Exploring the relationship between social inequality and environmental migration: evidence from Tibetan migrants on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

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EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND
ENVIRONMENTAL MIGRATION: EVIDENCE FROM TIBETAN MIGRANTS
ON QINGHAI-TIBETAN PLATEAU

by

XIN WANG

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

August 2021
Copyright 2021 XIN WANG

ii

Acknowledgements
It is an emotional moment to write down the acknowledgements by reviewing the long
journey to complete this dissertation. This dissertation would have never existed without the
generous supports from so many people and I would like to take the opportunity to thank them
here and now.
I begin by extending my gratefulness to all the interviewed Tibetan herders, my field
research interpreter Xie Yu from Tibetan University, the drivers, and the local officials for their
facilitations during the fieldwork. In particular, I profoundly appreciate the Tibetan herders who
opened up their hearts to me and shared their experiences and knowledge, their struggles and
pains, their dreams and hopes, all of which adds great empirical value to this study.
My deepest appreciation goes to my family. I am grateful to my birth parents for bringing
me to this world. But I would like to give my eternal thanks to my foster parents who really
raised me up and offer me their immeasurable love and support, who many times abdicated from
their dreams in favor of mine. No words can express how grateful and blessed I am to have them
in my humble life.
I want to thank my Grandpa, the most important person in my life. Thank you for
teaching me the three most valuable lessons in my life: independence, responsibility and
gratefulness; thank you for always encouraging me to pursue my dreams in your unique and
empowering way. I miss you so much every single day and I wish you could be proud of me in
the Heaven.
The love of my life, my husband Robert, thank you for always being there for me with
your grounded feet, tender eyes, strong shoulders and loving arms; thank you for comforting me

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in my moments of doubts and frustrations; thank you for loving me regardless of my weaknesses
and imperfections; thank you for sharing this amazing life with me together. I love you.
My sweet and precious daughter Cheryl, thank you for choosing me as your Mom; thank
you for always bringing me heartfelt laughter and tears; thank you for your motivations,
inspirations, and confidence; thank you for making me realize and find my internal strength and
power. You are the most precious gift. I am so honored to become a part of your beautiful life.
I am greatly indebted to Annenberg School for Communications at University of
Southern California. Thank you for accepting me into this top-notch PhD program in the first
place. Thank you for providing all the needed resources to support my study until the end.
Particularly, I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Goodnight, for your inspiring
and meaningful ideas, for your genuine interest in my research, for your strong belief in its value
and your extensive support to help me finish it. Your openness to combined methods of studying
migration encourages me to explore my own approaches. Your questions and challenges were
very important for me to clarify and scrutinize my ideas. Your guidance and influence on me are
not only about how to do specific research but also the enthusiasm and curiosity about academic
inquiries. It has been such a privilege to work with you.
I would like to thank Professor Lake and Professor Hong for being willing to become my
dissertation committee faculty. You two have given me a great guidance to deepening the
theoretical thoughts of my dissertation. I really appreciate your making the time to read my
lengthy chapters and your belief in the potential significance of this work.
My appreciation also goes to the US-China Institute for supporting my ideas and
encouraging me to conduct my field work. Thank you, Mr. Dube, for your tremendous trust and
generous support when I first proposed my preliminary idea to you in 2013.

