Hum Ecol DOI 10.1007/s10745-017-9891-8 Pastoralist Decision-Making on the Tibetan Plateau Emily T. Yeh1 & Leah H. Samberg2 & Gaerrang 3 & Emily Volkmar1 & Richard B. Harris4 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 Abstract Despite a growing body of research about rangeland [The government] should try hard to change these con- degradation and the effects of policies implemented to address cepts in traditional pastoralism: judging wealth by live- it on the Tibetan Plateau, little in-depth research has been con- stock numbers, perceiving rangeland as free resources, ducted on how pastoralists make decisions. Based on qualita- using [rangeland] without limit, and the unwillingness tive research in Gouli Township, Qinghai province, China, we to slaughter or sell. analyze the context in which Tibetan herders make decisions, -Committee for Population, Resources, and and their decisions about livestock and pastures. We refute Environment, Chinese People’s Political Consultative three fundamental assumptions upon which current policy is Conference, 20081 premised: that pastoralists aim to increase livestock numbers without limit; that, blindly following tradition, they do not ac- tively manage livestock and rangelands; and that they lack Many Tibetan herdsmen believe that the innumer- environmental knowledge. We demonstrate that pastoralists able sheep and cattle crowding the range are bless- carefully assess limits to livestock holdings based on land and ings from Buddha, but many are now [because of labor availability; that they increasingly manage their livestock government restrictions] realizing that less is more. and rangelands through contracting; and that herding knowl- – Xinhua News, 2013.2 edge is a form of embodied practical skill. We further discuss points of convergence and contradiction between herders’ ob- servations and results of a vegetation analysis. Introduction Keywords Tibet . Pastoralism . Rangeland condition . Livestock management . Environmental knowledge A growing body of literature addresses the causes of grassland degradation on the Tibetan Plateau and the effects of various rangeland management policies that have been implemented in response. The dominant view of Chinese policy makers as * Emily T. Yeh well as remote sensing scientists in the Chinese academy [email protected] is that degradation is caused largely by irrational manage- ment and overgrazing beyond carrying capacity, and by Ochotona 1 University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA the burrowing and herbivory of plateau pikas ( 2 Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN 55108, USA 1 Research report on establishment of long-term rangeland ecological protec- 3 The Centre for Tibetan Studies of Sichuan University, tion compensation mechanism in the TAR (guanyu jianli Xizang caoyuan Chengdu, China shengtai buchang changxiao jizhi de diaoyan baogao) in Proposals on Sustainable Development 2007 (in Chinese), Forestry Publishing House, 4 Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Olympia, WA 98501, Beijing, 366–72, in Nyima (2014:186). USA 2 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-08/31/c_132679346.htm Hum Ecol curzoniae)(Duet al. 2004;Duet al. 2012;Panet al. 2015; interviews with Tibetan pastoralists to explore their practices and Wang et al. 2013; Wei and Chen 2001). Policy responses, motivations in relation to current policies. At their core, these including the Rangeland Household Responsibility System policies presume that transhumant pastoralism is an anachronism and tuimu huancao (Bretire livestock, restore rangeland^), whose practitioners must be modernized in order to restore grass- have been grounded in a tragedy of the commons model that land condition. More specifically, as demonstrated in the epi- presses for the privatization and division of pastoral use rights graphs above, they are premised upon the assumptions that to smaller scales of management – increasingly to the house- Tibetan pastoralists (1) aim to increase their livestock numbers hold. However, studies have demonstrated negative social and without limit; (2) act according to tradition and thus do not ac- environmental effects related to the reduction of flexibility and tively manage or make sound decisions about their livestock and mobility, including more concentrated trampling and grazing, rangelands; and (3) are not knowledgeable about their environ- as well as greater susceptibility to livestock loss during snow- ments. Following a description of our methods and study site, the storms (Bauer 2005; Bauer and Nyima 2010;Caoet al. 2011a; paper demonstrates that these assumptions are untenable. In the Cao et al. 2011b;Caoet al. 2013; Gongbuzeren et al. 2015; first main section, on livestock numbers and