<DOC>
[108th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:93221.wais]
DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN TIBETAN AREAS OF CHINA: ARTICULATING CLEAR
GOALS AND ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE RESULTS
=======================================================================
ROUNDTABLE
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 19, 2004
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
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______
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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
House
Senate
JIM LEACH, Iowa, Chairman CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska, Co-Chairman
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming
DAVID DREIER, California SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
FRANK WOLF, Virginia PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
JOE PITTS, Pennsylvania GORDON SMITH, Oregon
SANDER LEVIN, Michigan MAX BAUCUS, Montana
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
DAVID WU, Oregon BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
PAULA DOBRIANSKY, Department of State
GRANT ALDONAS, Department of Commerce
LORNE CRANER, Department of State
JAMES KELLY, Department of State
STEPHEN J. LAW, Department of Labor
John Foarde, Staff Director
David Dorman, Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
STATEMENTS
Miller, Daniel, agricultural officer, U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID), Washington, DC.............. 2
Goldstein, Melvyn, John Reynold Harkness Professor of
Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH... 6
Samen, Arlene M., founder and executive director, One H.E.A.R.T.,
nurse practitioner, Maternal Fetal Medicine Division, School of
Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT............... 9
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Miller, Daniel................................................... 28
Goldstein, Melvyn C.............................................. 31
Samen, Arlene M.................................................. 33
Submissions for the Record
``Poverty Among Tibetan Nomads: Profiles of Poverty and
Strategies for Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development,''
submitted by Daniel Miller..................................... 35
``Development and Change in Rural Tibet,'' by Melvyn C.
Goldstein, Ben Jiao, Cynthia M. Beall, and Phuntsog Tsering,
submitted by Melvyn C. Goldstein............................... 54
DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS IN TIBETAN AREAS OF CHINA: ARTICULATING CLEAR
GOALS AND ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE RESULTS
----------
FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2004
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:30
p.m., in room 2255, Rayburn House Office building, John Foarde
(staff director) presiding.
Also present: David Dorman, deputy staff director; Andrea
Yaffe, Office of Senator Carl Levin; Michael Schiffer, Office
of Senator Dianne Feinstein; Joel McFadden, Office of Senator
Dianne Feinstein; Susan R. Weld, general counsel; Steve
Marshall, senior advisor; Selene Ko, chief counsel for trade
and commercial law; and Carl Minzner, senior counsel.
Mr. Foarde. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is John
Foarde. I am the staff director of the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China. Welcome to the resumption of our issues
roundtable series. We have been away since late October, but
are back today with a very important program.
On behalf of Congressman Jim Leach, our chairman, and
Senator Chuck Hagel, our co-chairman, and all the members of
the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, I would like
to welcome our three panelists and all of you who are in the
audience
attending today.
This is our first roundtable for a while, but we have a
couple coming up which I wanted to alert you to. In one case,
the announcement has gone out already. In another case, it will
be out later this afternoon.
We will be meeting again next week, on Friday, March 26,
from 10 to 11:30 a.m., here in this room, 2255 Rayburn, for a
session on WTO implementation and compliance in the context of
agricultural standards and sanitary and phytosanitary issues.
On April 2, 2004, also a Friday, in this very room at 10:30
a.m., we will meet to examine issues relating to commercial
rule of law development in China, and an announcement will be
going out about that session and the panel later today.
We are here today to examine a very particular set of
issues relating to Tibet. The Tibet problem is a very big issue
for the United States and is something that is always on the
bilateral agenda between our two countries. The Tibet issue has
many dimensions. It has a political dimension, an aid
dimension, a strategic dimension, a cultural dimension. But
today we are interested in looking at the development
dimension, and particularly development projects in the Tibetan
Autonomous Region [TAR] and Tibetan areas of China.
To help us understand what the issues are and the long and
the short of these questions today, we have three extremely
distinguished panelists. All three have long experience in
Tibet. I am going to introduce them briefly, all three of them,
and then say a few words before each of them speaks.
From the U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID],
is Dan Miller. Dan is an old friend of all of us on the
Commission staff and someone from whom we have learned a great
deal about Tibet over the last couple of years since we got
under way.
Our second speaker will be Dr. Melvyn Goldstein from Case
Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Dr. Goldstein's
writings have been very helpful to me, personally, and I think
to a great many of us here on the panel in understanding
Tibetan history, Tibetan culture, and the issues that are
involved in contemporary Tibet.
We are particularly pleased to bring Arlene Samen from One
H.E.A.R.T. here to Washington, which I understand is your home
town, to help us understand health projects and related issues.
So without further ado, let me ask Dan Miller to say a few
words. Dan is currently an agricultural officer with the U.S.
Agency for International Development. He has been working in
Tibetan areas of China for 16 years. He has worked for
international organizations and NGOs in Tibetan areas of China,
including the World Bank, the Canadian International
Development Agency, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the
Nature Conservancy, the Mountain Institute, and the Bridge
Fund.
Dan, Mel, and Arlene, I will say that our rules are
relatively informal, but fairly inflexible. That is, we will
give each of you 10 minutes to speak. After 8 minutes, I will
let you know that you have 2 minutes left. Then when the 10
minutes have elapsed, I will have to ask you to end it there.
Inevitably, there are many points that you want to make
that you do not have time for in your main presentation, and we
will try to come back to those points during the question and
answer session.
After each of you has made a presentation, we will give
everyone here a chance to ask questions for 5 minutes each
until we run out of questions, or until 90 minutes have
elapsed, whichever is first.
So, Dan, please, go ahead.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL MILLER, AGRICULTURAL OFFICER, U.S. AGENCY
FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Foarde.
I am grateful to the Congressional-Executive Commission on
China for giving me the opportunity to speak today. This
roundtable on development projects in the Tibetan areas of
China is a very important topic. I am especially pleased with
the subtitle of this roundtable on articulating clear goals and
achieving sustainable results. As a development specialist, I
believe that development efforts in the Tibetan areas of China,
in order to be successful, need to give much greater attention
to formulating explicit goals and objectives and ensuring that
results are attained and that they are sustained.
In the short time I have to talk, I would like to focus on
agricultural development, and, more specifically, on livestock
development for Tibetan nomads and farmers, which also happens
to be my area of expertise.
In the last 20 years, China has achieved remarkable
agricultural and rural growth, greatly reduced poverty, and
addressed many environment and natural resource degradation
problems. In many of the Tibetan areas, however, broad-based
rural economic growth has not been very significant. Poverty is
still pervasive. However, not all Tibetans are poor. There are
many nomads and some farmers in certain areas, especially where
the environment is more favorable, that would probably not be
considered poor, although social services and access to markets
may still be limited.
To date, most Tibetan farmers and nomads have not
participated fully in the assessment, planning, and
implementation of development programs and the policies that
affect their lives. Government development programs have
generally taken a top-down approach and, despite many of their
good intentions, have often been hampered because Tibetan
farmers and nomads were not involved in both the design and
implementation of activities. Many of the government's efforts
have also been not as effective because of faulty assumptions
that have been made about poverty and Tibetans' traditional
agricultural and livestock production practices.
I have been amazed at the transformations that have been
taking place in the Tibetan areas just in the last few years.
In the nomad areas, nomads are being settled down. Range lands
are being privatized and fenced. There has been incredible
infrastructural development that has taken place in prefectural
and county towns, even in the nomad areas. The Tibetan areas
are certainly a dynamic development environment, but how much
the Tibetan farmers and nomads are benefiting from these
developments still needs much better analysis.
Rural development experience internationally and elsewhere
in China demonstrates the benefits of adopting an integrated
approach to rural development and to attacking poverty, an
approach that involves both social and economic development, as
well as environment management. An emphasis on economic growth
within a community-based integrated development project or
model has the greatest promise for a multiplier effect in
reducing poverty in Tibetan areas and improving the lives of
Tibetans.
Reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development
requires expanding the income base for Tibetans. Because much
of agriculture is dependent on livestock, improvements in
livestock production and animal husbandry practices hold the
potential for stimulating economic growth. Yet when you look at
the types of development projects that are being implemented by
many American-based NGOs in Tibetan areas, there is
surprisingly little attention being paid to livestock
development, or at least not in a strategic manner focusing on
improving production and income.
In my opinion, the key issues for sustainable development
in the Tibetan pastoral areas are widespread poverty, range
land degradation, unsustainable livestock production practices,
poor market development, weak community participation, and lack
of integration in addressing all of these problems. The
development challenge now is determining how to target funding
better to address these issues and to ensure that resources
allocated for development and poverty reduction actually
reaches the Tibetan farmers and nomads.
I would now like to go back to the subtitle of this
roundtable, articulating clear goals and achieving sustainable
results. Having been involved in rural development for many
years, I firmly believe that clear objectives and strong
commitment is what drives successful projects. There are
numerous U.S.-based NGOs working in Tibetan areas of China, a
number of them with funding from the U.S. Government--the
American NGOs, that is. NGOs are widely perceived by the public
as more effective than larger donors at reaching local people.
Typically, NGOs operate small-scale community-based projects.
While building schools and health clinics are certainly
beneficial to the Tibetan people, real economic growth is not
going to take place without addressing the agriculture and
livestock sectors.
Having worked with both NGOs and larger multilateral and
bilateral development organizations, I believe that the
development planning process that many of the larger
development organizations embrace, which are tools and
procedures such as results-based management and logical
frameworks, are a very valuable tool and could help NGOs
working in Tibet to be more strategic and effective in their
work. These tools provide a logical, step-wise framework for
designing development projects and for organizing the
implementation of activities and for reporting on results.
For development to be effective, what is important is that
the proper analysis is carried out, and this also includes
adopting a participatory approach so that the local people are
involved; that outputs and activities for projects are clearly
defined; that performance indicators are spelled out; and that
monitoring and evaluation systems are designed.
Roles and responsibilities of the different actors in
development also need to be defined and a work plan schedule
developed. Since funding is often limited, development
organizations also need to focus on those activities that will
provide the greatest return on investment, which often means
that economic analysis and cost benefit analysis is going to be
necessary.
Evaluation of project performance in order to judge its
effectiveness is also critical, especially if U.S. taxpayer
money is being used.
The U.S. Government agency that I work for, USAID, has
considerable experience and lessons learned about pastoral
development that I think is relevant to Tibetan nomadic areas.
For example, USAID's Global Livestock Collaborative Research
Support Program has worked with pastoralists in South America,
East Africa, and Central Asia. Many of the approaches from
these activities could be applied to Tibet. USAID has also been
involved with nomads in Mongolia, working with Mongolian
herders to form herder groups and to develop range land
management plans, and working with them to improve the business
of herding. Many of these activities are also relevant to
development in Tibetan areas. Many other bilateral and
multilateral organizations have range livestock development
projects in the Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Xinjiang parts of
China, and there are also valuable lessons learned from these
projects on organizing pastoral development in Tibetan areas.
I think that American NGOs and other organizations would be
wise to learn about these activities and to see how they can
adapt many of these lessons learned and the experiences to
working with Tibetans.
The crucial problem now facing agriculture and livestock
development in Tibetan areas appears to be organizational and
behavioral rather than technical. Therefore, analysis of the
socioeconomic processes at work are a key challenge.
To conclude, let me say that the challenges facing
development in Tibetan areas are considerable. Opportunities do
exist, however, for improving the livelihoods of Tibetans. With
an area almost three times the size of Texas, there is room for
many more American organizations and American people to be
working in Tibetan areas.
Different groups bring diverse ideas, approaches, and
expertise, which is beneficial. However, more attention will
need to be given to making sure development efforts articulate
clear goals, define their objectives and outputs, and that the
impacts are measurable. There are no simple solutions.
Activities will need to be undertaken at many levels, including
at the central policy level, at the university and research
level, at the county and township level, and at the nomad and
farmer level. Promoting more sustainable development will also
require policies and approaches that integrate ecological
principles regulating ecosystem functions with the economic
principles governing agricultural and livestock production and
general economic development processes.
If this guidance is followed and if more financial
resources can be directed to Tibetan areas, Tibetan livelihoods
can improve, while sustaining one of the world's most
significant ecosystems and a rich cultural heritage.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Miller appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Foarde. Dan, thank you very much. You are remarkably
disciplined, since the buzzer was just about to sound. So,
congratulations.
We would like to go, next, to Professor Goldstein. Melvyn
C. Goldstein is the John Reynold Harkness Professor of
Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland,
OH. He also directs the University's Center for Research on
Tibet.
Dr. Goldstein is currently conducting research in Tibet and
Mongolia. His earlier research has focused on Tibetan refugees
in India, nomads in Mongolia, and cultural ecology in the
Himalayas and Tibet.
He has authored or co-authored more than 80 articles and
books on Tibet, and he has not been here in Washington in far
too long. Welcome, Mel Goldstein. Thank you very much.
STATEMENT OF MELVYN C. GOLDSTEIN, JOHN REYNOLD HARKNESS
PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY AND
DIRECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY'S CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON TIBET,
CLEVELAND, OH
Mr. Goldstein. Thanks very much, Mr. Foarde.
Rural Tibet has experienced a dramatic change in the past
25 years. Around 1980, the system of communal production in
Tibet was replaced by the current quasi-market system called
the ``Responsibility System.'' In almost all areas, the
commune's land and animals were divided among its members on a
one-time basis. All individuals alive on the day of division
got an equal share, but
anyone born after that did not get anything. From then on, the
household became the basic unit of production, as it had been
in traditional Tibet, and a new economic era began.
Although I am sure you all have heard or read depictions of
Tibet as exceptionally impoverished, and to an extent it
certainly is, it is also clear that in the two decades since
1980 the standard of living in rural Tibet has improved a great
deal. Tibet has a long way to go, but it is important to
understand how far it has come and what problems it faces
moving forward.
Much of what I am going to say is based on my own
longitudinal research in rural Tibet that began in 1986, and in
particular from a large field study of 13 farming villages in 3
counties that began in 1998.
On the positive side, almost all the rural farmers we
studied had a favorable opinion of the Responsibility System.
Ninety-four percent indicated that their livelihood improved
since the de-collectivization in 1980. Seventy-seven percent
said they produced enough barley for their family's food needs,
and 67 percent said that they had one or more years worth of
barley stored in reserve.
Similarly, the three main high-quality or luxury
traditional foods, locally brewed barley beer, butter, and
meat, were all widely consumed. Three-quarters of the
households said they now make and drink beer regularly rather
than just on special occasions, and the majority of families
reported that they ate meat or fat either daily or several
times a week. Ninety-one percent reported that they drank
butter tea every day.
What accounts for these gains? First and foremost, there is
a new economic framework that allowed households to keep the
fruits of their labor. In farming, this allowed households to
intensify the care with which they planted their own fields and
resulted in most households quickly experiencing increases in
production. These increased yields were further amplified by
the government's new policy of exempting rural Tibetans from
taxes.
This effect was even more impressive with respect to
domestic animals, which increased 82 percent since de-
collectivization, and more if I had counted chickens and pigs.
Moreover, the milking animals that provide the essential milk
that every rural household needs to make butter for Tibetan tea
have increased an amazing 668 percent in these 20 years.
Finally, the new economic structure also has allowed an
encouraged rural households to engage in non-farm income-
generating
activities, and, as we shall see, many have done so.
But I do not want to paint an overly rosy view of rural
Tibet. Despite these improvements, Tibetans clearly have a long
way to go vis-a-vis inland China. For example, as of 2002, none
of the 13 villages we studied had running water in houses, and
only the village immediately adjacent to a county seat had a
water tap and electricity. None of the areas had improved dirt
roads, let alone paved roads.
Critically, there is still a great deal of rural poverty.
Despite starting equally in 1980, 14 percent of households were
poor, in the sense that they did not have enough grain, either
from their own fields, or bought through earned income, and
another 28 percent of households were having a difficult time
meeting their basic subsistence needs. Moreover, in the poorest
areas we studied, about 30 percent of the households were poor,
as I defined it. Thus, while progress in rural Tibet in some
ways has been impressive, many families have faltered and are
in dire need of assistance.
The situation in Tibet, however, is not static and there
are fundamental changes going on that need to be mentioned,
since these raise serious questions about whether the overall
increases of the past 20 years can be sustained, let alone
improved, over, say, the next 20 years.
First, and more critical, is a serious decline in per
capita land holdings. As a result of population growth and
fixed land size, there has been an average decline of 20
percent in per capita land holdings, and this decline does not
take into account land lost to home building sites, floods,
roads, et cetera. Since Tibet's rural population will continue
to grow in the next decade, this process of
decline will continue.
Second, the cost of living is increasing. In addition to
general inflation, the price of key products, such as chemical
fertilizers, has increased substantially, while at the same
time there has been a decrease in government subsidies and an
increase in local taxes. This combination is also likely to be
exacerbated in the years ahead.
Compensating for this by trying to increase yields will not
be easy because farmers are already using high levels of
chemical fertilizers and improved seeds.
Similarly, it is unlikely that the value of Tibetan crops
will increase and compensate for the changes. The market for
Tibetan crops is limited and declining. Tibetan barley and
wheat have no export potential outside of Tibet because the
Chinese do not eat barley, and find Tibetan wheat too coarse.
Even in Tibet, the increasing consumption by Tibetans of rice,
vegetables and imported white flour means that they are
consuming less barley and Tibetan wheat, and this trajectory is
also likely to increase.
Tibetan farmers are acutely aware of these changes and
challenges and they are trying to compensate in a variety of
ways. For example, by contracting traditional fraternal
polyandrous marriages in which two or more brothers take a
wife, since this concentrates labor in the household and avoids
dividing the land
between the brothers. They are also increasingly using
contraception to have fewer children, and, most critically, are
actively taking steps to secure non-farm income.
It is clear to rural villagers and their leaders that,
without a source of non-farm income, households cannot move
from basic subsistence to a good standard of living. In the
future, it may not even be possible for households that are now
self-sufficient from their fields to remain so if they do not
have some modicum of non-farm income.
Not surprisingly, in 1988, 44 percent of males between ages
20 and 34 were engaged in migrant labor for part of the year,
and 49 percent of all households had at least one member so
engaged. Most of these worked as manual laborers on
construction projects. Moreover, it is significant to note that
only 24 percent of households in the poorest areas were engaged
in non-farm labor.
With respect to such work, we found widespread frustration
and anger in the villages about the difficulties villagers face
in finding jobs. Villagers commonly complained that there are
not enough jobs for them and that, because their skill levels
are low, most of the jobs they find pay poorly. The villagers
overwhelmingly lay the blame for this on the unrestricted
influx of non-Tibetan migrant
laborers.
Rural Tibetans now find themselves in competition for
construction jobs with large numbers of more skilled and
experienced Chinese workers, and given the current policy, this
competition will certainly increase. How Tibetans will fare in
the future, therefore, is less clear. There are some positive
signs, but it is hard to be very optimistic. What is really
needed is a change in government policy that will give much
greater priority to securing jobs for Tibetans, perhaps through
a large-scale system of set-aside contracts for them over some
period of time.
