallen into disrepair and many of the nomads struggle to find jobs in their new urban surroundings.

"There is nothing to do here except sell caterpillar fungus", explains Dhakpa to us as we wander together through the dusty streets of the relocation village on the outskirts of Zaduo. "This year I sold 600 pieces and earned around 50 yuan (approx. $8) for each. This money has to support me and my family for a year. The fact that the weather is getting warmer here each year isn't good for harvesting caterpillar fungus. If we lose this, what will we do? How will we earn money?"

As we continue to walk around the relocation village, we saw people lingering on street corners and wandering the alleyways that connected the one-storey buildings. Piles of refuse had collected in many areas and the village appeared to have become quite neglected since its creation a few years before.

"I like it here because there are more business opportunities, but I miss the grasslands", said Seldon, a Tibetan store owner who moved to the relocation village two years previously. "There isn't much crime but we worry about the rubbish. Its been like this for over a year. It's the government's responsibility to clean it. We worry about disease."

Other community members express concern about the implications of relocating nomadic people into urban communities. "Life is more convenient now, but I worry that Tibetan culture is disappearing", said one man to us as we stopped for lunch in a sparse restaurant overlooking the main street.

As we look out onto the relocation village, the people wore a mixture of clothing, from very traditional dress, to attire that wouldn't be out of place on the streets of Beijing. There appeared to be a clear trend of modern clothing in the young, to more traditional in the old. It could only be assumed that a slow disappearance of traditional dress was inevitable in the future, as the nomads became increasingly incorporated into modern Chinese urban society.

As we left Zaduo, we followed the one road that lead out of town. Clinging to the side of numerous ravenous valleys, we stopped unexpectedly on encountering a large group of Tibetan men, gathered on the side of the road. Unbeknownst to us, this group of around one hundred men had met for a meeting to talk to local officials. There was tension in the air. The presence of a foreigner was unexpected and not entirely welcome.  

"Okay, we must leave now! These men have come to protect their land", said my guide to me, just as we had sat down in a tent by the side of the road.

"The government gives out permits so that people can mine for gold", explained one of the herders as we quickly sipped our remaining yak milk which we had been given as an obligatory welcome. "Local Tibetans believe that when the gold is mined, the grass is disturbed and it is very bad for the sacred mountains. The locals never try to get the gold from the mountains." These men had gathered to talk with local officials in an effort to try to stop and protect the use of their grasslands as new sites for mining.

The Tibetan Plateau has become the front line for China's new search for heavy metals, in a society that is desperate to exploit its natural resources and continue fuel development.  As a result, mines have appeared across the region, removing minerals such as gold, copper, lithium, lead, iron and coal. One newly discovered multi-metal mine has been touted as having "the potential to be among the world's 50 biggest mines of its kind by deposits', according to state media, generating "an annual product value of 4.5 billion yuan ($712 million) by the end of 2015." The inevitable environmental impacts of this development are leading to concerns from the few remaining nomads who inhabit these lands, hence the impromptu meeting we discovered in this hidden valley high in the mountains.

As my journey came to an end, it had become increasingly difficult to discern the true motivations behind the relocation of the nomads from the grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau. Was it a genuine effort to protect the environment and fragile ecosystems in the region, which were clearly suffering as a result of the real threat of climate change? A way to monitor and restrict nomadic populations to settled communities in a politically volatile region? A method to remove people from a land rich in readily exploitable natural resources? A combination of all of these? 

One thing was certain however, that a traditional way of life that has existed for thousands of years on the highland grasslands of the Tibetan plateau is on the brink of disappearing, perhaps forever.

* Tibetan names have been changed, to protect identity.