management, we Harris 2010;Li2012;Yanet al. 2011; Yan and Wu 2005;Yan address the first two assumptions. The last section addresses et al. 2005;Yeh2009;Yeh2013;Yehet al. 2014). herders’ environmental knowledge and its relationship to find- In addition to division of pasture use rights, other policy re- ings from ecological science. sponses have included mass pika poisoning campaigns, despite the pika’s status as a keystone species for biodiversity (Smith and Foggin 1999), and regulations to limit household livestock hold- Methods, Study Site, and Context ings to government-established carrying capacities. Herders are largely opposed to poisoning because of their Buddhist stance on Our analysis is part of a larger interdisciplinary study conducted the mass taking of life, and because they note that pika numbers from 2009 to 2014 in Village Five of Gouli Township, Dulan bounce back quickly from poisoning. Moreover, recent studies County, Qinghai Province, China (Fig. 1), home to 175 residents have found that extermination campaigns negatively affect pred- in 37 households, most of whom are engaged primarily in pas- ator abundance as well as hydrological functioning toralism. Village Five occupies relatively high elevation pastures (Badingquiying et al. 2016;WilsonandSmith2015). within Gouli (between 4100 and 4900 m, with vegetation sparse Regulation of livestock numbers is similarly problematic in above 4700 m), and had been used as summer and transitional practice. Nyima (2015) demonstrates that the purportedly scien- (spring/fall) pastures before collectives were dismantled in 1983. tific determination of carrying capacity on the Tibetan Plateau is Pastoralists now use the lower areas as winter pastures, to which not only plagued by technical problems, but also often deter- they move in mid-October and stay until mid-June, when they mined more by political-economic incentives than ecological leave for higher spring/fall and summer pastures. The implemen- considerations. Moreover, in some areas the official carrying tation of the Rangeland Household Responsibility System in capacity is at or below what is considered the household poverty 1996 allocated specific winter pastures to each pastoralist house- level. However, to date, there are few places on the Tibetan hold on long-term leases (for details see Yeh and Gaerrang 2011). Plateau where these limits on household livestock numbers have In addition to annual surveys of livestock numbers from 2009 been strictly enforced. Destocking has instead taken place most to 2012, we conducted semi-structured interviews and participant dramatically in the Sanjiangyuan area of Qinghai province (a observation with 17 households in 2009, 2010, and 2014. The region encompassing the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow and interviews, most of which were conducted by native Tibetan Mekong Rivers) through Becological migration,^ a program that researcher Gaerrang, focused on village and household rangeland moves herders completely off the grasslands to settlements in and livestock management history, household socioeconomic distant towns, which had led to socio-cultural dislocation with- and demographic information, herders’ understandings of the out attendant evidence of grassland improvement (Bauer 2015). relationship between livestock and rangeland condition, snow- In critiquing the flawed assumptions of these various policies, storms, daily herding practices, livestock sales, identity, and Harris (2010:8) notes that Bmost Chinese biological research has household aspirations and definitions of success. The broader not asked, much less answered, questions regarding human mo- study also included an exclosure experiment (Harris et al. tivations among the pastoralists using the rangelands of the 2015), and non-destructive annual vegetation sampling for [Tibetan plateau], but this has not kept many authors from sug- ground cover and species composition on 317 permanent plots gesting simple reductions in livestock numbers or dramatic in eleven winter pastures from 2009 to 2012 (Harris et al. 2016). changes in livestock production systems.^ Social science re- Pastoralists, like all people, make everyday decisions within search, for the most part, has also not focused on understanding specific political-economic, environmental, and socio-cultural pastoralists’ decision-making about their pastures and livestock contexts. In Gouli, Tibetan herders maneuver within China’s (but see Bessho (2015) on decisions to leave herding and move authoritarian state capitalist institutions and forces, which have to town). Addressing this lacuna, this paper draws on in-depth produced an increasingly marketized environment, as well as Hum Ecol Fig. 1 Study site. Map by Galen Maclaurin development projects that