However, if the current policy continues, rural Tibetans
will have to compete as best they can, and it is here that
outside development organizations can, and should, play a
helpful role. There are many things that rural communities
need, but I believe that the greatest impact will come from
those programs that address what rural Tibetans themselves
primarily want and need, namely, assistance in generating non-
farm income. Whether the life of rural Tibetans will improve in
the next decade depends on many complicated factors occurring
at the macro level. But it is clear to me that foreign
development programs can make a useful difference in the lives
of rural Tibetans, although, given the economic and political
problems in Tibet, it will not be easy.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Goldstein appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Foarde. You have given us lots of good ideas to think
about and to come back to you in the question and answer
session. Thank you very much.
We would like to continue now with Ms. Arlene Samen. Arlene
is the founder and executive director of One H.E.A.R.T, the
latter acronym standing for Health, Education, and Research,
Tibet. She is a nurse practitioner in Maternal-Fetal Medicine
at the University of Utah.
Arlene has worked with international health projects since
1985 and has spent the last 6 years in Tibet establishing a
midwife training and community-based life-saving skills program
in Medrogongkar County, near Lhasa.
Arlene, welcome back to Washington, your home. Thank you
for being here.
STATEMENT OF ARLENE SAMEN, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ONE
H.E.A.R.T. AND A NURSE PRACTITIONER IN MATERNAL-FETAL MEDICINE
DIVISION, SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH, SALT LAKE
CITY, UT
Ms. Samen. Tashi delek. I would like to thank the CECC for
inviting me to share with you One H.E.A.R.T.'s work in Tibet.
Last October, while working at 15,000 feet in Medrogongkar
County, I was suddenly called to help a pregnant woman in a
remote village. She had been in labor for 4 long days. I found
her alone in a cold, dark shed while her family huddled around
a warm fire in the kitchen. Four hours later, the exhausted
woman delivered a healthy baby boy into my bare hands. In the
same county, this scene is repeated daily. Tragically, just a
few days earlier, another young woman bled to death during
childbirth.
Like other cultures, a Tibetan mother's death is
devastating to her family, for it often threatens the health of
her children and impacts the family for generations. The mother
is the thread that holds the family together. When a Tibetan
mother dies, her surviving children are 3 to 10 times more
likely to die within 2 years. When a Tibetan mother dies, her
surviving children are more likely to die young, and less
likely to attend school or complete their education.
Many Tibetans believe that a mother's death during
childbirth is ominous, a sign of bad spirits that bring
misfortune to her family and her community. Saving the lives of
Tibetan women and their children is of the utmost urgency for
the survival of the Tibetan culture. One H.E.A.R.T.'s mission
is to work with Tibetans to improve the circumstances of
childbirth and maternal and newborn survival on the Tibetan
Plateau.
Tibetan society is one of the few in the world in which
there is no tradition of trained midwives who facilitate the
delivery process. Poor nutrition and the lack of trained health
personnel and emergency services combine to place Tibetan women
and infants at high risk for labor-related deaths. The vast
majority of births take place at high altitude in a cold
environment and without access to electricity or health care.
In spite of active campaigns by the Chinese Government to
encourage women to deliver in a medical facility, more than 85
percent of Tibetan women deliver at home. Most
babies are delivered with only the help of the mother or the
mother-in-law of the pregnant woman, and their only assistance
is the cutting of the cord. Amazingly, many Tibetan women
deliver their babies completely alone.
It is believed that Tibet has one of the highest newborn
and infant mortality rates in the world. Tibetan women are 300
times more likely to die than American women from various
pregnancy and delivery complications. Post-partum hemorrhage is
the leading cause of death. Likewise, babies are far more
likely to die in Tibet than anywhere else in the world. We
believe that most of these deaths are preventable with minimal
technology and simple interventions.
In 1998, a group of maternal and child experts founded One
H.E.A.R.T. in an effort to address maternal and newborn death
in Tibet. We are a 501(c)(3) organization based in the Maternal
Fetal Medicine Division of the University of Utah's School of
Medicine.
In the summer of 2000, One H.E.A.R.T., in collaboration
with the Trace Foundation and the Netherlands Red Cross,
provided the first skilled birth attendant course in Lhasa
Prefecture. Since that time, we have focused our attention on
Medrogongkar County. According to the Lhasa Health Bureau
records, Medrogongkar County has the highest reported maternal
and newborn death rates in the Lhasa Prefecture. An estimated
75 percent of stillbirths and 30 to 40 percent of infant deaths
can be avoided with adequate nutrition, prenatal and skilled
delivery, and post-delivery care for mothers. Medrogongkar,
because of its close proximity to Lhasa, provides an ideal
setting for training, monitoring, and evaluating these
outcomes.
Our midwifery course is now an annual event and is being
taught entirely by our Tibetan colleagues with clinical
supervision by Carolyn Bell, a midwifery specialist. Our close
working relationship with our Tibetan staff and partners and
the Chinese health officials is helping to build a successful
and sustainable infrastructure.
In January 2000, the University of Utah received a 5-year
grant from the NIH NICHD. Under the guidance of principal
investigators Dr. Michael Varner and Dr. Suellen Miller, and
anthropologists Dr. Vincanne Adam and Dr. Sienna Craig, we
developed the infrastructure for clinical research in Tibet and
are now preparing to conduct clinical trials of centuries-old
Tibetan medicine. Tibetans believe that this traditional
medicine may help to prevent post-partum hemorrhage.
We are also conducting ethnographic surveys which have been
extremely valuable for both this research project and our
midwife training programs. Hundreds of village women have been
interviewed about their cultural beliefs about childbirth. One
H.E.A.R.T. works within these Tibetan cultural beliefs and
practices in not only identifying those behaviors that may be
harmful, but also determining which beliefs and practices can
help us to develop and implement culturally appropriate and
sensitive health care interventions.
In 2002, One H.E.A.R.T. formed a committee of foreign and
Tibetan experts to address the difficult health problems facing
the Tibetan families surrounding childbirth. The team includes
physicians, midwives, and doctors from the Tibetan traditional
medicine hospital in Mentzikhang, and the biomedical hospitals
in Lhasa, as well as representatives from the Ministry of
Health. The team
discussed new ways to focus its collective expertise in a
capacity-building effort in the TAR. Out of this group, the
Curriculum and Research Development Committee was formed and
they have taken a leadership role in directing these efforts,
helping to develop research protocols for designing and
teaching curriculums. One H.E.A.R.T.'s work with this committee
is ongoing and, as time and training progresses, we anticipate
that the Tibetans will assume more and more responsibility for
these programs.
During the fall of 2002, One H.E.A.R.T. gained permission
from the Lhasa Health Bureau to review and analyze death
records for infants and children in Medrogongkar County. It is
clear that there are significant challenges even collecting
maternal and child health data in such remote and inaccessible
villages as those found in Tibet. The results confirmed
previous observations and also highlighted the main causes of
death. The single main cause of death in Tibetan children is
death related to childbirth. From 1997 to 2002, 154 of the 339
deaths occurred on the day of birth and were charted as
``breathlessness.'' Subsequently, Drs. Bernhard Fassl and Reini
Jensen interviewed over 90 families who had one or more babies
die at birth. This data helped us to analyze the causes of
newborn breathlessness and stillbirth, and understand the
causes and events that led to these deaths. The three main
causes of breathlessness appear to be absence of trained birth
attendants, inadequate management of babies who are not
breathing, and insufficient protection from hypothermia.
Along with our Tibetan partners from the Health Bureau, One
H.E.A.R.T. is developing interventions that are both culturally
acceptable and self-sustainable, and we are implementing them
in our training programs and public health outreach messages.
In April of this year, through funding from the Citizen
Exchange Program of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of
Education and Cultural Affairs and One H.E.A.R.T., six Tibetan
doctors and health workers are coming to the United States for
a 1-month medical training. This experience not only develops
their medical skills, but, upon their return to Tibet, they can
pass on this information to their fellow health workers.
As you can see, we face many challenges in the Tibet
autonomous region. At times, our task seems daunting. However,
with the passionate commitment of our staff and volunteers, and
with the continued funding from the U.S. Government, private
corporations, foundations, and individual donors, One
H.E.A.R.T. is making a difference in Tibet one birth at a time.
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Samen appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Foarde. Thank you very much, Arlene, for an extremely
interesting presentation.
I am going to let our three speakers catch their breath for
just a moment before we go to the question and answer session
and just remind the members of the audience that you can find
the written statements from each of our panelists on our
website at www.cecc.gov. In a few weeks, we will have the full
transcript of today's session up on the website, and you can
also find the complete transcripts and statements from
previous, and future, roundtables and hearings on our site as
well.
Let us move, then, to our question and answer session.
Normally, we give each of the staff panelists up here 5 minutes
to ask a question and hear the answer, and then we will move on
to the next person until we have gone through at least a round
or two, or until 4 o'clock comes, whichever comes first. You
all were so remarkably disciplined that we will have plenty of
time for this part of the program, which I think is the most
interesting and most important.
So, let me get started. I know that we are going to have a
question or two about what the United States has been doing in
development programs in Tibet, but I wanted to preempt just a
little bit and see, beginning with Dan Miller, if you would not
comment a little bit on what other countries are doing. I think
all of you have had experience either cooperating with other
countries outside the United States on development projects in
Tibet or evaluating or seeing them. So, if you would offer some
comments on the level of effort, whether they are evaluating
themselves in the types of ways that you thought U.S. programs
should, et cetera, I think that would be very useful for us.
Mr. Miller. Yes. I know specifically that the Canadian
International Development Agency [CIDA] has a project in the
Tibet Autonomous Region, because I was involved in the
preparation of that project, which is a rural development
program focusing on agriculture and livestock, as well as some
health activities. In terms of financial commitment, I am not
certain. Maybe it is on the order of $1 or $2 million U.S.
dollars. But, again, having gone through this preparation with
CIDA, their standard procedure for a results-based management
type of approach, an integrated approach, is fairly narrowly
focused in just a couple of areas.
I am aware that the New Zealand Government has been working
in Tibetan areas in northwestern Yunnan Province; the
Australian Government in the TAR, with health and drinking
water, and also in western Sichuan Province Tibetan areas.
Those are some of the larger bilateral projects that I am aware
of.
Mr. Foarde. How do they compare in dollar amounts, roughly,
to what the United States is doing?
Mr. Miller. Probably about the same. I mean, if you look at
their entire program, probably about the same as ours. New
Zealand, probably much less. I think right now we are going to
be at about, this next year, close to $3 million or so. So,
roughly the same.
Mr. Foarde. Mel, any comment on that question?
Mr. Goldstein. I really do not. I do not have that much to
add to it. I should say that I have found that what Dan said is
exactly right. We need more evaluation built into these funding
programs. I worked for the EU once in Qinghai Province and I
could not even get permission to distribute my own report
because it was classified. The people who wanted it had to
contact the EU to get permission.
Mr. Foarde. Could we clarify, classified by the EU, by the
Chinese, or both?
Mr. Goldstein The EU.
Mr. Foarde. By the EU.
Mr. Goldstein Yes.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you.
Mr. Goldstein Too sensitive, all of these. Although I do
not think it was. The point is that as an academic, it was not
available. If I wanted to study what is being done in
development in Tibet, it is not published. Whatever evaluations
are done are done in-house, there is no way to get access.
There are no outside groups who have been hired to examine
these projects. So, it is hard to know if they are effective or
just pushing money through.
I think what Dan says, that the United States should try to
take a more innovative role and set aside a small part of these
millions of dollars for independent people to go out and
systematically evaluate efficacy. That would be a useful step
forward, I think, for all of development in Tibet.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you.
Arlene, comments?
Ms. Samen. I would agree with both Dan and Mel. The United
States has, I think, given relatively low amounts of money
compared to others. The AUSAID, who are coming in, I have
heard, somewhere between 7 and 17 million Australian dollars.
There has not been a lot of collaboration between them and
NGOs. I think that if there were more collaboration and more
systems set up for infrastructure and evaluation, that that
could be extremely helpful, because there is no way to
evaluate, really, what has been done.
In my particular area, in maternal health, we hear that
WHO, UNICEF, etc., have come in, but you cannot find anything
that they have done, or who to talk to, or how you can work
with them. I think that would be very useful.
Mr. Foarde. Very useful comments for me.
Since there are so many of our staff colleagues that wish
to ask questions, I am going to pass the baton on to my friend
and
colleague, Dave Dorman, who is the deputy staff director of the
Commission staff, and represents Senator Chuck Hagel, our co-
chairman.
David.
Mr. Dorman. First, I would like to say thank you to each of
you for coming today and sharing your insights, your knowledge,
and experience with the Commission on this very important
topic.
I would like to just take 30 seconds to say that I have
just learned that Dan Miller has accepted a 1-year assignment
for USAID in Afghanistan running its agricultural programs. So,
I know I speak on behalf of Senator Hagel and probably all of
our commissioners when I say thank you for taking that very
difficult and very important assignment.
I have three very quick questions; one for each of the
panelists.
Dan, just a point of clarification. In your written
statement, and also your testimony, you mentioned that the top-
down approach of many well-intentioned government programs
impacts the success level. Later in your statement you
mentioned that low community participation also impacts
success.
Are those two related? Are these two different problems or
is the top-down approach generating low community involvement?
Mr. Miller. In many ways they are two different problems,
but they are related. Not only in Tibet itself, but throughout
much of China, the government in many places takes a sense of,
``this is what needs to be done for poor farmers and for poor
herders,'' with their hearts in the right place, trying to
help, but a very top-down type of approach. On the other hand,
you also have very limited participation by the local people in
making sure that their ideas, their needs, and their interests
are being reflected in development projects. So, it is two
separate problems, but they are very related.
Mr. Dorman. Professor Goldstein, you mentioned in your
statement that one of the things that we should all be seeking
to find a way to generate non-farm income. I was wondering, and
I suspect this is probably a question that cannot be answered
easily, if you could help us understand the relationship, if
there is one--I suspect there is one--between finding ways to
generate non-farm income, and not impacting the unique
lifestyle and cultural identity of nomads and farmers.
Mr. Goldstein Well, I was talking primarily about farmers.
Nomads, in some ways, are easier because they produce products
that are more valuable. Farmers do not, so they need non-farm
income.
Although 60 percent of families had increases and a better
life now than they had in the past, they are worried about
their children and whether their children will have a better
life than they have, and how to get that. Given the options as
I laid out, then they see the only realistic one for them is to
find sources of non-farm income.
So some families that are better off buy trucks, some of
them try to get into business, some have their kids learn
carpentry because there is more income in that. Others just try
to find jobs for their younger boys, and now girls, just
working on road gangs and construction.
Yes, it is changing life in Tibet. I am working on a paper
right now showing how this is changing the organization and
leadership in families since the younger generation is the only
one who can deal with the new world. The forces that are in
play in China now are changing the social system. These changes
do not make them less Tibetan, I think, any more than we are
less American than we were in 1930. They are adapting the same
way we in the United States have adapted to new situations, and
are continuing to adapt now.
Mr. Dorman. Good. Thank you.
One quick question for you, Arlene. You mention in your
statement that, despite government efforts, over 85 percent of
Tibetan women deliver outside of a medical facility. To what
extent is that due to lack of access to medical facilities as
opposed to just traditional preferences?
Ms. Samen. Well, I think it is multi-level. One, there are
a lot of cultural beliefs behind why women deliver at home.
There is a belief that childbirth itself is polluted, so they
typically birth outside of the kitchen area, either in a shed,
or in the barn, or even sometimes in a tent just so the rest of
the household does not become polluted. So the concept of going
to a facility to deliver is a little new to them. I think,
through community outreach, they are getting pushed to do that
because the government campaign has a new system where they
give 20 RMB to the woman if she comes to the facility, and 10
to the person that brings her.
There is still resistance because of their cultural
beliefs, and then there are also transportation issues, and
then issues around reimbursement. Many families cannot afford
to go deliver in a facility. There is a new cooperative medical
system in place now in the TAR, at least. If they do not know
how to use that system, then if they do not go through the
right avenues, they may end up at the Menzikhan, but if they
did not have a referral to actually go there, they do not get
reimbursed. So it is a little bit complicated, and we are
working with the Health Bureau to better understand where we
can focus attention to get people to use the facilities, and
even to think is it appropriate for us to refer them?
Mr. Dorman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Foarde. Useful questions and useful answers.
Let us move on, now. I would like to recognize our friend
and colleague, Michael Schiffer, who represents Senator Dianne
Feinstein of California. Senator Feinstein has been a stalwart
in U.S.-China relations on Capitol Hill for many years, and
particularly Tibetan issues. So we are particularly delighted
to have Michael and his colleague, Joel McFadden, here with us
this afternoon.
Michael.
Mr. Schiffer. Thank you. Let me just start off by joining
my colleagues and thanking you for participating in this
roundtable today.
If I could start with a first question, I will address at
least the first part of it to Dan. You mention in your comments
that Tibetan farmers and nomads are not fully engaged in the
design and implementation of the poverty alleviation programs.
As you know, the Tibetan Policy Act has some guidelines that
were intended to make sure that the U.S. Government's systems
benefit the Tibetan people. How are those guidelines being
incorporated into USAID's work?
I guess, a related question for Mel and Arlene is, on your
end of things as you work with USAID, how do you see those
guidelines and principles incorporated into the work that the
USAID is pushing?
Mr. Miller. Yes. As I had mentioned, Tibetan farmers and
herders have not been fully engaged in the process of planning
and development. With USAID, in terms of trying to develop a
program where we would be supporting American-based NGOs to
undertake activities, USAID staff undertook a trip out to
Tibetan areas last summer, where we met with Tibetans at many
levels, trying to better understand the problems and needs that
they were having and things that they thought could be done.
Certainly, as part of our process for soliciting proposals,
it will be necessary for those American groups, when they plan
their projects, to make sure that they are involving local
Tibetans in the planning process and in the implementation
period when projects are being undertaken, and that the Tibetan
language is being used whenever possible.
Mr. Schiffer. I do not know if you have any comment.
Ms. Samen. Right now, my project does not have any USAID
funds. We do have NIH funds. I think, if we were to apply for
funding to help us with this maternal health project, I agree
with Dan, it would be very useful for us to keep the Tibetans
in that loop. What I have seen is a lot of different NGOs come
in and try to mandate or change the system. The way that it is
really going to work and be an infrastructure there is to
listen to what the Tibetans feel are their needs and to work
within that context.
Mr. Goldstein I would just like to make a brief comment. I
do not work with USAID or any government agencies, per se. But
I think we have to keep in mind here that Tibet is a real
place. We are not talking about Washington, DC, or Maryland, we
are talking about China, the People's Republic of China. Most
of the people who are in government, the leaders, are all
Communist Party members. You cannot just go in and convince 10
farmers to do something without the permission of their
leaders.
That does not mean that they are unreasonable or that it
cannot be done. It absolutely can. So I think, as we think of
how to use U.S. Government funding in Tibet, the common people
have to be involved in it, but we also have to make a real
effort to work with all those communists, because that is who
runs the country. I think it can be done and I think there
would be no problem, and the interests of Tibetans would
benefit from it.
