Farmer livelihood in Henan County, Sanjiangyuan Region, Qinghai Province

Abstract

Henan County, with a human population of approximately 40,000, is located in headwater regions of the Yellow River on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at an altitude of approximately 3,600 metres. It is part of the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve which has special protection linked to the region’s importance to lowland China. Traditional livelihoods have been based on nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralism with yaks and Tibetan sheep. The documented county history extends back to Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century and the county is classed as a Mongolian Autonomous County. However, the indigenous inhabitants of the county speak Tibetan as their first language, are followers of Tibetan Buddhism, and largely follow Tibetan lifestyles apart from special occasions relating to the Mongolian traditions. Since the 1950s, with incorporation within the People’s Republic of China, there has been an ongoing process of infrastructure development and sedentarisation. Although most working-age people are still pastoralists, the children typically live in the towns during school terms, often boarding with retired grand-parents. The One Child Policy was never applied to the majority within the county, being non-Han ethnic minorities, and this, together with ongoing improvements in health, has led to a rapidly increasing population. Whereas traditional pastoral livelihoods were essentially self-contained on the Plateau, in recent decades there have been greatly increasing flows of livestock products and also animal dung away from Henan County to the lands below the Plateau. These increasing product flows, which are linked both to increased livestock number and higher per-head animal productivity, together with a lack of nutrients returning to the grasslands, has led to nutrient depletion, land degradation and associated sustainability challenges. Our focus in this paper is on the evolving livelihood systems within this challenging biophysical environment.