Mr. Miller. If I could just add to that. Having worked in a
number of other areas of China, such as Xinjiang, Inner
Mongolia, and Gansu, with minority people in those areas,
working on projects, yes, wherever possible you have to be
working with the government officials. Oftentimes, they are the
Communist Party members.
But things are changing in Tibet and throughout China,
including the Tibetan areas. People are becoming more aware of
the need for participatory approaches and to be involving local
people in the local level type of planning.
You have to remember that, really, this kind of development
activity only started 10, 15 years ago, and so these areas in
western China are slow to catch up. But people are now starting
to be aware of it and it is starting to be reflected in many
areas in the west. It is an education process as well and it is
going to take some time, but there are some encouraging signs.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you, Michael.
Let us go on and give Joel McFadden a chance to ask a
question, if you have got one.
Mr. McFadden. Please.
Mr. Foarde. Go ahead. Sure.
Mr. McFadden. Thank you all for coming today. I have a
couple of questions here. One, is for Dr. Goldstein. I wanted
to follow up on this discussion about generating non-farming
income. My question was, you mentioned that some 44 percent of
families have somebody involved as migrant laborers. How many
of these migrant workers are actually staying within Tibet and
how many are actually moving to some of the eastern Chinese
cities, such as Shanghai and Beijing? To what extent is that
helping their families?
Mr. Goldstein Yes, that is an excellent question. In fact,
one of the real problems that Tibet has faced is that they
cannot go as migrant laborers anywhere else because none of
them speak Chinese. There were no Chinese in any of the
villages I studied, and virtually nobody knew Chinese. Some of
the kids near a county seat knew some Chinese. So basically,
not only can they not go out to Shanghai and work, but even if
there is a Chinese firm where it would be needed to speak
Chinese to get a better job, they probably could not. That is a
real problem.
It was 44 percent of all the males between a certain age,
so that a lot of them are going out because they need the
income. Income can be generated not just from road gangs, it
could be from small businesses, handicrafts, any intelligent,
thinking projects. Projects do not need to be millions of
dollars.
They could involve $20,000 in a local area that could
generate some skills or something that could have a tremendous
impact, and I think that is where we ought to look at USAID to
find the right programs and have a broader spectrum of people
competing, and then evaluate them.
Mr. McFadden. I had a question for Ms. Samen, real quick.
What sort of cooperation obstacles have you encountered in your
work in Tibet from the local governments specifically? Are
there areas where you would like to have more cooperation in a
specific area where you have found obstacles in working with
them, whether it is the TAR, the local health departments, or
those sorts of folks?
Ms. Samen. When we first came in we were one of the few
projects that actually brought U.S. Government funding in.
Initially, we went in with some NIH funds. As you know, NIH is
very research-oriented. Just the word ``research'' to them
brought up lots of suspicion, and the fact that we were going
out to do ethnographic surveys around childbirth. So once we
both understood that research to us and research to them meant
two different things--actually, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was
very helpful. There is a Chinese woman there that works in
research and she was very helpful in helping us translate
documents. Then we started off on a better foot.
Now, we have a really excellent relationship with the local
health bureau and the regional health bureau. We have this
committee that we developed and we meet on a regular basis. If
we think something is sensitive, we go to them and ask them how
best to handle this. We have an excellent relationship now.
The director of the health bureau will be coming to Utah
next month and meeting with people from our State Health
Bureau. I think, as long as we stay really focused on maternal
and newborn outcomes and around medical education, it is great.
If we started to veer off and get our noses in different
directions, I think we would run into more problems. But as the
obstacles have come up, we have sat down and talked about them.
I think they know our motivation is pretty pure. Right now, I
think they pretty much would let us do anything because we have
gained their respect, and we certainly respect them. You cannot
work there without having a relationship with the local
government.
Mr. McFadden. Thank you.
Mr. Foarde. Now I would like to recognize Andrea Yaffe, who
represents Senator Carl Levin, one of our commissioners. Since
Andrea started working for the Senator in his personal office 2
years ago, she has been a real stalwart with us at all of our
roundtables.
So, welcome, again. Go ahead, please, and ask questions.
Ms. Yaffe. Dr. Goldstein, you spoke about the competition
the Tibetans are facing from the migration of Chinese laborers.
I was wondering if our other two panelists could talk about the
impact of Chinese migration on your efforts for development in
the Tibetan region.
Mr. Miller. Well, in my case, having spent considerable
time in rural Tibetan nomadic areas, what you see happening is
that, even in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures, for example,
many of the shops, as well as the construction, and the service
industry, a lot of the jobs are being taken by the Han and Hui
people that are migrating in. At least in the nomadic areas, a
big part of the problem is that the people certainly do not
have the training or the language to be able to compete for
these jobs. There are jobs there, but nomads cannot compete for
them because of language, because of skills. There could be
opportunities for construction-related work, but a lot of them
do not want to do construction work. So, there is that cultural
aspect to it as well. But the biggest concern is really the
lack of skills to be able to compete effectively on many of
these types of jobs.
Ms. Samen. I do not see it as much in my particular area
because Medrogongkar is all Tibetan, and the Han Chinese would
not go out there to live or work, although, they just recently
built a hot springs and a hotel nearby. But we are seeing more
of the men in the families that live in the villages having to
go into Lhasa or to leave their families to do road work or
other types of work to bring income to the families. So I think
it will become more of a problem in the future as the poverty
level continues to drop because the crops are not selling and
people have to leave their families to go get work, and so they
are migrating more to the cities.
Ms. Yaffe. I guess, for all the panelists, what kind of
programs do you think are necessary to address this problem so
that the Tibetans are not going to be further marginalized as
development continues? Do you have specific suggestions?
Mr. Miller. I will start off with that. Certainly, any kind
of activities for education, be it primary and secondary
school, just the whole aspect of education, generally, is
helpful and necessary. Then there is the vocational training,
carpentry skills, welding skills, car mechanic, sewing, various
of these types of trades so that Tibetans have these kinds of
skills.
We also need to help them with business types of training
so that the Tibetans, once they get these kinds of skills and
training, could have some better business sense on how to
operate small businesses like that. So, certainly those types
of projects related to education and vocational training are
very helpful.
Mr. Goldstein That is a difficult question. If I knew it, I
probably would not be here, I would be trying to do it out
there. But I think one thing, another caveat that I should
mention, is that when we talk about Tibetans being
marginalized, Tibetans are like Americans. Some of us have a
lot of money in the stock market and are doing very well, and
others are in the inner city on welfare. So the strategies for
development are going to be very difficult for the hard-core
poor in Tibet who are dependent on welfare, the same as the
hard-core poor are in the United States. The middle-income
groups who have some potential might be helped by vocational
training and help, and then starting a little business while
those who are better off and could use the money to maybe open
a large trucking business, or something like that. It is very
complicated, just as it is here. We cannot solve our own
problems.
So, the thing over there is that with the political
problems overlaying everything, it is hard, but it can be done.
I have seen things that work. I have experimented myself. It is
not easy and it is certainly not easier than here.
Ms. Samen. I agree. I think it is a very complicated issue,
and multi-level. But, starting just with helping with poverty
and getting people to be able to eat better in our particular
area, that really has an impact on pregnancy and newborn
infants' lives. If we had funds from USAID, we could really be
doing aid projects that can help to set up an infrastructure
for health care out in the rural areas, because it is very
limited. There are seven hospitals in Lhasa Prefecture and
Lhasa City, but when you go outside of that area, the county
hospitals are run down, they have no blood bank, they have no
doctors who can provide any kind of emergency services. There
is no transportation.
But any project has to be done in a way that there is a
bilateral agreement saying that if there is an infrastructure
built, that must stay in place. We should not put money there
and turn around and walk away, because the hospital would fall
apart and it would be the same problem all over.
Mr. Miller. If I could follow up a bit on Ms. Yaffe's
question, and also to go a little bit further on what Mel has
said. It is very complicated and complex. I think oftentimes
here in America sometimes people have this impression that, oh,
Tibet is just kind of one area.
But when we are talking about the Tibetan areas of China,
you are talking about close to 2.5 million square kilometers.
We have farming communities. We have nomad communities. We have
different environmental situations. In very western Tibet, it
is a very dry, high, cold desert, almost strictly pastoral
nomadism taking place. In the eastern ethnic Tibetan regions of
western Sichuan and northwestern Yunnan Provinces, very fertile
environments exist. People there are much better off. There is
easier access to roads and markets.
So, it is a very complex situation that you cannot just
give a general prescription for development. You really need to
be looking at site-specific activities. Then, on top of that
environmental layer, you have the administrative layer because
things are different in the Tibet Autonomous Region than they
are in Qinghai Province or Sichuan Province.
So, you have many layers that all need to be considered
when you are looking at coming up with activities or programs
to train Tibetan people so they can more easily take on jobs.
It is very complicated and complex. It is not as easy as we
think it is at times.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you all for your comments.
Let me keep going and recognize Steve Marshall. For almost
2 years, Steve has been our CECC staff expert on Tibet and we
have learned a great deal about Tibet and its beauty, its
problems, and everything else from Steve. Steve is responsible
for organizing today's roundtable, so we appreciate that as
well.
The gavel is yours.
Mr. Marshall. Thank you. I am really, really pleased to
have heard everything each of you has had to say. This is
decades of experience and a lot of heartfelt concern we are
hearing today.
I want to focus on sustainability. You cannot just come up
with foreign funds indefinitely and keep pouring them out on
the sand. Since you have ``been there and done that'' and have
known these things over time, can you describe to us
specifically, in your own experience if possible, precise
examples of sustainable projects? You went out there, you did
something, you got it going, and it keeps going.
Arlene, would you like to start?
Ms. Samen. Yes. The first 2 years that One H.E.A.R.T. did
midwife training in Tibet, it was taught solely by midwife
experts that we brought from around the world. Last summer,
partly due to the SARS situation, we could not get back in time
to start the course. But our Tibetan colleagues, who are
obstetricians, they felt confident enough, having attended the
courses before, that they felt they could go ahead and start
it. So they pretty much taught the course on their own. Then by
the time we were able to come back, we just basically came back
and supervised part of the clinical rotation. But they now have
written their own midwife training manual in Tibetan and it is
culturally appropriate for them. The course will go on whether
we get there or not this summer. So that, for us, has been one
thing that has been quite sustainable.
We are having a little more difficulty in keeping the
infrastructure sustainable out in the community area, but have
set up a monitoring and evaluation system this year. It looks
like we are identifying some leaders out there that will really
take the ball and run with it. One of the people who is coming
to Utah next month is the director of MPH from Medrogongkar
County. He actually is very passionate about the work and it is
our hope that he will just continue on with the project out in
that area whether we are there or not.
Mr. Marshall. Thanks.
Dan, can you expand on that a bit?
Mr. Miller. Yes. I will try to mention two or three things.
First, regarding a project on biodiversity conservation on the
Chang Tang Wildlife Reserve where I first started doing some
work with George Schaller and the Wildlife Conservation Society
back in 1993. Initially, this was just surveys of wildlife and
nomads and range lands in the area to get a sense of what
really the situation is, and what is going on. We went back a
couple of years, or I went back a number of years with that,
and then other people have continued working. But what you have
now is that this reserve is starting to be managed. There are
now periodic surveys done on wildlife in the area. There is a
program of training for the forest guards, as they call them,
to control poaching. There is work with the villages to make
them aware of conservation issues and the importance of
conserving the animals. That is something that I see has
continued, if we are talking about sustainability.
The capacity of those institutions involved has been
strengthened and is now able to continue. This was catalyzed
from the beginning largely through the efforts of Dr. Schaller
and his organization and the teams of people that they are
working with, so that effort has continued.
The same with the Qomolangma Nature Preserve. Some of that
initial work was done on surveys and trying to come up with
management plans for the area. That work is now, I think, well
in place.
Another example is some work that I saw in Tibetan areas in
Gansu Province. Actually, it was with some initial funding from
Oxfam Hong Kong, working with a Tibetan man with a Ph.D. at
Lanzhou University who works with Tibetan nomads in the area.
He designed a community-based rangeland management approach
that was very successful and happened to be the right place to
do it. There were receptive local community officials,
receptive villagers, and it worked. That model for a group-
based management of grasslands, instead of everything on an
individual basis, raised the foundation for a much larger World
Bank project in Xinjiang and in other parts of Gansu. They
really promoted an approach in which you are looking at
village-based management and group-based management to pastoral
development, rather than just an individualized approach. So, I
think that is something that shows sustainability of efforts.
Mr. Marshall. Thank you.
Mr. Foarde. Let me recognize our colleague Susan Roosevelt
Weld, who is the general counsel of the CECC staff, for a
question or two, please.
Ms. Weld. Thanks, John.
I want to start with Arlene. I am wondering if, in Tibet,
there are strong women's groups. Are there traditional women's
organizations that you could work with on birth practices?
Ms. Samen. We just now started working with the Women's
Federation, and also will be starting to do focus groups within
communities with women. There usually does seem to be one or
two in a community that will stand up and be active and take a
voice.
Tibetan women are extremely shy and often will not want to
talk about health care issues or issues surrounding birthing.
But now that we are doing a lot of education about why it is so
important that women be aware of what happens during pregnancy,
what happens if they were to die or their children were to die,
women are becoming more interested and wanting to take more of
a role. So I feel that the program is definitely going to be
headed in that direction. We have identified several community
women whom I think will have a voice. But it is not a typical
Tibetan behavior to be very vocal about their own bodies or
their own rights.
Ms. Weld. That is puzzling, in a way, because I know that
the male/female ratios of newborns in Tibet are more favorable
to women than they are in the rest of China now. So I have
wondered, and asked Steve about this, whether that meant that
there is something cultural in Tibet which is more favorable to
women.
Ms. Samen. Mel probably can answer that better than I can.
Mr. Goldstein I do not think so. That is a fascinating
thing, I believe, although I do not quite understand what it
is. It is not because women have a higher status than they have
elsewhere in China.
Ms. Weld. Interesting. My next question is, this Commission
has the duty to look at the rule of law in China. Thinking
about issues of poverty and income in rural areas, I wonder,
which laws are useful to promote this? For example, now we see
that people are
allowed to have private property which will be protected in the
Chinese Constitution. There has recently been reform of the
laws of land use. I would like to know whether those new laws
are helpful. Are they implemented in Tibet or are they only
implemented in other parts of China? Are they useful to the
Tibetan people in this respect?
Mr. Miller. Let me start off with that. One law that I
think is very important is the Grassland Law. My understanding
is that it recently went through a revision, and I am not sure
what the status is of it right now, or if it has actually
finally passed. But my understanding is that there was a lot of
discussion about whether that law should include provision for
group-based management of grasslands, rather than just on an
individual basis. So, certainly China's Grassland Law is
something that would be of importance in the Tibetan areas.
Mr. Goldstein I just do not really have anything to add
about that. I think these would count much more in the urban
areas where there is property and people are buying and
selling, but in rural areas there is not a lot who would be
involved in that; they only own the house that they have,
perhaps. So, I really cannot add anything.
Ms. Weld. Thank you.
Mr. Foarde. Let me go on then and recognize our friend and
colleague, Selene Ko. Selene is senior legal counsel on the
Commission staff. She handles a number of issues, including
commercial rule of law development, but has interests in a
great many things. Over to you for a question.
Ms. Ko. One of the things that I follow fairly closely is
U.S. Government funding of programs throughout China, including
the Tibetan areas of China. So, I am very interested in
understanding how the process for allocating funds to projects
through government funding, such as USAID, works. Dan, if you
could talk a little bit about USAID's priorities for the
funding? How does it decide on projects? Is there some sort of
public bidding process, and is there any evaluation process?
You discussed a few suggestions for areas where more
funding could be used, education, training, and then you talked
about agricultural projects. Are those areas that are focuses
of USAID's funding for Tibet? From an NGO perspective, how
accessible is this money to the NGO community, and do you see
many NGOs trying to avail themselves of the opportunities
provided by the funding?
Mr. Miller. Yes. My understanding is that U.S. Government
funding to Tibetan areas, I believe, really got started in
fiscal year 2000 or 2001, when the funds were handled by the
State Department and provided to American NGOs. Now USAID is
managing some of this funding. In terms of the priorities, it
really comes out of the Tibet Policy Act that states that
funding should be used for activities to promote sustainable
development, conserve Tibet's environment, and preserve the
cultural heritage of the Tibetan people.
So, those are the three categories, you might say, that we
are bound by law to be supporting with USAID programs to
American NGOs. That is pretty broad, but certainly then within
the sustainable development aspect, USAID is in the process of
developing what is called a Request for Applications [RFA], and
a notice will be going out in the Federal Register.
A lot of that is then addressing these three major
concerns. So then a bidding process would take place that is
transparent, in which NGOs are asked to submit proposals that
are then evaluated by a technical committee in a competitive
process to determine which ones are deemed the best available.
In this process of preparing this Request for Applications,
USAID visited the Tibetan areas in Qinghai Province last year.
I provided a background paper on the environmental analysis
that was done. We have been in close consultation with the U.S.
Embassy in Beijing on this, and in consultation with the
Special Coordinator for Tibet's office at the State Department
on determining this program.
In terms of looking specifically at agriculture, I would
say that we certainly need to look at some of these aspects
that I mentioned, about trying to promote economic growth and
improving the lives of the Tibetan people.
Ms. Ko. Is there any evaluation process envisioned as part
of the grant making process?
Mr. Miller. Well, certainly, USAID has a legal obligation
to ensure that these funds are being used appropriately, and
USAID has a regular evaluation process whenever funds are being
used. But this project is still just getting started, but
certainly there will be an evaluation process that will be gone
through to look at the effectiveness of these activities.
Ms. Ko. Thank you.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you, Dan. I would now go to our friend
and colleague, Carl Minzner, who is also a senior legal counsel
for the Commission staff.
Carl.
Mr. Minzner. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the
opportunity to ask questions of such a distinguished panel with
so many collective years of experience in Tibet.
Let me return to a topic that was touched on earlier. I
think, as many people know, the Chinese Government policy for
development in Tibet falls within sort of a broader plan for
providing development for western China.
One view that is often expressed on Capitol Hill, among
other places in the United States, is that this policy,
although it might have some incidental benefits to local
Tibetans, is really part of a coherent plan or a policy
designed to facilitate Han migration to Tibet.
Based on your experience in Tibet, what can you say about
this? Is this an accurate assessment? Is there truth to this
idea as to the motivations behind the Chinese Government's
development policies? I will ask all three of you.
Mr. Miller. I will jump in here, first. Yes. This is
oftentimes call the Great Western Development Strategy, I
believe you are referring to, where the Chinese Government
realized that the western regions were lagging far behind the
eastern regions in terms of
development, so there has been considerable effort going into
developing these areas.
Now, a lot of it has been in the last couple of years, with
infrastructure development, roads, highways, railroads, and air
facilities. Is this part of a plan for Han migration into these
areas? I cannot say. But what I see is that, yes, the
infrastructure development is taking place. The authorities
realize that development has lagged behind. These areas need to
develop. It is not just the Tibet Autonomous Region or Qinghai
Province, it is Inner Mongolia, it is Xinjiang, it is Ningxia,
it is Gansu, all of these areas. And, yes, it is creating jobs
for local people, and also for people coming in from various
places. I cannot say what the real motivation is behind it,
other than what I see happening on the ground.
Mr. Goldstein Nor can I say what the real motivation is. I
think I do not have to say much to you distinguished gentlemen,
other than development is politics. As development is politics
in the United States, and it is certainly true in China. What I
can say is that there are different opinions, I think, in the
Chinese leadership as to what is in the national interests of
the government there with regard to Tibet and, let us say,
other minority areas. The policy that they have chosen is what
I would think of as the more hard-line policy, because it is
open competition. It would be like when the Chinese started
opening up in 1980, if Deng Xiaoping had said any foreign
company can come and buy whatever factory they want and just
export whatever money they want and not transfer any technology
to China.
Well, that is what the policy is in Tibet. The Chinese
Government has talked about policies where a kind of economic
development would be formulated in which Tibetans get more of
the
advantages, more of the profit of it, but they decided against
that direction and in favor of open competition.
Now, one cynical interpretation would be to say that this
was to improve migration. That is probably a part of it. The
other thing is, how would you win over Tibetans if you are
unwilling to reach a compromise with the exiles over political
sharing?
Their idea from the beginning has been that, by improving
the standard of living as quickly as possible, you will win
over their economic interests. So, that, I am sure, is a part
of it, too. When you look at a program like this, I think
people in Beijing have to say, ``Is this counterproductive or
productive? '' I think they may be moving more to programs that
are going to give more specialized preference to Tibetans
because it is so obvious on the ground and to their leaders
that Tibetans just need more jobs in the future or they are
going to have a worse situation than they have now. So, I do
not know if that answers your question, but I think it is
complicated.
Ms. Samen. I do not know what the Chinese policy is, but
certainly Tibet is viewed as a place of income generation. It
is mostly tourism. There is also mining and the railroad coming
in, and definitely a place where there is opportunity for
entrepreneurship.
So whether the Han Chinese or the Tibetans who are going to
jump on that train has yet to be seen. But it is definitely
growing by leaps and bounds, and there is a lot of financial
opportunity there.
I agree with Dan and Mel. The Tibetans really need to learn
more about business, infrastructure, and vocations because it
is just going to grow exponentially in the next few years. I
personally would like to see a lot more Tibetans involved in
the growth.
Mr. Foarde. Interesting question, and interesting answers
as well. Thank you all. We are getting very close to the end of
our session this afternoon, but I would like to recognize for
the last round of questions Steve Marshall.
Steve.
Mr. Marshall. I will follow up on the last question here.
There is a very interesting comment, Dr. Goldstein, at the end
of your paper about short-term alleviation of some of the
poverty by using set-asides for jobs or rebates for Tibetan
entrepreneurs to get them more involved in the economy.
Is there something that, in your experience and to the
extent you understand the Chinese laws, could actually be
brought about? My sense is that it is, within the development
programs and the autonomy law and so on. But I would wonder
what you think, based on working on the ground and dealing with
local officials.
Mr. Goldstein I am not a legal expert, so I am not really
familiar with the laws. But I think it certainly can be done.
They talk about it now and there is a lot of thinking about it.
They have talked about it in the past. When governments give
out contracts, they can give out any kind of contract that they
want. They can have a contract that says that 30 percent of the
subcontractors have to be Tibetan.
Now, who will do it? Not some of the farmers I am dealing
with. But in those farm communities there are families who are
doing phenomenally well, and they have companies, and they have
skills, and business skills, and they could organize it. Right
now, people generally go from these farming communities after
they plant, which is sometime in the spring, and they come back
just before the harvest, so they are away for 3 or 4 months on
the road, trying to find jobs.
Very often, Tibetans organize 50 or 60 people and take them
500 miles away on a project. So, that is already going on, that
there are Tibetan businessmen who try to get a contract from
Lhasa, and then do something.
It could be revved up very quickly, I think. And outside
programs could then come in and try to provide some extra
skills for what might be needed and then help people to
organize by giving them the loan to buy the trucks to do the
work. In that case NGOs could have a substantial impact.
Tibetans are ready for it. Whether they want it or not, they
all know they need it. Given an opportunity, if you can
convince them, I think they will take it.
But on the other hand, they are stubborn. Under the current
government rules, they often do not have to do things. Even the
local Party secretaries cannot make them do things. Two years
ago, the local Governor of a county wanted them to plant all
the crops in certain areas to be more effective, he thought.
People did not want to do that and they blocked it, despite the
Governor and despite the higher level officials.
So, you have to convince the local Tibetans that the
program is really useful and they are going to make money in it
and it is in their interests. If you do, I think it will have
impact. I think it is within the laws of China and within the
feeling of many of the Tibetans in the government in Tibet to
do that.
Mr. Marshall. Thanks.
Arlene, Dan, can you expand on that or add to that?
Ms. Samen. I will let Dan, because I am really in health
care.
Mr. Miller. I was just going to say, too, that, yes, I see
that there are these opportunities out there. Mel has given
more of a specific example. But certain entrepreneurial types
of people have things.
If you were then to come in with a training program to
develop the trade skills or specific skills that some of the
workers might require, or to provide business development
services for that entrepreneur and give them access to credit
or loans, that he could get things going, yes, those types of
opportunities are there.
Again, it is just a matter of finding them and then coming
in with the right kind of assistance to those individuals, you
might say, but it is sort of the whole aspect of financial
services and skilled trade development.
Ms. Samen. I think there is a lot of room for micro-finance
projects in Tibet. I think the Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund
is just starting some of those, and the Bridge Fund, certainly.
But there is a lot more room for that.
I mean, just in my midwifery project, just opening up to
people in the community, recently when I was there, three of
the women from the Women's Federation came to me and said they
would like to be midwives.
So, I think, given opportunities for either education or
business, micro-finance, and given the assistance and
mentorship that they need, I think that the Tibetans can have
self-sustaining programs.
Mr. Marshall. Thank you.
Mr. Miller. I would just like to add that it is not only
just micro-finance. Micro-finance is usually small amounts, a
couple of hundred dollars or so. You need more than that to buy
a truck or to really get something going. So, yes, micro-
finance is important, but also larger financial services are
going to be necessary to jump-start some of these things that
will then employ a lot more people.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you all.
The magic hour has come far too soon. We have had a very
interesting session, with lots of great ideas and information
that will be very useful to us in putting together our annual
report this year.
On behalf of Congressman Jim Leach and Senator Chuck Hagel,
our co-chairmen, and each of our 23 commissioners, I would like
to thank our three panelists, Dan Miller, Mel Goldstein, and
Arlene Samen for sharing your expertise and taking the time to
come this afternoon.
I would like to thank all of you who came to attend and to
listen, and to our staff colleagues who came this afternoon.
Just a reminder, next Friday, March 26, at 10 a.m. in this
very room we will have our next roundtable. I hope to see all
of you there.
Thank you, and good afternoon.
[Whereupon, at 4 p.m. the roundtable was concluded.]
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
----------
Prepared Statement of Daniel Miller
MARCH 19, 2004
Thank you very much. I am grateful to the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China for giving me the opportunity to speak today. This
roundtable on development projects in the Tibetan areas of China is an
important topic. I am especially pleased with the subtitle of the
roundtable on articulating clear goals and achieving sustainable
results. As a development specialist, I believe that development
efforts in Tibetan areas of China, in order to be successful, need to
give much greater
attention to formulating explicit goals and objectives and ensuring
that results are attained and that they are sustained.
As a bit of background let me say that I have spent part of every
year for the last 16 years working in Tibetan areas of China. In the
beginning, I conducted research on rangelands, wildlife and nomads and
later was involved in designing and implementing wildlife conservation
and rural development projects for a variety of bilateral and
multilateral organizations, and NGOs. At last count, I have made 35
trips to Tibetan areas in western China. I have been fortunate to have
been able to visit and work in numerous areas, including the remote
Chang Tang region in the northern Tibetan Autonomous Region and western
Qinghai Province, the central valleys of the TAR, eastern Qinghai
Province, and the Tibetan areas of Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan
Provinces.
My work in Tibetan areas of China was preceded by many years
working with Tibetan refugees and Tibetan-speaking herders and farmers
in Nepal and Bhutan. I also speak Tibetan. I admit I have trouble
carrying on a political or philosophical conversation in Tibetan--as I
do in English--but I can easily converse in Tibetan with Tibetan
farmers and nomads about agriculture, livestock and rangeland
management.
In the short time I have to talk, I would like to focus on
agricultural development in the Tibetan areas of China and, more
specifically, on livestock development for Tibetan nomads and farmers,
which happens to be my area of expertise.
Of the Tibetan population in China of about 5 million people,
almost 2 million
Tibetans are nomads who make their living primarily from animal
husbandry.
Another 2\1/2\ million people are agro-pastoralists, who combine both
cropping and livestock raising for their livelihoods. As such,
livestock development and the management of the rangeland resources is
fundamental to the future development of the majority of the Tibetan
people.
Rangelands of the Tibetan Plateau encompass about 1.65 million
square kilometers, an area slightly larger than the country of
Mongolia--or about 2\1/2\ times the size of the State of Texas. Thus,
the Tibetan rangeland environment is one of the world's largest
rangeland landscapes. It is also one of the earth's most important
ecosystems as it contains the headwaters environment for many of Asia's
major rivers and has been identified as one of the world's priority
areas for conservation of biodiversity. Despite its vast extent, the
global significance of its biodiversity, the regional importance of its
watersheds, and the millions of Tibetan nomads and farmers who are
dependent on the rangelands, they have not been given the consideration
they deserve.
In the last 20 years, China has achieved remarkable agricultural
and rural growth, greatly reduced poverty and addressed many
environmental and natural resource degradation problems. In many of the
Tibetan areas, however, broad-based rural economic growth has not been
very significant yet. Poverty is still pervasive and inhibits the
government's and rural communities efforts to create economic
opportunities. Tackling poverty in the Tibetan areas is also
constrained because of the poor understanding of the nature of poverty
and the lack of reliable information about improved farming systems and
more appropriate pastoral production practices. Some of these aspects
on the nature of poverty among Tibetan nomads are dealt with in more
detail in my prepared statement.
To date, most Tibetan farmers and nomads have not participated
fully in the assessment, planning and implementation of development
programs and policies that affect their lives. Government development
programs have generally taken a top-down approach and, despite their
good intentions, have often been hampered because Tibetan farmers and
nomads themselves were not involved in the design and implementation of
activities and by faulty assumptions about poverty and Tibetan's
agricultural and livestock production practices.
In addressing poverty and implementing rural development in Tibetan
areas, one is faced with problems of two production systems. On the one
hand, there is the traditional agricultural and pastoral production
systems, which can be seen as an evolutionary response to environmental
limitations; it is a pattern for survival, which has proved successful.
On the other hand, there is also another system, which is a new pattern
for survival and increased production, based on the technical rationale
brought in from outside but not yet adjusted to social factors and
subjected to the test of time; its technical innovations are promoted
by development projects and technical specialists. Dealing with
problems, which relate to the entire system, including the interaction
of old and new strategies will require much more careful analysis when
planning development in Tibetan areas. Let me add here, that I have
been amazed at the changes I have seen taking place in just a few year
in many of the nomad areas in China where rangelands are being
privatized and fenced and nomads are encouraged to settle down. It
certainly is a dynamic environment.
Rural development experience internationally, and elsewhere in
China, demonstrates the benefits of adopting an integrated approach to
tackling poverty--an approach that involves social and economic
development as well as environmental management. An emphasis on
economic growth within a community-based integrated development model
has the greatest promise for a multiplier effect in reducing poverty in
Tibetan areas. It addresses the needs of Tibetans in local communities
and the opportunities that exist for increasing incomes and improving
livelihoods.
The lack of markets of livestock and agricultural products, of
agro-processing that adds significant value, and of financial services
are important contributors to the environmental, economic and social
problems afflicting Tibetan areas. Development of integrated markets
for agricultural and livestock products that increase the flow of
products and price signals that reward higher quality is essential to
adding
economic value, reducing the negative impacts of overgrazing and
environmental degradation, and improving the livelihoods of farmers and
nomads. Development of demand-based agricultural processing enterprises
that add significant value to agricultural and natural resource
products means a greater emphasis on quality rather than quantity. It
also underscores the importance of providing increased alternative
opportunities for employment and income for Tibetan farmers and
herders.
Reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development in Tibetan
areas requires expanding the income base for Tibetans. The economic
base of the majority of Tibetan people is primarily agriculture and
animal husbandry is the dominant agricultural activity across much of
the Tibetan plateau. Therefore, improvements in livestock production
and animal husbandry practices, in both agricultural and nomadic areas,
hold the potential for stimulating economic growth. Yet, when we look
at the types of development projects that are being implemented by most
American-based NGOs in Tibetan areas there is surprisingly little
attention being paid to livestock development.
The key issues for sustainable development in the Tibetan pastoral
areas to be resolved are: (1) widespread poverty; (2) rangeland
degradation; (3) unsustainable livestock production practices; (4) poor
market development; (5) weak community participation; and (6) lack of
integration in addressing the problems. The development challenge is
determining how to target funding better to address these issues and to
ensure that resources allocated for development actually reaches the
Tibetan farmers and nomads.
I would now like to go back to the subtitle of this roundtable:
articulating clear goals and achieving sustainable results. Having been
involved in rural development for many years, I firmly believe that
clear objectives and strong commitment drive successful projects. There
are numerous US-based NGOs working in Tibetan areas of China, a number
of them with funding from the US Government. NGOs are widely perceived
by the public as more effective than larger donors at reaching local
people. Typically, NGOs operate small-scale, community-based projects.
Having worked for both NGOs and larger multilateral and bilateral
development organizations, I think the development planning process
that larger development organizations like USAID, the Canadian
International Development Agency (CIDA) and the World Bank embrace--
tools such as results-based management and logical frameworks--are very
valuable and could help NGOs be more strategic and effective in their
work in Tibetan areas. These tools--and there are numerous training
programs and manuals on them--assist you to clearly define goals,
development objectives, outputs and activities. It really doesn't
matter if you are designing a large $50 million project or a small,
$50,000 project--the process is the same.
What is important is that the proper analysis is carried out,
outputs and activities are clearly defined, performance indicators are
defined, and a monitoring and evaluation system is designed. Roles and
responsibilities of different actors also need to be defined and a work
plan schedule developed. Since funding is limited, development
organizations also need to focus on those activities that provide the
greatest return on investment. Economic analysis has to play an
important role in identifying costs, benefits and risks and in
evaluating design alternatives during project planning.
Defining development goals and objectives and achieving sustainable
results in Tibetan areas will require that those organizations
currently working there, and those desiring to work there in the
future, learn to use these development tools that have proven to be
useful.
With respect to sustainability, the basic objective for
sustainability is to institutionalize the project/program outcomes in
partner organizations. This requires permanent changes in institutional
knowledge, processes, and systems. Having a project sustainability
strategy helps ensure that project strategies, management structures
and processes foster stakeholder participation, capacity building and
ownership of results. The likelihood of sustainability is increased
when local partners are involved in decisionmaking. When they
participate in decisionmaking about the use of resources, they are
building their capacity to assess needs, formulate solutions, and
ensure their effective implementation.
The US Government Agency I work for, USAID, has considerable
experience and lessons learned about pastoral development that is
relevant to Tibetan nomadic areas. For example, the Global Livestock
Collaborative Research Support Program has worked with pastoralists in
South America, East Africa, and Central Asia. Many of the approaches
from these activities could be applied to Tibet. USAID also has been
working with nomads in Mongolia, forming herder groups and working with
herders to develop rangeland management plans and improving the
business of herding that is relevant to Tibetan pastoral areas. A
number of other bilateral and multilateral organizations have range and
livestock development projects in Inner Mongolia, Gansu, and Xinjiang
regions of China and have valuable lessons-learned on organizing
pastoral development.
In addition, a Sino-US Center for Grazingland Excellence was
recently established in Gansu Province of China that will provide
opportunities for American scientists to work with scientists from
universities throughout Western China, including the Tibetan Autonomous
Region, on rangeland and pastoral development related research. I see
this as an excellent opportunity for US-based NGOs working in Tibetan
areas to team up with American and Chinese scientists (including
Tibetans and Mongolians) to design long-term research efforts to help
solve many pastoral development related issues.
There is a great need for more multidisciplinary research that
brings together the expertise of social scientists, ecologists,
agronomists, economists, and pastoral specialists to develop a better
understanding of the nature of poverty and existing agricultural and
pastoral production practices among Tibetan farmers and nomads.
Research also needs to be more participatory and farmers and herders
need to play a larger role in setting research priorities and in
determining the merits of research findings.
Research efforts need to be directed toward understanding current
nomadic pastoral production and farming systems and how they are
changing and adapting to development influences. Practices vary
considerably across the Tibetan areas and these differences need to be
analyzed. How do increasing demands for livestock and agricultural
products in the market place affect future agricultural and livestock
sales? What constraints and opportunities for improving production are
recognized by the farmers and nomads themselves? What forms of social
organization exist for managing livestock and rangelands? How have
these practices changed in recent years and what are the implications
of these transformations? Answers to these and related questions will
help unravel many of the complexities of current agricultural and
pastoral production systems, of which we still know so little about,
and will help us to better plan future interventions.
The crucial problem now facing agricultural and livestock
development in Tibetan areas appears to be organizational and
behavioral, rather than technical. That is to say, what social forms of
production are likely to be viable in the changed socio-economic
situation that now faces most rural Tibetans? Analyses of the socio-
economic processes at work are a key challenge for development workers.
Finally, let me conclude by saying that the challenges facing
development in the Tibetan areas of China are considerable.
Opportunities do exist, however, for improving the livelihoods of
Tibetans. To be successful, development projects need to develop a
better understanding of the ecosystems and agricultural and pastoral
production systems, greater appreciation for Tibetan nomads and farmers
and their way of life, and consideration of new information and ideas.
There are no simple solutions. Due to the multifaceted dimensions of
the development problems, actions will need to be taken on several
levels: at the central policy level, at the university and research
level, at the county and township level, and at the nomad and farmer
level. Promoting more sustainable development in Tibetan areas will
require policies and approaches that integrate ecological principles
regulating ecosystem functions with the economic principles governing
agricultural and livestock production and general economic development
processes.
______
Prepared Statement of Melvyn C. Goldstein
MARCH 19, 2004
Rural Tibet has experienced a dramatic change in the past 25 years.
Around 1980, the system of communal production in Tibet was replaced by
the current quasi-market system called the ``responsibility system,''
and in almost all areas, the commune's land and animals were divided
among its members on a one time basis. All individuals alive on the day
of division got an equal share but anyone born after that did not get
anything. From then on, the household became the basic unit of
production as it had been in Traditional Tibet. A new economic era
began.
Although I am sure you all have heard or read depictions of Tibet
as exceptionally impoverished, and to an extent it certainly is, it is
also clear that in the two decades since 1980, the standard of living
in rural Tibet has improved a great deal. Tibet has a long way to go,
but it is important to understand how far it has come and what problems
it faces moving forward.
Much of what I am going to say is based on my own longitudinal
research in rural Tibet that began in 1986, and in particular, from a
large field study of 13 farming villages in three counties that began
in 1998.
On the positive side, almost all the rural farmers we studied had a
favorable opinion of the responsibility system. Ninety-four percent
indicated that their livelihood had improved since decollectivization
in 1980. Seventy-seven percent said that they produced enough barley
for their family's food needs, and 67 percent said that they had one or
more year's worth of barley stored in reserve.
Similarly, the three main high quality or luxury traditional
foods--locally brewed barley beer, butter, and meat--were all widely
consumed. Three quarters of the households said they now make and drink
beer regularly rather than just on special occasions and the majority
of families reported that they ate meat or fat either daily or several
times a week. 91 percent reported they drank butter tea every day.
Finally, the material situation of village households is another
empirical way to assess standard of living. We addressed this by asking
households about their ownership of a range of durable consumer goods
that went beyond the ``basics.'' The
results were mixed. While 71 percent of households owned a pressure
cooker, 60 percent had a Tibetan carpet set, and 57 percent had a metal
stove and 53 percent a bicycle, only 30 percent had a sewing machine.
What accounts for these gains? First and foremost is the new
economic framework that allowed households to keep the fruits of their
labor. In farming, this allowed households to intensify the care with
which they planted their own fields, and resulted in most households
quickly experiencing increases in production. These increased yields
were further amplified by the government's new policy of exempting
rural Tibetans from taxes.
This effect was even more impressive with respect to domestic
animals which increased 82 percent since decollectivization, and more
if chickens and pigs are counted. The milking animals that provide the
essential milk that every rural household needs to make butter for tea,
have increased an amazing 668 percent.
Finally, the new economic structure also has allowed and encouraged
rural households to engage in non-farm income generating activities,
and as we shall see, many have done so.
But I do not want to paint an overly rosy view of rural Tibet.
Despite these improvements, Tibetans clearly have a long way to go vis-
a-vis inland China. For example, as of 2002, none of the 13 villages we
studied had running water in houses and only the village immediately
adjacent to a county seat had a water tap and electricity. None of the
areas had improved dirt roads, let alone paved roads.
And, critically, there is still a great deal of real poverty.
Despite starting equally in 1980, 14 percent of households were poor in
the sense that they did not have enough grain either from their own
fields or bought through earned income, and another 28 percent of
households were having a difficult time meeting their basic subsistence
needs. Moreover, in the poorest areas we studied, about 30 percent of
the households were poor as I defined it. Thus, while progress in rural
Tibet in some ways has been impressive, many families have faltered and
are in dire need of assistance.
The situation in Tibet, however, is not static and there are
fundamental changes going on that need to be mentioned since these
raise serious questions about whether the overall increases of the past
20 years can be sustained, let alone improved over, say, the next 20
years.
First, and most critical, is a serious decline in per capita land
holdings. As a result of population growth and fixed land size, there
has been an average decline of 20 percent in per capita land holdings,
and this does not take into account land lost to home building sites,
floods, roads, etc. Since Tibet's rural population will continue to
grow during the next decade, this process of decline will continue.
Second, the cost of living is increasing. In addition to general
inflation, the price of key products such as chemical fertilizers has
increased substantially, while at the same time there has been a
decrease in government subsidies and an increase in local taxes. This
combination is also likely to be exacerbated in the years ahead.
Compensating for this by trying to increase yields will not be easy
because farmers are already using high levels of chemical fertilizers
and improved seeds.
Similarly, it is unlikely that the value of Tibetan crops will
increase and compensate for the changes. The market for Tibetan crops
is limited and declining. Tibetan barley and wheat have no export
potential outside of Tibet because Chinese do not eat barley and find
the Tibetan wheat too coarse. And even in Tibet, the increasing
consumption by Tibetans of rice, 1vegetables and imported white flour,
means they are consuming less barley and Tibetan wheat, and this
trajectory is likely to increase.
Tibetan farmers are acutely aware of these changes and challenges
and they are trying to compensate in a variety of ways, for example by
contracting fraternal polyandrous marriages in which two or more
brothers take a wife since this concentrates labor in the household and
avoids dividing the land between the brothers. They are also
increasingly using contraception to have fewer children, and most
critically, are actively taking steps to secure non-farm income.
It is clear to rural villagers and their leaders that without a
source of non-farm income households can not move from basic
subsistence to a good standard of living, and in the future it may not
even be possible for households who are now self-sufficient from their
fields to remain so if they do not have some modicum of non-farm
income.
Not surprisingly, in 1998, 44 percent of males between the ages 20
and 34 were engaged in migrant labor for part of the year and 49
percent of all households had at least one member so engaged. Most of
these worked as manual laborers on construction projects. Moreover, it
is significant to note that only 24 percent of households in the
poorest area were engaged in non-farm labor.
With respect to such work, we found widespread frustration and
anger in the villages about the difficulties villagers faced in finding
jobs. Villagers commonly complained that there are not enough jobs for
them and that because their skill levels are low, most of the jobs they
find pay poorly. The villagers overwhelmingly lay the blame for this on
the unrestricted influx of non-Tibetan migrant laborers.
Rural Tibetan farmers now find themselves in competition for
constructions jobs with large numbers of more skilled and experienced
Chinese workers, and given the current policy, this competition will
certainly increase. How Tibetans will fare in the future, therefore, is
less than clear. There are some positive signs, but it is hard to be
very optimistic. What is really needed is a change in government policy
that would give much greater priority to securing jobs for Tibetans,
perhaps through a large-scale system of set-aside contracts for them
for some period of time.
However, if the current policy continues, rural Tibetans will have
to compete as best they can, and it is here that outside development
organizations can and should play a helpful role. There are many things
that rural Tibetan communities need, but I believe that the greatest
impact will come from those programs that address what rural Tibetans
themselves primarily want and need, namely, assistance in generating
non-farm income. Whether the life of rural Tibetans will improve in the
next decade depends on many complicated issues occurring at the
macrolevel, but it is clear to me that foreign development programs can
make a useful difference in the lives of rural Tibetans, although given
the economic and political problems in Tibet, it will not be easy.
Prepared Statement of Arlene M. Samen
MARCH 19, 2004
Tashi Delek. I want to thank the CECC for inviting me to share with
you One H.E.A.R.T.'s work in Tibet.
Last October, while working at 15,000 feet in Medrogongar County, I
was suddenly called to help a pregnant woman in a remote village. She
had been in labor for 4 days. I found her alone in a cold, dark shed,
while her family huddled around a warm fire in the kitchen. Four hours
later, the exhausted woman delivered a healthy baby boy into my bare
hands. In the same county, this scene is repeated daily. Tragically,
just a few days earlier, another young mother bled to death during
childbirth.
Like other cultures, a Tibetan mother's death is devastating to her
family for it often threatens the health of her children and impacts
the family for generations. The mother is the thread that holds the
family together. When a Tibetan mother dies, her surviving children are
three to ten times more likely to die within 2 years.\1\ When a Tibetan
mother dies, her surviving children are more likely to die young and
less likely to attend school or complete their education.\2\
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\1\ M.A Strong, ``The Health of Adults in the Developing World: The
View from Bangladesh.'' Health Transition Review 2(2):215-24,1992.
\2\ Family Care International, ``Safe Motherhood as a Vital Social
and Economic Investment,'' Safe Motherhood Fact Sheet, New York, 1998.
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Many Tibetans believe that a mother's death during childbirth is
ominous, a sign of bad spirits that bring misfortune to her family and
her community. Saving the lives of Tibetan women and their children is
of the utmost urgency for the survival of the Tibetan culture. One
HEART's mission is to work with Tibetans to improve the circumstances
of childbirth and maternal and newborn survival on the Tibetan Plateau.
Tibetan society is one of the few in the world in which there is no
tradition of trained midwives who facilitate the delivery process. Poor
nutrition, the lack of trained health personnel and emergency services
combine to place Tibetan women and infants at high risk for labor
related deaths. The vast majority of births take place at high
altitude, in a cold environment and without access to electricity or
health care. In spite of active campaigns by the Chinese government to
encourage women to deliver in a medical facility, more than 85 percent
of Tibetan women deliver at home. Most babies are delivered with only
the help of the mother or the mother-in-law of the pregnant woman, and
their only assistance is the cutting of the cord. Amazingly, many
Tibetan women deliver their babies completely alone.
It is believed that Tibet has one of highest newborn and infant
mortality rates in the world. Tibetan women are three hundred times
more likely to die than American women from various pregnancy and
delivery complications. Post partum hemorrhage is the leading cause of
death. Likewise, babies are far more likely to die in Tibet than
anywhere else in the world. We believe that most of these deaths are
preventable with minimal technology and simple interventions.
In 1998, a group of maternal child experts founded One HEART, in an
effort to address maternal and newborn death in Tibet. We are a 501(c)3
organization based in the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Division of the
University Of Utah School Of Medicine.
In the summer of 2000, One HEART, in collaboration with The Trace
Foundation and the Netherlands Red Cross, provided the first skilled
birth attendant course in Lhasa Prefecture. Since that time, we have
focused our attention on Medrogongar County. According to Lhasa Health
Bureau records, Medrogongar County has the highest reported maternal
and newborn death rates in the Lhasa Prefecture. An estimated 75
percent of stillbirths and 30-40 percent of infant deaths can be
avoided with adequate nutrition, prenatal and skilled delivery and
post-delivery care for mothers. Medrogongar, because of its close
proximity to Lhasa, provides an ideal setting for training, monitoring,
and evaluating these outcomes.
Our midwifery course is now an annual event and is being taught
entirely by our Tibetan colleagues with clinical supervision by Carolyn
Bell, FNP/CNM, Midwifery Specialist. Our close working relationship
with our Tibetan staff and partners and the Chinese Health officials is
helping to build a successful and sustainable infrastructure.
In January 2000, the University of Utah received a 5-year grant
from the NIH/NICHD. Under the guidance of Principal Investigators Drs.
Michael Varner, and Suellen Miller, and Anthropologists Drs. Vincanne
Adam and Sienna Craig, we developed the infrastructure for clinical
research in Tibet and are now preparing to conduct clinical trials of a
centuries old traditional Tibetan medicine.
Tibetans believe that this traditional medicine may help to prevent
post partum hemorrhage.
We are also conducting ethnographic surveys which have been
extremely valuable for both this research project and our midwife
training programs. Hundreds of village women have been interviewed
about their cultural beliefs around childbirth. One HEART works within
these Tibetan cultural beliefs and practices, not only identifying
those behaviors that may be harmful, but determining which beliefs and
practices can help us to develop and implement culturally appropriate
and sensitive health care interventions.
In 2002, One HEART formed a committee of foreign and Tibetan
experts to address the difficult health problems facing the Tibetan
families around childbirth. The team includes physicians, midwives, and
doctors from the Tibetan traditional medicine hospital (Mentzikhang)
and the biomedical hospitals in Lhasa, as well as representatives from
the Ministry of Health. The team discussed new ways to focus our
collective expertise in a capacity building effort in the TAR. Out of
this group, the Curriculum and Research Development Committee was
formed and they have taken a leadership role in directing these
efforts, helping to develop research protocols for designing and
teaching curriculums. One HEART's work with this committee is ongoing
and as time and training progresses, we anticipate that the Tibetans
will assume more and more responsibility for these programs.
During the fall of 2002, One HEART gained permission from the Lhasa
Health Bureau to review and analyze death records for infants and
children in Medrogongar County. It is clear that there are significant
challenges even collecting maternal and child health data in such
remote and inaccessible villages as those found in Tibet. The results
confirmed previous observations and also highlighted the main causes of
death. The single main cause of death in Tibetan children is death
related to childbirth. From 1997-2002, 154 out of 339 deaths occurred
on the day of birth and were charted as ``breathlessness.''
Subsequently, Drs. Bernhard Fassl and Reini Jensen interviewed over 90
families who had one or more babies die at birth. This data helped us
to analyze the causes of newborn ``breathlessness'' and stillbirth and
understand the causes and events that lead to these deaths. The three
main causes of ``breathlessness'' appear to be: first, the absence of
trained birth attendants; second, the inadequate management of babies
who are not breathing at birth; and third, insufficient protection from
hypothermia.
Along with our Tibetan partners from the Health Bureau, One HEART
is developing interventions that are both culturally acceptable and
self-sustainable and implementing them in our training programs and
public outreach messages. Tibetan and foreign experts agree that
consistent and continued training in basic midwifery skills and
emergency obstetric services, combined with community outreach messages
regarding safe motherhood, can, over time, significantly decrease the
number of women and children dying in childbirth.
In April of this year, through funding from the Citizen Exchange
Program of the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and
Cultural Affairs and One HEART, a group of six Tibetan doctors and
Health workers is coming to the United States for one month of medical
training. This experience not only develops their medical skills, but
upon their return to Tibet, they can pass on this information to their
fellow health workers.
As you can see, we face many challenges in the Tibet Autonomous
Region. At times, our task seems daunting, however with the passionate
commitment of our staff and volunteers and with continued funding from
the U.S. Government, private corporations, foundations, and individual
donors, One HEART is making a difference in Tibet, one birth at a time.
Thank you for your time.
Submissions for the Record
----------
Poverty Among Tibetan Nomads: Profiles of Poverty and Strategies for
Poverty Reduction and Sustainable Development\1\
SUBMITTED BY DANIEL MILLER\2\
INTRODUCTION TO THE TIBETAN PASTORAL AREA
The Tibetan nomadic pastoral area, located on the Tibetan plateau
in western China, is one of the world's most remarkable grazingland
ecosystems (Ekvall 1974, Goldstein and Beall 1990, Miller 1998c).
Stretching for almost 3,000 km from west to east and 1,500 km from
south to north and encompassing about 1.6 million sq. km., the Tibetan
pastoral area makes up almost half of China's total rangeland area,
equivalent in size to almost the entire land area of the country of
Mongolia. As such, the Tibetan pastoral area is one of the largest
pastoral areas on earth.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Prepared for the Roundtable before the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China, March 19, 2004.
\2\ Agriculture Development Officer, U.S. Agency for International
Development, Washington, DC.
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The Tibetan pastoral area sustains an estimated two million nomads
and an additional three million agro-pastoralists and supports a large
livestock population of some 10 million yaks and 30 million sheep and
goats. Tibetan nomadic pastoralism is distinct ecologically from
pastoralism in most other regions of the world (Ekvall 1968, Miller
2000). The key distinguishing factors that separate Tibetan nomadic
areas from cultivated areas are altitude and temperature, in contrast
to most other pastoral areas where the key factor is usually the lack
of water. Tibetan nomads prosper at altitudes from 3,000 to 5,000 m in
environments too cold for crop cultivation. Yet, at these elevations
there is still extensive and very productive grazing land that provides
nutritious forage for nomads' herds. Tibetan pastoralism has flourished
to this day because there has been little encroachment into the nomadic
areas by farmers trying to plow up the grass and plant crops. A unique
animal, the yak also distinguishes Tibetan nomadic pastoralism, which
is superbly adapted to the high altitude, cold environment. The wild
yak is the progenitor of all domestic yak populations. The
domestication of the wild yak, about 4,000 years ago, was a key factor
in the development of Tibetan civilization.
The nomadic pastoral systems developed by Tibetan nomads were a
successful adaptation to life in one of the most inhospitable places on
earth (Clarke 1998, Manderscheid 2001a, Goldstein and Beall 1990,
Miller 1998a). Over centuries, nomads acquired complex indigenous
knowledge about the environment in which they lived and upon which
their lives depended. Tibetan nomads mitigated environmental risks
through strategies that enhanced diversity, flexibility, linkages to
support networks, and self-sufficiency. Diversity is crucial to
pastoral survival. Tibetan nomads keep a diverse mix of livestock in
terms of species and class; they use a diverse mosaic of grazing sites,
exploiting seasonal and annual variability in forage resources; and
they maintain a diverse mix of goals for livestock production. The
organizational flexibility of traditional Tibetan nomadic pastoralism,
which emphasized mobility of the multi-species herds, developed as a
rational response to the unpredictability of the ecosystem (Goldstein
et al. 1990, Levine 1998, Miller 1999b, Wu 1997).
The economic viability and environmental sustainability of Tibetan
pastoral production systems are under considerable scrutiny these days
(Ciwang 2000, Sheehy 2000, Wu and Richard 1999, Yan and Luo 2000).
Tibetan nomads are some of the poorest people in China and reducing
poverty in the Tibetan pastoral areas is a daunting challenge. Many
nomads are caught in a downward spiral of increasing poverty, frequent
risk of livestock loss from severe snowstorms, physical insecurity, and
rangeland degradation (Clarke 1998, Gelek 1998, Miller 2000). With
rangelands increasingly being divided and allocated to individual
households it is also becoming more difficult for nomads to increase
livestock numbers, thus limiting their options to earn more income from
increased numbers of animals and have a chance to rise out of poverty.
Developing strategies to address poverty among Tibetan nomads requires
an understanding of China's approach to rural development and poverty
reduction in the pastoral regions and better knowledge about the nature
of poverty in Tibetan pastoral areas.
BACKGROUND ON RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE PASTORAL REGIONS OF WESTERN
CHINA
In much of China's pastoral region, including the Tibetan areas,
traditional livestock production and grazing management strategies have
been greatly altered in the past several decades as the nomadic way of
life has been transformed to one more oriented toward a market economy
(Cincotta et al. 1992, Manderscheid 2001b, Miller 2000). Following the
establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the goal for
agriculture has been to increase grain production, which resulted in
the conversion of large areas of marginal rangeland to crop land; much
of which was later abandoned as rain-fed grain production in the semi-
arid areas proved futile.
Since the early 1980s, goals for the pastoral areas have been to
increase livestock offtake, which has been promoted through the
privatization of herds and rangelands, sedentarization of herders,
intensive grazing management strategies, and introduction of rain-fed
farming techniques for growing forage and fodder. Many of these
developments were responses to economic objectives. In many cases,
however, they have conflicted with the goal of maintaining rangeland
ecosystem health and stability. In addition, they have not always been
consistent with the local herders' own goals (World Bank 2001b).
Longworth and Williamson (1993) concluded that the pastoral areas have
been negatively affected by three sets of policy-related issues:
population pressures; market distortions; and institutional
uncertainties. These factors have interacted with the adoption of new
technologies, including the opening of additional water wells and
animal health programs; supplementary winter fodder/feed from
agricultural byproducts; and cultivation of improved pasture, which in
many cases has led to an increase in livestock numbers, thus, leading
to rangeland degradation.
With the decollectivization of the agricultural sector, China has
achieved remarkable agricultural and rural growth, greatly reduced
poverty and addressed many environmental and natural resource
degradation problems. The livestock sub-sector has experienced
especially strong growth and rapid expansion during the past two
decades and the livestock sub-sector has consistently outperformed the
agricultural sector as a whole (Nyberg and Rozelle 1999). Average
annual economic growth rates close to ten percent, combined with
specific efforts to diversify regionally and within the sub-sector have
contributed significantly to raise farmers' and herders' incomes and
has improved the availability and variety of food and livestock
products for local and export markets.
Reforms in the rural areas have been deliberate, gradual, and quite
effective as the rural sector has moved away from a planned economy.
The total number of people living in absolute poverty in the country
has dropped to some 106 million, or about 11.5 percent of the
population. The Chinese government has a strong commitment to poverty
reduction, and the scale and funding of its poverty reduction program,
and the sustained dramatic reduction of absolute poverty over the last
20 years of reform, are exemplary (World Bank 2001a). Replicating these
accomplishments and improving sustainability in the future, however,
will be more difficult as many of the potential gains from the
transition reforms have been achieved and weak demand has now slowed
growth.
A recent World Bank study (Nyberg and Rozelle 1999) concluded that
future productivity gains in the agricultural sector will have to come
from greater efficiencies of production, stimulated by market forces,
and greater productivity of scarce natural resources through improved
natural resource management and introduction of new technologies.
Sustained rural development will also require more dynamic and
effective rural institutions and financial systems, improved land
tenure regimes, improved incentives for investing in agricultural
development, liberalization of production, pricing and marketing
policies, and better targeted investments in rural
infrastructure and social services. There is also evidence now
indicating that an increasing share of the remaining rural poor are
concentrated in China's western provinces, and mostly within remote and
mountainous townships. The educational, health, and nutritional status
of these remaining rural poor is deplorable, and minority peoples are
known to represent a highly disproportionate share of the rural poor
(World Bank 2001a).
Animal husbandry is one of the few major industries upon which
further economic development of the strategically important pastoral
areas in western China can be built. However, in the context of the
Chinese agricultural sector, animal husbandry ranks a poor second in
importance to grain production. Furthermore, within the animal
husbandry sub-sector, pastoral livestock have not received as much
emphasis compared to pigs, poultry and dairy cattle. Consequently, at
the national level and even in most pastoral provinces, relatively few
research or administrative resources have been devoted to pastoral
livestock problems.
In addition to the emerging strategic and political significance of
the pastoral area, the changing food consumption patterns in China have
awakened new interest in ruminant livestock grazed on the rangelands.
The growing consumer preference for milk and meat is forcing a
reassessment of priorities within the Chinese animal husbandry sub-
sector (Longworth and Williamson 1993). As China modernizes, the
rangelands are expected to help meet the country's growing demands for
livestock products in the future.
China is facing major difficulties dealing with the simultaneous
problems of improving the livelihoods of the pastoral population while
protecting and maintaining the numerous economic and environmental
benefits provided by rangeland ecosystems (Smith and Foggin 2000,
Sneath 1998). Current information on rangeland degradation suggests
that current strategies are not working (Ling 2000, Liu et al. 1999.
Liu and Zhao 2001). Rangeland degradation is caused by many complex
factors, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the most
fundamental underlying cause has been poor government development
policies relating to the pastoral areas (World Bank 2001). Other
problems include a general lack of applied, cross-
disciplinary, and ecosystem-level research, which would provide a
better basis for developing more integrated and sustainable rangeland
management systems. A disproportionate amount of rangeland research is
oriented to livestock and ways to maximize productivity from intensive
livestock production, rather than understanding how livestock fit into
the rangeland ecosystem and how to optimize production in an
environmentally and socially sustainable way.
China is also facing a dilemma regarding the effective
privatization of land tenure in the context of its pastoral areas
(World Bank 2001b). A
concerted effort is now underway to establish clearly defined
individual private property rights to land by allocating grassland to
individual herders on long-term contracts. This policy entails high
transaction costs, both private and public. Strict interpretation of
the policy by local officials also prevents the adoption of more
innovative forms of group-based rangeland tenure systems, often based
on the traditional grazing management systems.
Despite the growing awareness of and interest in the pastoral areas
in Chinese policymaking circles, remarkably little research has been
undertaken on a systematic basis in the pastoral areas. For example,
while considerable effort has been devoted to surveying the extent of
rangeland degradation, there have been almost no studies of the policy/
institutional framework within which the degradation problem has
emerged. Indeed, in China, rangeland degradation is widely perceived as
a technical problem for which there are technological solutions
(Longworth and Williamson 1993).
In China, many attitudes toward rangelands appear to be influenced
by the notion that sedentary agriculture, particularly crop-based
agriculture, is the superior development option. Rangelands are viewed
as systems to be controlled and modified, much like cropland, rather
than to be managed as natural ecosystems. This view is reflected in
many of the terms that are used in discussion of pastoral development
such as ``grassland construction'' and ``grassland ecological-
engineering'' (Miller 2002b). Development is focused on agronomic and
production aspects instead of ecological sustainability. There appears
to be little acceptance of the fact that most of the rangeland in China
is of low productivity or that this situation is unalterable, either
for ecological, technical and/or economic reasons (World Bank 2001).
There is a similarly narrow-minded view of the validity of
traditional nomadic pastoral production practices (Clarke 1987,
Goldstein and Beall 1991, Miller 2002b). The purposeful, seasonal
movement of nomads' herds is often viewed as ``wandering'' and an
unsound type of use of the rangeland, instead of an efficient
utilization of forage. Traditional herd structures, perfected over
centuries, are seen as ``irrational'' and ``uneconomic.'' Nomads
themselves are often perceived as ``backward'' and ``ignorant'' (Box
1). Nomads have played an important role in the rangelands of China for
thousands of years. As such, the social dimension of rangeland
ecosystems should be an important aspect of research and development in
the pastoral areas of China but, unfortunately, it is not.
In China, both organizational divisions between academic
disciplines and the intellectual assumption that view human beings as
separate from their natural environment have impeded the integration of
social and natural scientific research (NRC 1992). Chinese rangeland
research primarily focuses on biotic interactions among soils, plants,
and herbivores, with little attention paid to the behaviors and motives
of the pastoralists. When Chinese researchers do focus on pastoralists,
the information is typically limited to narrow economic parameters,
reporting such figures as animal units, stocking ratios, and
production/consumption levels (Williams 2002).
The issue is compounded by the rather narrow approach taken to
rangeland ecosystem research in China. There has been a general lack of
applied, interdisciplinary ecosystem-level research, which would
provide a better basis for developing more integrated and sustainable
rangeland and pastoral development programs. Researchers have generally
neglected such topics as the effects of traditional pastoral systems on
rangeland ecology, the dynamics of herd growth and traditional risk
management strategies among nomads, and the impact of large numbers of
Han Chinese farmers into pastoral areas to convert rangeland to
cropland.
Box 1. Nomads ``in the way'' of Modernization
Chinese rangeland policy initiatives are informed by a long
history of antagonism with the grassland environment and its
native inhabitants. For centuries, Chinese literati viewed and
described neighboring mobile populations and their homelands in
the most disparaging terms. These derogatory Confucian
attitudes were only strengthened by Marxist orthodoxy after
1949. The Marx-Lenin-Mao line of political philosophy viewed
nomadic pastoralism as an evolutionary dead-end standing in
opposition to national progress, scientific rationalism, and
economic development. Mainstream Chinese intellectuals in the
reform era still consider the land and people to be ``in the
way'' of modernization--obsolete and disposable in their
traditional composition.
Source: Williams (2002:10)
A serious re-evaluation of the approach being taken to rangeland
management and pastoral development in China is needed (World Bank
2001b). While there is no doubt that China's diverse efforts to prevent
particular types of land degradation are having positive effects in
some areas, and there are some promising new productivity enhancing
technologies for some locations, there has been insufficient adaptation
of strategies and policies to suit local environmental or social
conditions. The tendency has been to apply a ``one-size-fits-all''
approach, which is not acceptable given the diversity of rangeland
ecosystems, the different pastoral production practices, and the
cultural diversity of the people who rely on the rangelands (World Bank
2001b).
There is growing awareness among policymakers in Beijing that the
rangelands and the animal husbandry related industries in the pastoral
areas are under serious threat (World Bank 2001b). There is also
concern with the lack of economic development that has taken place in
the pastoral areas of western China and the fact that minority
pastoralists are some of the poorest people in China. Evidence of this
is the development of the Great Western Development Plan that will
target investments in the western provinces and autonomous regions,
including Tibet.
In the Tibetan pastoral areas, stimulating agricultural growth,
reducing poverty, and managing the environment are huge challenges.
Here, complex interactive issues related to the environment,
technology, policies, and human population growth greatly hamper
development (Levine 1999, Miller 1998b, Richard 2000). The key issues
for sustainable development in the pastoral areas of the Tibetan
plateau are: widespread poverty; rangeland degradation; unsustainable
livestock production practices; poor market development; and lack of
community participation in the development process.
POVERTY AMONG TIBETAN NOMADS
In China, the Tibetan pastoral areas exhibit some of the highest
incidence and intensity of poverty. Poverty in the Tibetan pastoral
areas is due to many factors but the major causes of poverty include:
(1) the harsh environment, characterized by cold temperatures, sandy or
infertile soils, drought, snowstorms; (2) low agricultural
productivity; (3) lack of financing and access to modern technologies
to improve productivity; (4) low literacy levels and poor education
systems; and (5) poor health care systems. In addition, the relatively
high rates of population growth and large family size have trapped many
families in continuing poverty. Frequent
natural disasters, such as snowstorms that decimate livestock herds,
can greatly increase the levels of poverty in pastoral areas. In
addition, nomads' incomes are usually low and their asset base is often
small, conditions that frequently undermine their health, well-being,
and potential to make improvements in their livelihoods.
Poverty exhibits certain common characteristics, but the Tibetan
nomadic pastoral population and the poverty they experience have
distinct features. The pastoral areas of the Tibetan Plateau have a
small human population that is widely spread across physically isolated
locations. Tibetan nomads are usually less healthy, less educated, and
tend to experience poorer service delivery and declining employment
opportunities than in other regions. Tibetan nomads usually face
interlocking barriers to economic, social and political opportunities.
They also lack a political voice because they are remote from the seats
of power. These factors limit their access to basic infrastructure,
undermine their ability to obtain social services, and in some cases
reduce their rights to own or access land. Due to heavy reliance on
rangeland-resource based livestock production systems, Tibetan
pastoralists are very vulnerable to climatic changes and natural
disasters. For example, the winter of 1997/98 was very severe across
much of the Tibetan Plateau and an estimated 3 million head of
livestock died in the Tibetan Autonomous Region alone, leading to
greatly increased poverty among the pastoral population (Miller 1998b).
In the Tibetan pastoral area, the challenges for rural development
are especially daunting. Despite the political and strategic importance
of the region, rural economic growth has not been very significant.
Poverty is still pervasive. Widespread poverty inhibits rural
development as well as the capacity of the region to seize new economic
opportunities. Most Tibetan nomads have low cash savings rates and
seldom participate in formal loan and credit programs. In general,
nomads seldom take out loans to improve grasslands because it usually
takes too long for returns to be generated. Most herders also simply
sell animals to meet cash needs. There are also great differences
between pastoral regions in terms of integration with the market
economy and in the degree to which the production system has been
transformed from nomadic to semi-nomadic or sedentary (Levine 1999,
Manderscheid 2001b). Rapid economic differentiation among herders has
meant that some are able to use market opportunities to their
advantage, while others are only subject to market vagaries and depend
largely on subsistence production. Distance from towns, roads, and
markets are important factors contributing to poverty as are cultural
practices.
Poverty in the Tibetan pastoral areas is extremely heterogeneous.
Many of the poor herders, both individuals and households, are
economically active and possess a mix of income sources while others,
especially the elderly, disabled and women-headed households, have to
rely on other families and government support for survival. Animal
husbandry remains the primary source of income, employment and
livelihood for Tibetan herders, and a flourishing livestock sector is
necessary to reduce poverty. There are few alternative sources of
income and employment outside of the livestock sector for Tibetan
herders. This is in contrast to many other rural poor areas of China
where poor farmers are turning to the rural non-farm sector for
employment and alternative sources of income. Many of the rural poor
from other parts of China also migrate to the cities in search of work,
which is generally not the case for Tibetan nomads. Since livestock
production on the Tibetan Plateau is very dependent on the vagaries of
nature, there is great annual and interannual variation in income and
consumption. This often leads to the poorest pastoral households
experiencing considerable deprivation during tough times, which can
have adverse long-term consequences for babies and young children.
Widespread poverty in the Tibetan pastoral area also affects rural
communities and hinders their ability, and the government's ability, to
provide adequate social services, maintain roads, and create economic
opportunities. Tackling poverty in the pastoral areas is constrained
because of the poor understanding of the nature of poverty in these
areas--who the poor are and the obstacles they face--and lack of
reliable information about the farming systems and nomadic pastoral
production. To date, the nomads have not participated fully in the
assessment, planning and implementation of development programs and
policies that affect their lives. Government programs have generally
taken a top-down approach and, despite their good intentions, have
often been hampered because nomads themselves were not involved in the
design and implementation of activities and by faulty assumptions about
poverty and Tibetan nomads' pastoral production systems.
Reducing poverty among Tibetan nomads in Western China is a major
development challenge. Efforts to reduce poverty and improve
livelihoods of pastoralists must address the roots of rural poverty.
Fully understanding rural poverty and defining an effective poverty
reduction strategy are preconditions to action (World Bank 2000).
Tackling poverty in pastoral areas is constrained because of the poor
understanding of the nature of poverty--who are the poor and the
obstacles they face--and reliable information about the pastoral
production system.
PROFILES OF POVERTY AMONG TIBETAN NOMADS
To better understand the nature of poverty among Tibetan nomads,
profiles of poverty are presented for Naqu Prefecture in the Tibetan
Autonomous Region. Naqu Prefecture encompasses about 400,000 km2, or
about one-third of the total land area of the Tibetan Autonomous
Region. There are 11 counties in Naqu Prefecture, including 147
townships (xiang) and 1,527 Administrative Villages. The total human
population of Naqu is about 340,000 people, in about 50,000 households.
Nomadic herders make up about 90 percent of the population and these
nomads are almost totally dependent upon livestock for a livelihood.
Naqu's rangelands support a livestock population of about 6.8 million
animals, consisting of yaks, cattle, sheep, goats, and horses. Naqu is
predominantly a nomadic livestock area and rangelands are estimated to
cover about 87 percent of the total land area of the Prefecture. About
65 percent of the rangeland is considered to be usable rangeland. There
is some crop cultivation that takes place in the lower elevation
regions of Jiali Sokshan and Biru counties.
The proportion of different livestock species raised by nomads in
Naqu Prefecture differs across the region according to rangeland
factors and the suitability of the landscape for different animals.
Herd compositions within a geographic area can also vary with the
skills, preferences and availability of labor of the nomads. Across
most of western Naqu Prefecture, sheep and goats are more common than
yaks. For example, in Shuanghu County in northwest Naqu, yaks only make
up 4 percent of total livestock numbers. In contrast, yaks comprise 53
percent of all livestock 400 km to the east in Jiali County. These
differences can largely be explained by differences in vegetation
between the two areas. In Shuanghu, the climate is drier and the
dominant alpine steppe and desert steppe is better suited to goats and
sheep. In Jiali, which is in the alpine meadow vegetation formation,
there is more annual rainfall and the rangeland ecosystem is better
suited to raising yaks.
The dynamics of poverty among Tibetan nomads can be better
understood from Tables 1-6 which present data from Takring and Dangmo
Townships in Naqu County. Many nomads interviewed indicated that an
ideal herd for an average nomad family (about 5 people) to have a good
life would be 40 yaks and 200 sheep/goats. However, as indicated in
Table 1, nomads in Taking and Dangmo on an average basis only have
about 30 yaks and 50-75 sheep/goats per family. This is considerably
less than the ideal.
Table 1.--Livestock Per Household in Takring and Dangmo Townships
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheep Goats
Township Yaks per per per
family family family
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Takring................................... 31 38 12
Dangmo.................................... 30 52 15
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Township Records, 1999.
Table 2 depicts the number of animal sold and consumed per family,
on an average basis for the two townships of Takring and Dangmo. The
data indicates that the nomads in these two townships have very few
animals to sell for cash income. Most of their production goes to
subsistence for their own consumption. This reflects the fact that
average herd sizes are quite low and provide little offtake for income
earning purposes or to buy additional items the family may require.
Table 2.--Livestock Sold and Consumed Per Family in Takring and Dangmo Townships
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yaks Sheep Goats
Yaks eaten Sheep eaten Goats eaten
Township sold per per sold per per sold per per
family family family family family family
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Takring............................................. 0.49 2.17 3.97 10.74 0.12 2.86
Dangmo.............................................. 0.84 1.81 1.73 8.25 0.07 1.49
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Township Records, 1999.
Table 3 shows the income earned per family from livestock and
livestock products on an average basis for Dangmo Township. The
greatest amount of income is earned from yaks and then from sheep. Yaks
provide 74 percent of the total income from all livestock products for
nomads.
Table 3.--Income Per Family From Livestock Products in Dangmo Township
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yak Sheep Goat
Sheep wool sold Goat cashmere Yak cashmere sold sold sold
Township per family sold per family sold per family per per per
family family family
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dangmo........................ 30.8 jin......... 1.45 jin........ 11.86 jin....... 0.84 1.73 0.07
Value in RMB.................. @3 = 92.4........ @70 = 101.5..... @10 = 118.6..... 1,428 432 7
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prices for live animals: Yak @ RMB 1700, Sheep @ RMB 250 Goat @ RMB 100. 1 jin equals 0.5 kg.
Table 4 depicts the total economic output from Dangmo Township for
1999. The data shows that yaks contribute a majority of the economic
output, almost 60 percent of the total economic value. Although sales
of wool and cashmere are important, raising sheep and yaks for home
consumption and sale are key factors in pastoral production among
Tibetan nomads in Naqu.
Table 4.--Economic Output from Dangmo Township for 1999
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Value Percent
Product (yuan) of total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
12,200 jin of sheep wool @ Y 3.5.................. 42,700 1.4
576 jin of goat cashmere @ Y 70................... 40,320 1.3
4,697 jin of yak cashmere @ 10.................... 46.970 1.5
1,048 yak @ Y 1,700............................... 1,781,600 59.6
3,952 sheep @ 250................................. 988,000 33.1
617 goat @ Y 100.................................. 61,700 2.1
4 horses @ Y 7,000................................ 28,000 0.9
---------------------
2,989,290 99.9
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: includes total animals sold and consumed by the households. Not
included is wool used and butter/cheese eaten. Very little butter/
cheese is sold from Dangmo.
Table 5 shows total livestock numbers and total annual offtake by
livestock species in Takring and Dangmo Township. Yak offtake, which
includes animals sold and eaten makes up about 8 percent of the total
herd. Sheep offtake is about 38 percent in Takring and 19 percent in
Dangmo. Goat offtake is 23 percent in Takring and only 10 percent in
Dangmo. The differences between Takring and Dangmo cannot be totally
explained by livestock numbers per household as Takring actually has
fewer sheep per household, on an average basis, than Dangmo but has
higher offtake. Some of this is probably due to access to markets as
Takring is much closer to the main market in Naqu.
Table 5.--Livestock Numbers and Total Annual Offtake in Takring and Dangmo Townships
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Yak offtake Total Sheep offtake Total Goat offtake
Township yak (percent) sheep (percent) goat (percent)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Takring....................... 20,780 1,742 (8.4)...... 25,028 9,622 (38.4).... 8,371 1,958 (23.4)
Dangmo........................ 11,718 1,048 (8.0)...... 20,710 3,952 (19.0).... 5,778 617 (10.7)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Township Records, 1999.
Table 6 depicts the percentage of livestock, by species, that are
either sold or consumed by the nomads. In Takring, of total yak
offtake, only 18 percent are sold, but 82 percent are for home
consumption. The ratio for sheep in Takring is 27 percent sold and 73
percent consumed by nomads themselves. What is interesting is that very
few goats are sold, which probably reflects the low demand for goat
meat in markets in Tibet. Goats are raised primarily for cashmere and
as meat for the nomads themselves.
Table 6.--Livestock Sold and Consumed for Takring and Dangmo Townships
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yak sold Yak eaten Sheep sold Sheep eaten Goat sold Goat eaten
Township (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent) (percent)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Takring......................... 320 (18).......... 1,422 (82)........ 2,598 (27)........ 7,024 (73)........ 81 (4)............ 1,875 (96)
Dangmo.......................... 332 (32).......... 716 (68).......... 686 (17).......... 3,266 (83)........ 28 (5)............ 589 (95)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Township Records, 1999.
The type of information presented above helps understand the
nomads' pastoral production system and has implications for
development. For example, the data shows the importance of the nomads'
livestock production for home consumption. There is little excess
livestock or livestock products available for sale. Development
interventions that improve nomads' risk management and strive to reduce
livestock losses and improve productivity could result in additional
animals for sale which could lead to improvements in nomads'
livelihoods.
Nomadic pastoral production is labor intensive as yaks have to be
milked, animals have to be herded and cared for, manure needs to be
collected and dried for fuel, butter and cheese need to be made, water
needs to be fetched, clothing and tents need to be woven, kids need to
be looked after and fed and there are seasonal activities such as
lambing, shearing, 1hay-making, and medicinal plant collecting that
require extra effort. Households with inadequate labor to raise enough
livestock have been especially affected and become trapped in poverty.
Those families with adequate labor, but who have been poor managers of
their livestock and grazing land also face difficulties. With the
division and allocation of rangeland to households taking place across
much of the Tibetan nomadic pastoral area, even poor households now
have grazing land that belongs to them and if they do not have enough
livestock they can rent pasture to richer nomads who have more
livestock than the determined carrying capacity of their allocated
rangeland.
The harsh environment of the Tibetan Plateau and especially
periodic, heavy snowfalls compounds the labor problem and even affects
those households with sufficient labor and who are good managers. Snow
disasters can decimate herds and cause even rich nomads to become poor.
Fencing of the more productive pastures to reserve them for winter/
spring grazing, the growing of hay and the construction of livestock
shelters greatly reduces the risk of losing animals during a bad
winter. Many nomads, especially those who can afford the investments,
are adopting pastoral risk management practices to reduce the danger of
losing animals to winter storms. Reducing mortality of young lambs and
yaks will provide the opportunity to earn more income and/or provide
more food for the family, since a large portion of nomads' livelihoods
comes from the home consumption of sheep and yaks and the sale of
animals. This can be accomplished by: (1) improving livestock
management, especially at lambing; (2) growing hay to feed in winter,
especially during later stages of pregnancy and lactation for sheep;
(3) fencing winter/spring pasture and deferring grazing on it during
the growing season so that forage is available in the winter/spring;
and (4) improved marketing of animals to reduce number of animals being
kept over the winter.
For poor nomads with few or no livestock at the current time but
who do have rangeland allocated to them, a sheep distribution program,
which provides adult female sheep to nomads can be a means to reduce
poverty. This is especially true if it is designed so that after 3-4
years the nomads return a number of sheep so that other poor households
can benefit. Livestock herd projections indicate that a nomad family
that is given 50 adult ewes would be able to build their herd up to
about 100 ewes in four years, even with giving back 40-50 ewe lambs in
the 4th year, and still sell the male animals every year (or a
combination of household consumption and sale). If a sheep distribution
program were linked with rangeland development and forage development
(growing of oats for hay to be fed in the winter) and an improved
livestock shed for lambing, the risk of losing animals in the winter
would be greatly reduced. Improved road access to what were previously
quite remote nomad areas also now allows nomads to take more advantage
of markets for livestock.
Tibetan nomads face considerable challenges in adjusting their
traditional pastoral production practices to the new rangeland tenure
arrangements now in place with the division and allocation of grazing
land to households and the general ``settling-down'' of nomads.
Opportunities for individuals to greatly expand livestock numbers are
now limited because herders must balance livestock numbers with the
carrying capacity of the rangeland. Nomads are compelled to become
livestock ranchers and to optimize animal productivity on finite
amounts of grazing land. This requires greatly improved management of
the rangelands and livestock, rehabilitation of degraded rangeland,
more efficient marketing of livestock and livestock products, and, for
some nomad households, a move away from livestock production to other
cash income-earning activities.
NOMAD VULNERABILITY AND LIVESTOCK LOSSES
The winter of 1997-1998 was the worst in recent history for much of
the Tibetan nomadic pastoral area. Unusually heavy snowfall in late
September was followed by severe cold weather, which prevented the snow
from melting. Additional storms deposited more snow and by early
November grass reserved for winter grazing were buried under deep snow.
Yaks, sheep, and goats were unable to reach any forage and started to
die in large numbers. By early April 1998, it was estimated that the
Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) had lost over 3 million heads of
livestock (Miler 1998b). Naqu Prefecture in the north was especially
hard hit but many areas in the TAR were affected. Losses in Naqu
Prefecture alone were estimated at about one million animals, or about
15 percent of the Prefecture's total livestock population. In Nyerong
County as a whole, one of the areas hit hardest, 30 percent of the
livestock died and some townships within the county lost as many as 70
percent. Many townships in Nyerong and other counties lost 40 to 50
percent of their domestic
animals. Almost one quarter of a million nomads were affected and
hundreds of families lost all their animals. Economic losses from
livestock deaths alone were
estimated at US$ 125 million in the Tibetan Autonomous Region.
Nomads suffered greatly as a result of the heavy snowfalls. Because
the snow came so early, many nomads were caught with their animals
still in the summer pastures and were unable to drive the livestock to
winter quarters where some hay and feed was available. Many nomads were
unable to sell animals they had planned to market in the fall of 1997,
or even to barter livestock for barley grain they require. As a result,
nomads lost not only their animals but also their source of income to
purchase necessities they require. Many families fed whatever grain
they had for themselves to their livestock to try to save the animals
from dying. Before the snowstorms began, it was estimated that 20
percent of Naqu Prefecture's 340,000 nomadic population were considered
to be living in poverty. As a result of the livestock losses
experienced during the winter of 1997-1998, it is estimated that about
40 percent of the nomad population in Naqu Prefecture were facing
poverty. Many other nomads, although still technically above the
poverty line, had their livelihoods reduced. The effect of the winter
of 1997-1998 will reverberate among the affected nomads for many years
to come, as it will take considerable time for nomads to buildup their
herds again.
The devastating effect of severe snowstorms is illustrated in
Tables 7-10 for Nyerong County, Naqu Prefecture of the Tibetan
Autonomous Region. Nyerong County as a whole lost 24 percent and 20
percent, respectively, of their yak and sheep population during the
severe winter of 1997-98. Sangrong Township was especially hard hit. In
Sangrong, total livestock population in 1998 was less than half what is
was the previous year (Table 8). On a household basis, the losses were
especially severe with average number of yaks per household dropping
from 44 to 18 and sheep declining from 63 to 28 (Table 9). Some
Administrative Villages within Sangrong Township were especially
affected by the severe winter losses with livestock numbers per
household declining drastically (Table 10).
Table 7.--Livestock Data for Nyerong County, 1998
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Death
Herd loss in Offtake Offtake in
End of 1998 Composition Percent Death percent sold and percent of
Population (percent) Females losses 1998 of eaten total
total numbers
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yaks............................................................. 129,189 32.8 53.4 43,880 23.8 10,853 5.9
Sheep............................................................ 219,105 55.6 51.1 63,002 19.1 48,386 14.6
Goats............................................................ 38,650 9.8 58.5 8,007 15.3 5,549 10.6
Horse............................................................ 6,760 1.7 42.2 1,184 14.9 0
--------------
Total........................................................ 393,704
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: County Records.
Table 8.--Livestock Population For Sangrong Township, Nyerong County
1996-1998
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1996 1997 1998
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yak.................................... 12,653 13,631 5,670
Sheep.................................. 20,461 19,570 8,826
Goats.................................. 2,848 2,800 1,470
Horse.................................. 425 401 314
--------------------------------
Total.............................. 36,387 36,402 16,280
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Township Records.
Table 9.--Numbers of Class of Animals and Sheep Equivalent Units (SEUs)
Per Household and Per Person in Sangrong Township, Nyerong County for
1996-1998
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1996 1997 1998
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yaks per household........................... 40.8 43.9 18.1
Sheep per household.......................... 66.0 63.1 28.2
Goats per household.......................... 9.2 9.0 4.7
SEUs per household........................... 285.0 297.9 128.3
SEUs per person.............................. 56.5 58.8 25.5
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table 10.--Household and Livestock Data for Three Villages in Sangrong in 1996-1998
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Village #9 Village #11 Village #12
-----------------------------------------------------------
1996 1998 1996 1998 1996 1998
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Households.......................................... 24 26 25 27 30 30
People.............................................. 122 135 120 122 153 155
Yaks................................................ 1,312 632 1,134 374 1293 462
Sheep............................................... 2,483 814 1803 410 2,290 791
Goats............................................... 210 70 194 69 369 132
Horses.............................................. 28 18 39 23 61 36
Yak per household................................... 55 24 45 14 43 15
Sheep per household................................. 103 31 72 16 76 26
Goat per household.................................. 9 3 8 3 12 4
Horse per household................................. 1.16 0.69 1.56 0.85 2.03 1.2
SEUs per household.................................. 390 159 314 91 313 114
SEUs per person..................................... 77 31 65 20 61 22
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Township Records.
Tables 11-13, present data from Dangmo Township, Naqu County,
Tibetan Autonomous Region that also helps illustrate the impact of
severe snowstorms on nomads and how these climatic events can con
tribute to poverty. Table 11 shows end of year livestock population for
the years 1995-1998. The number of yaks declined from 11,268 to 10, 551
and sheep numbers declined from 20,345 to 18,188 between 1997 and 1998.
Table 12 shows total offtake and total number of livestock that died,
by species, for years 1995-1996. Table 13 shows percent offtake and
percent death loss of the total herd for each species. Although losses
from the severe winter of 1997/98 were not as great as in Sangrong
Township, losses were still high, with 11 percent death loss in sheep
and over 7 percent in yaks. In 1998, numbers of animals that died were
almost equal to number of animals eaten and sold.
Table 11.--Livestock Population for Dangmo Township, Naqu County for
1995-1998
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1995 1996 1997 1998
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yaks............................ 12,077 11,058 11,268 10,551
Sheep........................... 21,509 21,713 20,345 18,188
Goats........................... 5,062 5,142 4,051 4,890
Horse........................... 593 592 593 591
---------------------------------------
Total....................... 39,241 38,505 36,257 34,220
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Township Records.
Table 12.--Livestock Offtake and Death Loss in Dangmo Twp. for 1995-1998
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1995 1996 1997 1998
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Offtake Died Offtake Died Offtake Died Offtake Died
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yak............................. 615 340 1,011 990 1,115 450 966 920
Sheep........................... 3,076 805 3,417 1,443 4,527 1,573 3,083 2,748
Goats........................... 400 211 596 353 703 342 532 535
Horse........................... 29 5 38 18 29 17 59
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Township Records.
Table 13.--Percent Offtake and Death Loss of Total Herd for Dangmo Township, Naqu County, Tibet, 1995-1998
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1995 1996 1997 1998
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Offtake Died Total Offtake Died Total Offtake Died Total Offtake Died Total
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yak......................................................... 4.7 2.6 7.3 7.7 7.6 15.3 8.7 3.5 12.2 7.7 7.4 15.1
Sheep....................................................... 12.1 1.9 14.0 12.8 5.4 18.2 17.1 5.9 23.0 12.8 11.4 24.2
Goats....................................................... 7.1 3.7 10.8 9.8 5.8 15.6 13.8 6.7 20.5 8.9 8.9 17.8
Horse....................................................... 0 4.6 4.6 0.8 5.9 6.7 2.8 4.5 7.3 2.5 8.8 11.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Township Records.
ELEMENTS OF A POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGY FOR TIBETAN NOMADS
The profiles of poverty among Tibetan nomads described above shows
the diverse nature of poverty among Tibetan nomads and the many
challenges they face. In addition to a lack of animals and income to
meeting basic human needs, many nomads also lack basic services such as
health and education. Poor nutrition is also a problem. Reducing
vulnerability, powerlessness, and inequality are critical challenges in
pastoral areas. A poverty reduction strategy for Tibetan nomads should
encompass the main determinants of poverty, promote economic
opportunities, facilitate empowerment, reduce vulnerability, and
determine exit strategies (World Bank 2000).
Promote economic opportunities for poor nomads
The main determinant of poverty reduction is a robust rural economy
with sustained growth and efficiency. This requires improving
agricultural productivity, fostering non-farm activities, developing
rural infrastructure, and expanding markets. A strategy for poverty
reduction for Tibetan nomads should promote rural incomes and
employment by fostering economic growth in livestock and non-farm
sectors, liberalizing access and removing market distortions, and
increasing accessibility to infrastructure, knowledge, and information
systems. Such measures would lead to faster access to and accumulation
of productive assets (human, physical, natural, and financial)
controlled by the pastoralists and/or increase returns to those assets.
Public policy choices to increase incomes and assets of nomads include:
<bullet> Providing greater security for those assets they already
possess, e.g., strengthening rights to rangeland and improving or
preserving adults' health status;
<bullet> Widening market access by nomads to productive assets,
including land, labor, and financial services;
<bullet> Facilitating micro-finance arrangements to promote the
accumulation of assets;
<bullet> Providing infrastructure, such as roads, electricity, and
other local public goods; and
<bullet> Accelerating the production and transfer of appropriate
new technology for rangeland and livestock production.
For nomad children, the priority is to ensure adequate nutrition,
followed by access to health care and education. The existence of well
functioning institutions and the efficiency of government expenditure
directly affect these opportunities.
Facilitate empowerment of nomads
Empowering nomads to take more charge of the development that is
affecting them is essential for poverty reduction. Sustainable
development in the Tibetan pastoral areas should encourage a social,
legal, and policy framework that enables nomads to more effectively
influence public decisions that affect them and/or reduce factors that
hinder their ability to earn a better livelihood. Since development
activities that affect nomads depend on the interaction of political,
social, and institutional processes, a poverty reduction strategy
should ensure that the political environment is conducive to civic
participation, and that government programs are decentralized and
transparent. Actions to facilitate empowerment of poor nomads include:
<bullet> Improving the functioning of institutions to facilitate
economic growth with equity by reducing bureaucratic and social
constraints to economic action and upward mobility;
<bullet> Laying a political, social, and legal basis for inclusive
development by establishing mechanisms for participatory
decisionmaking;
<bullet> Creating, sustaining, and integrating competitive markets
and related institutions that provide agricultural inputs and outputs;
<bullet> Reducing social barriers by removing ethnic and gender
bias and encouraging the representation of nomads in community,
provincial and national organizations;
<bullet> Fostering local empowerment and decisionmaking through
decentralization of administrative, fiscal and political structures;
<bullet> Strengthening the participation of nomads in public
service delivery;
<bullet> Eliminating biased pricing structures and other policies
that negatively affect herders and the rangeland environment; and
<bullet> Increasing public expenditures in pastoral areas.
How can Tibetan nomads be empowered and put more in charge of their
own future? It is becoming increasingly clear that local-level nomad
organizations, or pastoral associations, provide a path to empower
nomads. Pastoral associations are not new to Tibetan nomadic societies
as traditional grazing management practices often relied on group
herding arrangements and informal group tenure of rangelands. In many
areas, vestiges and new variations on traditional pastoral
organizations exist. However, the legal and regulatory frameworks often
do not support local-level nomad groups and group tenure arrangements.
Pastoral associations could help
facilitate the participation of nomads in the design and implementation
of development programs, improve the government's understanding of
pastoral systems, contribute to formulating more appropriate rules for
rangeland use, and reduce the level of government resources required
for monitoring rangelands. Pastoral associations could not only provide
a formal means for nomads to more effectively manage their rangelands,
but to do a better job of marketing their livestock and livestock
products as well. Empowering nomads requires a thorough understanding
of pastoral production systems, knowledge of existing group
arrangements and the incentive structures that exist for group actions
and new institutional arrangements. A change in attitudes toward nomads
and their production systems is also required.
Reduce the vulnerability of the poor nomads
Poverty entails not just an inability to guarantee basic needs, but
also a vulnerability to unexpected fluctuations both in future real
income and access to public services. Nomads throughout the Tibetan
plateau are exposed to considerable risks that affect their livestock
production system and their livelihoods. Risks are also associated with
markets, service delivery, and the very foundations of society and
polity. Many of these risks are highly localized while others are more
general. For many nomads, natural disasters in the form of severe
winter snowstorms poses one of the greatest risks and increases their
vulnerability to remaining trapped in poverty. To address this problem,
measures need to be taken to reduce ex ante exposure to risk and
improve the ex post capacity of the poor to cope with risk. Priority
actions to reduce ex ante exposure of nomads to risks might include:
<bullet> Developing early warning systems for droughts and
snowstorms;
<bullet> Improving public services, such as roads and health
clinics;
<bullet> Producing and transferring appropriate range-livestock
technology to herders, which improves livestock productivity; and
<bullet> Improving market accessibility for nomads to sell their
livestock and livestock products.
Possible priority actions to improve ex post capacity to cope with
risks could
include:
<bullet> Facilitating livestock restocking programs to replace
animals lost in the disasters.
Provide exit strategies for poor nomads
One of the primary goals of a poverty reduction strategy is to
promote broad-based economic growth that helps the poor climb out of
poverty, but in some cases in the pastoral areas this goal may be
difficult to achieve. One reason is that the natural resource base
cannot support the growing human population. Severe rangeland
degradation in some areas is already calling into question the
sustainability of current livestock production practices. In such
cases, possible exit strategies for tackling poverty could take the
form of migration of some people out of the most degraded areas and
establishing social support programs to assist the poor. In some
pastoral areas, permanent out-migration may be the most cost-effective
mechanism for reducing poverty.
Effects of policies and the economy on poverty
Macroeconomic policies and institutional reforms as well as the
quality of local governance have a profound affect on poverty in
pastoral areas. This is because they affect the rate of economic
growth, which is the single most important macroeconomic determinant of
poverty. They also influence the allocation of government funding and
shape the type of economic growth. Steady economic growth creates more
jobs and increases incomes, thus helping to reduce poverty. Growth also
increases tax revenues, enabling local governments to allocate more to
health and education, which work indirectly to reduce poverty.
Measuring progress in reducing poverty
It is important to monitor progress in reducing poverty among
nomads. Not only is monitoring an effective way to inform others about
the State of nomads' well being and encourage debate on development
approaches and priorities, but it also helps promote evidence-based
policymaking by senior decisionmakers. This allows more feasible
poverty reduction goals and targets to be determined for the future.
Monitoring requires selecting poverty indicators and setting poverty
reduction targets. Poverty indicators should be reliable, quick and
cheap. It is better to identify a few indicators and measure them well
rather than measure a number of indicators poorly. Indicators should
also show the direction of change in tackling poverty. Once indicators
are chosen, a baseline needs to be established to measure future
progress.
A recent World Bank (2001a) report on rural poverty in China
concludes that the key issue related to poverty reduction is not
allocating more funding, but the more efficient and effective use of
available resources. Findings from the study also indicate that both
the problems and the development opportunities facing the western
mountain areas have been underestimated, largely because of a lack of
an appropriate framework to develop local strategies and programs. The
widespread poverty in Tibetan pastoral areas suggest that efforts
should be expanded and improved to ensure that the broader gains of
economic and rural growth in the country are more widely shared among
the poor, nomadic Tibetan population.
FUTURE CHALLENGES
The Government of China has placed high priority on the sustainable
development of the pastoral areas in western China, including the
Tibetan areas. This is evident in the Western Development Strategy
which emphasizes two main objectives: (1) to reduce economic
disparities between the western and other regions; and (2) to ensure
sustainable natural resources management. In addition, while
sustainable growth in agriculture and ensuring food security was one of
the five key areas of China's development strategy articulated in the
Ninth Five Year Plan, in the 10th Five Year Plan, there has been a
noticeable shift in the focus away from increased quantities of
agricultural products toward improved quality and more ecologically
sound types of production. Thus, China appears committed to address
rangeland degradation and poverty in the pastoral regions. However, it
is confronting major difficulties in dealing with the simultaneous
short and long-term tradeoffs, such as improving the welfare of people
living in pastoral areas and protecting and maintaining the numerous
economic and environmental benefits provided by rangeland ecosystems.
A critical crisis is emerging as China attempts to transform the
traditional Tibetan nomadic pastoral system to one more oriented toward
a market economy. Livestock development has been promoted through the
privatization of herds and rangeland, intensive grazing management
strategies with the construction of fences, and introduction of rain-
fed farming techniques for growing forage. Many of these interventions
have been responses to political or economic objectives and while they
have improved the delivery of social services, in many instances, they
have conflicted with the goal of maintaining rangeland health and
stability. Programs to settle nomads, to divide and allocate the
rangeland to individual herders, and to fence the rangeland
fundamentally alter the mobile nature of Tibetan nomadic pastoralism
and jeopardize many worth aspects of the indigenous pastoral systems.
These attempts to foster sedentary livestock production systems have a
high probability of destroying the highly developed pastoral system
that has existed for centuries on the Tibetan plateau. Both the
rangeland environment and the nomadic pastoral culture are under threat
in areas where the culture of mobile pastoralism has been eliminated or
substantially reduced.
Stimulating agricultural growth, reducing poverty and managing the
environment are monumental tasks in the Tibetan pastoral areas of
Western China. In these grazingland landscapes, complex interactive
issues related to the environment, technology, policies, and human
population growth greatly hamper development. There is a vicious cycle
of increasing human populations leading to pressure to convert
rangelands to cropland and to increase livestock stocking rates to
maintain rural incomes. This leads to rangeland degradation, reducing
the capacity of the pastoral areas to support livestock and the human
populations that rely on them. Rangeland degradation is an increasing
problem in many areas, calling into question their
sustainability under current use. Furthermore, much of the economic
growth and inappropriate development policies have contributed to
unsustainable use of natural resources and degradation of the
environment. Given the seriousness of the problems related to livestock
production in the pastoral areas, new approaches that better integrate
livestock production with improved range management, more efficient
marketing of livestock and livestock products, a focus on poverty
reduction, and pastoral risk management are warranted.
Poverty alleviation experience internationally, and elsewhere in
China, demonstrates the benefits of adopting an integrated approach to
tackling poverty--an approach that involves social and economic
development as well as environmental management. Investments in
education and health can greatly foster long-term
sustainable development in pastoral areas. For Tibetan nomads, the
challenge is determining how to target funding better and to ensure
that resources allocated for poverty alleviation actually reaches the
poorest sectors and families in the pastoral areas.
Despite their extent and importance, the Tibetan pastoral area has
received limited attention from range ecologists and nomadic pastoral
specialists. The lack of information limits the proper management and
development of the pastoral area. Rangeland ecosystem dynamics are
still poorly understood and scientific data on ecological processes are
limited. Many questions concerning how rangeland vegetation functions
and the effect of grazing animals on the pastoral system remain
unanswered for the most part. There is a great need for more in-depth
analysis of the relationship between herbivores and the vegetation
resource and the relationship between domestic livestock and wild
herbivores in the pastoral areas.
The poor perception of the rangeland environment and traditional
Tibetan livestock and grazing management systems, along with the
limited support for pastoral development and rangeland resource
management, needs to be counterbalanced by fresh perspectives and new
information regarding rangeland ecosystem dynamics and pastoral
development. It is becoming increasingly apparent that many of the
existing paradigms for explaining the dynamics of rangeland ecosystems
have not captured the vigorous nature of the rangeland ecosystems of
the Tibetan plateau and, therefore, traditional measures for range
conditions and carrying capacities may not be effective gauges for
management. Emerging research findings on the dynamics of semi-arid
rangelands, indicate that non-equilibrium models for describing
pastoral system dynamics and state-and-transition models for explaining
vegetation succession are valuable concepts (Ellis and Swift 1988,
Westoby et al. 1989, Laycock 1991, Fernandez-Gimenez and Allen--Diaz
1999). These fresh perspectives and concepts provide new frameworks for
rangeland monitoring and offer promise for improved analyses of
rangeland ecosystems on the Tibetan plateau. They also suggest new
possibilities for innovative approaches to designing improved, and more
sustainable, rangeland management and pastoral development.
The socio-economic dimensions of Tibetan pastoralism are also not
well known (Clarke 1992, Goldstein and Beall 1989, Levine 1998, Miller
1999). Greater efforts need to be directed toward developing a better
understanding of current nomadic pastoral production systems and how
they are changing and adapting to development influences. Practices
vary considerably across the pastoral area and these differences need
to be analyzed. Why do nomads in different areas maintain different
livestock herd compositions? What are current livestock offtake rates
and how do increasing demands for livestock products in the marketplace
affect future livestock sales? What constraints and opportunities for
improving livestock productivity are recognized by nomads themselves?
What forms of social organization exist for managing livestock and
rangelands. How have these practices changed in recent years and what
are the implications of these transformations? Answers to these, and
related questions, will help unravel many of the complexities of
current pastoral production systems on the Tibetan plateau, of which we
still know so little about.
Although there is much in common across the Tibetan pastoral areas
there are also striking regional differences that need to be addressed
at local community levels. This calls for strengthened community
participation and the development of sustainable participatory
mechanisms for community-based rangeland resource management. Improved
analyses of the socioeconomic processes at work in Tibetan pastoral
areas are urgently required (Box 2). It will also be important to
determine which aspects of indigenous knowledge systems and traditional
pastoral production strategies can be built upon and used in the design
of new rural development interventions for tackling poverty and
managing rangeland resources.
Box 2. The Role of Social Scientists in Pastoral Development on
the Tibetan Plateau
Ecological environments are constructed and transformed by
complex and reciprocal interactions between human populations,
animal populations, and the physical forces of nature that
occur across local, regional, and global scales. At any scale
of analysis, these interactions are understood only
incompletely, and the great variety of perspectives across many
disciplines are all instrumental in the effort to promote human
understanding of socially defined environmental problems.
Anthropologists can contribute substantially to the effort by
situating human decisionmaking behaviors within specific
communities of known individuals to observe how practices of
local resource management are both constrained and enabled by
powerful social forces that are not necessarily obvious or
material. The attempt to broaden the interpretive framework for
understanding human-environment relationships in this way
should be welcomed by all.
Source: Williams (2002: 202).
In addressing poverty and implementing pastoral development in the
Tibetan pastoral area, one is faced with problems of two production
systems (Dyson-Hudson and Dyson-Hudson 1991). On the one hand, there is
the traditional pastoral production system, which can be seen as an
evolutionary response to environmental pressure; it is a pattern for
survival that has proved successful insofar as Tibetan nomads continue
to exist. On the other hand, there is also another system, which is a
new pattern for survival (and increased livestock production), based on
the technical rationale brought in from the outside but not yet
adjusted to social factors and subjected to the test of time; its
technical innovations are promoted by development projects and
technical specialists. It is in dealing with problems which relate to
the entire pastoral system, including the interaction of new and old
strategies, that require much more careful analysis when planning
pastoral development.
Policies and development strategies for the Tibetan pastoral areas
need to consider the ecological constraints inherent in the arid and
semi-arid ecosystems, the interests and aspirations of the local
pastoral population, and alternative methods of meeting social
objectives for the pastoral areas. Sustainable development of the
pastoral areas also needs to recognize the significance of nomads'
indigenous knowledge of the environment and management of rangeland
resources. Range and livestock development can no longer ignore local
circumstances, local technologies, and local knowledge systems (Miller
2002, Wu 1998). Traditional pastoral production practices have been
tried and tested. In many cases, they are still very effective and are
based on preserving and building on the patterns and processes of the
rangeland ecosystem (Box 3).
Box 3. Tibetan Nomads' Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Over hundreds of years, Tibetan nomads acquired intricate
ecological knowledge about the rangeland ecosystems in which
they live and upon which their livestock production economies
depend. Nomads' husbandry of land, water, plant, and livestock
resources and their strategies are highly skilled, complex and
organized, reflecting generations of acute observation,
experimentation, and adaptation to a harsh environment. Local
climatic patterns and key grazing areas were recognized,
allowing nomads to select favorable winter ranges that provided
protection from storms and sufficient forage to bring animals
through stressful times. Forage plants were identified that had
special nutritive value. Other plant species were known for
their medicinal properties or as plants to be avoided since
they were poisonous. A wide diversity of livestock and grazing
management techniques were employed which enabled nomads to
maintain the natural balance of the land upon which they were
dependent. For example, nomads usually raise a mix of livestock
species; each species has its own specific characteristics and
adaptations to the environment. This multi-species grazing
system maximizes the use of rangeland vegetation. Maintaining
mixed species herds is also a risk management strategy employed
by nomads to minimize loss from disease or harsh winters.
The organization of traditional Tibetan nomadic pastoralism,
which emphasized multi-species herds, complex herd structures,
regular movements of livestock, and linkages with agricultural
communities developed as a rational response to the
unpredictability of the rangeland ecosystem. Complex forms of
social organization within nomadic pastoral societies also
developed that aided allocation of rangeland resources and,
through trade networks with other societies secured goods not
available within the pastoral systems. Pastoralism evolved
through long-term adaptation and persistence in a harsh
environment and the grazing and livestock management systems
that developed were rational responses by herders to the
resources and risks of an inhospitable environment. Nomads
mitigated environmental risks through strategies that enhanced
diversity, flexibility, linkages to support networks, and self-
sufficiency. Diversity is crucial to pastoral survival. Nomads
keep a diverse mix of livestock in terms of species and class;
they use a diverse mosaic of grazing sites, exploiting seasonal
and annual variability in forage resources; and they maintain a
diverse mix of goals for livestock production. The
organizational flexibility of traditional nomadic
pastoralism, which emphasized mobility of the multi-species
herds, was a fundamental reason for Tibetan nomads' success on
the Tibetan plateau.
The expanded appreciation for the complexity and ecological
and economic efficacy of Tibetan pastoral production systems is
encouraging. It provides hope that the vast indigenous
knowledge nomads possess will be better understood and used in
designing new interventions. Greater awareness of the need to
understand existing pastoral systems should also help ensure
that the goals and needs of nomads are incorporated into new
programs and that nomads become active participants in the
development process. Pastoral development programs must involve
nomads themselves in the initial design of interventions.
Tibetan nomads' needs and desires must be heard and the vast
body of indigenous knowledge they possess about rangeland
resources must be put to use when designing new range-livestock
development projects. An important message for pastoral
policymakers and planners is the need for active participation
by the nomads in all aspects of the development process and for
empowered nomads to manage their own development.
Given the generally poor experience with settling nomads in other
pastoral areas of the world, it will be interesting to watch the
attempts to foster more sedentary livestock production systems on the
Tibetan plateau. What effects will the privatization of rangelands have
on rangeland condition? Will nomads overgraze pastures that they view
as their own property now? What effect will private rangeland and
fences have on traditional mechanisms for pooling livestock into group
herds and group herding? What kinds of rangeland monitoring programs
are needed to look after the privatized rangeland? These will be
important questions to seek answers to in the future.
China needs to re-orient its policy objectives for the rangelands
and pastoral areas, not only in terms of range management and livestock
production, but also in the management of rural development itself. The
traditional approach of maximizing agricultural output is no longer
relevant to current circumstances in China. The need now is for
ecologically and economically sustainable development of the pastoral
regions, neither of which is consistent with output maximization (World
Bank 2001b). Policies and development strategies for the Tibetan
pastoral area should be based on much better consideration of
ecological constraints, the interests and aspirations of the Tibetan
nomads themselves, and alternative methods of meeting social
objectives.
The challenge for the future is to balance the diverse cultural,
social and economic needs of Tibetan nomads with the need to maintain
the rangeland resources and conserve the biodiversity and cultural
heritage of the Tibetan pastoral landscape. Because of the importance
to the nation and the international community, China needs to do a much
better job of managing the Tibetan pastoral region for cultural,
social, economic, and ecological sustainability and diversity. Although
there is much in common across the pastoral areas there are also
striking regional differences that need to be addressed at local
community levels. This calls for strengthened community participation
and the development of sustainable participatory mechanisms for
community-based rangeland resource management.
Participation by local people in the planning and implementation of
pastoral development programs in Tibetan pastoral areas remains weak. A
top-down approach still prevails, stemming from the attitude that the
government knows best what is good for herders. Frequently, inadequate
consultation with nomads, bureaucracy, poor understanding of local
needs and constraints impede nomads from participating in decisions and
render development programs ineffective and unsustainable. In the
Tibetan pastoral areas, the varied social and cultural differences of
the different nomad groups is a strong argument for pursuing
participatory approaches in order to enable access and more equitable
distribution of potential development benefits. Reducing poverty among
pastoralists is also going to require increased attention to women and
their role in range-livestock development (Box 4).
In summary, sustainable pastoral development in Tibetan pastoral
will require: (1) greater concern about the welfare of the nomads; (2)
increased concern about rangeland degradation and ecosystem processes;
and (3) the political will to address the problems. Concern and
political will, however, are not enough. There also has to be improved
human resource capability to design and implement suitable policies and
actions. Lack of capacity at the local level is one of the main
constraints to more sustainable pastoral development and rangeland
management in Tibetan pastoral areas. It will be necessary, therefore,
to foster an enabling environment for local-level capacity building
among Tibetan nomads. This must take into account the local variability
and site-specific conditions related to climate, soils, ecology,
livestock production, and socio-economic factors (Oygard et al. 1999).
Box 4. Nomad Women and Their Role in Poverty Reduction
Throughout the Tibetan pastoral area, women play a very
important role in the pastoral economy. Since they bear and
rear children, women directly influence future human resources.
As managers of the household and tent, pastoral women make
vital decisions about the use of natural resources (e.g., fuel,
water). As herders, women are responsible for many of the
activities regarding livestock production. Their decisions and
actions have effects on rangeland resources and livestock.
Efforts to improve livestock productivity, conserve and manage
rangeland resources, reduce population growth, and improve
pastoral peoples' livelihoods will, therefore, have to focus on
pastoral women. These efforts will have to try and reduce
women's time constraints; remove barriers to women's access to
credit and extension advice; introduce technologies usable by
and beneficial to women; and improve women's educational
levels. Women are key actors in the sustainable development of
the pastoral areas. The government, donors, researchers, and
pastoral specialists need to better acknowledge pastoral
women's critical roles.
conclusion
The challenges facing pastoral production, environmental
conservation and sustainable development in Tibetan pastoral areas are
considerable. Opportunities do exist, however, for improving the
management of rangeland resources, increasing livestock productivity,
and bettering the livelihoods of the pastoral population. Programs
stressing multiple use, participatory development, sustainability,
economics, and biodiversity could be realized through complementary
activities in range resource management, livestock production, and
wildlife conservation. Implementing such programs requires a better
understanding of the rangeland ecosystem, greater appreciation for
nomads and their way of life, and consideration of new information and
ideas emerging about nomadic pastoral systems, rangeland ecology, and
rural development and poverty reduction.
Livestock production on the Tibetan plateau can be sustainable
because rangeland ecosystems can tolerate the disturbance caused by
livestock grazing. Much of the rangeland of the plateau is surprisingly
resilient to livestock grazing; overgrazed rangeland can recover from
livestock grazing naturally as long as the disturbance is not too
great. Ecological processes that sustain rangeland for livestock also
support wildlife, biodiversity, and other natural resource functions.
Sustainable pastoral development in Tibetan pastoral areas depends
heavily on the local-level users of the rangeland resources; the
Tibetan nomads. It is at this level that rangeland resource use
decisions are made on a daily basis. It is also at this local level
that awareness, incentives and institutional and infrastructure
conditions must be appropriate in order to secure sustainable rangeland
management and poverty reduction (Oygard et al. 1999).
In the past, policies for developing the pastoral areas emphasized
economic growth at almost any cost with insufficient attention paid to
promoting efficiency and rangeland ecosystem sustainability. In recent
years, rehabilitation of degraded rangelands has become an important
feature of national programs, but the focus is almost entirely on
investment in ``technical fixes'' and/or ``quick fixes'' with little
attention paid to the underlying social and administrative issues which
are often at the heart of the rangeland degradation and poverty
problem. Development strategies for the Tibetan pastoral areas need to
adopt an integrated ecosystem approach that views livestock production
as just one important aspect of an overall rural development and
poverty reduction strategy.
For the Tibetan pastoral areas, the development approach needs to
move from a focus of sustaining livestock outputs from the rangelands
to one of sustaining ecological processes and a wide variety of goods,
services, conditions and values. Ecological sustainability requires
maintaining the composition, structure and processes of the rangeland
ecosystems. The concept of ecological sustainability provides a
foundation upon which the management of the rangelands can contribute
to goals of economic and social sustainability.
There are no simple solutions to addressing poverty among Tibetan
nomads. Due to the multifaceted dimensions of the problems, actions
will need to be taken on several levels: at the central policy level;
at the university and research center level; at the level of range and
livestock extension services; and at the herder level. Promoting more
sustainable pastoral development in the Tibetan pastoral area will
require policies and approaches that integrate ecological principles
regulating rangeland ecosystem functions with the economic principles
governing livestock production and general economic development
processes.
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