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Last but not least, I thank all the incredible people that have crossed my life and have
inspired me in so many ways.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................ii
List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. ix
List of Figures .................................................................................................................................. x
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... xi
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1
1.1 The Historical Background of Environmental Migration ..................................................... 2
1.2 The Development Implications of Environmental Migration ............................................... 8
1.3 Theories and Drivers of Migration ..................................................................................... 12
1.4 Environmental Change Impacts on Livelihoods and Migration Patterns ........................... 17
1.5 The Environment–Conflict–Migration Nexus .................................................................... 19
1.6 Environmental Impacts on Migrants and Their Households .............................................. 22
1.7 Environmental Migration and Social Inequalities .............................................................. 26
1.7.1 The Role of Migration in Adaptation........................................................................... 27
1.7.2 Environmental Migration and Human Security ........................................................... 29
1.7.3 Inequality, Capability, Vulnerability, and Environmental Migration .......................... 32
1.8 Gendered Impacts of Migration Patterns on Vulnerable Groups........................................ 34
1.9 Challenging Environmental Migration as “A Win-Win Strategy” ..................................... 39
1.10 Object of Study ................................................................................................................. 41
1.11 Clarifying the Conception of Environmental Migration ................................................... 58
1.12 Structure of the Dissertation ............................................................................................. 62
Chapter 2: Conceptualizing Migration-Social Equality Nexus in Environmental Change .......... 64
2.1 Theorizing the Environment and Migration ....................................................................... 64
2.1.2 Putting Environment Back into Migration ................................................................... 68
2.1.3 Examining the evidence for environmental migration ................................................. 71
2.2 Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems ............................................................................ 80
2.2.1 Resilience and Social Ecological Systems ................................................................... 80
2.2.2 Locating the actor within a resilience framing ............................................................ 82
2.2.3 Whose Resilience? ....................................................................................................... 84

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2.3 Translocal Political Ecology and Environmental Migration .............................................. 88
2.3.1 Environmental Factors as Drivers of Migration .......................................................... 89
2.3.2 Between Permanent Displacement and Feedback Processes ....................................... 92
2.3.3 A Proper Marriage: Translocality Meets Political Ecology ......................................... 95
2.3.4 Toward a Political Ecology of Translocal Relations ................................................... 98
2.4 Gendering Resilience in the Discourse on Environmental Migration .............................. 101
2.4.1 Gender and vulnerability to environmental migration ............................................... 101
2.4.2 A poststructuralist perspective on gender and the environment ................................ 114
2.4.3 The hyper-masculinized discourse of environmental migration ................................ 116
2.4.4 Gender dimensions of the process and outcomes of environmental migration ......... 120
2.4.5 Toward a gender-sensitive discourse on environmental migration ........................... 124
2.5 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 127
Chapter 3: Methodologies ........................................................................................................... 129
3.1 The General Methodological Approach ............................................................................ 129
3.2 Research Methods ............................................................................................................. 131
3.2.1 Overview of Research Methods ................................................................................. 131
3.2.2 Spatial and temporal research issues .......................................................................... 133
3.2.3 Research Data Collection Methods ............................................................................ 137
3.3 Research Sites ................................................................................................................... 149
3.4 Reflexivity and Ethics ....................................................................................................... 155
3.4.1 Doing research as a familiar stranger......................................................................... 155
3.4.2 Power relations and ethical considerations ................................................................ 158
3.5 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 159
Chapter 4: The Case Study in Tibet ............................................................................................ 160
4.1 Environmental Stressors and Ecological Vulnerability in China ..................................... 160
4.2 Environmental Change and Its Impact on Poverty ........................................................... 163
4.3 China’s Approaches to Environmental Migration ............................................................ 166
4.3.1 Stages and scope ........................................................................................................ 167
4.3.2 Near resettlement vs. distant resettlement ................................................................. 169
4.3.3 Rural resettlement vs. urban resettlement .................................................................. 170
4.4 Background and Rationale for Environmental Migration in Tibet ............................... 172
4.4.1 Evidence for grassland degradation in the TRHR ..................................................... 175

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4.4.2 Spatial and temporal patterns of grassland degradation in the TRHR ....................... 177
4.4.3 Socioeconomic and natural causes of grassland degradation in the TRHR............... 179
4.4.4 Brief summary of causes of grassland degradation ................................................... 188
4.5 Environmental Migration as Grassland Restoration Strategies ........................................ 189
4.5.1 Sustainable development discourse in Sanjiangyuan ................................................ 192
4.5.2 The implementation process of environmental migration in Sanjiangyuan .............. 196
4.6 Controversial Environmental Migration Strategy ............................................................. 202
4.7 Fieldwork and Findings .................................................................................................... 208
4.7.1 The implementation of policy at the county, township and village levels ................. 208
4.7.2 The decision-making process to become a migrant ................................................... 213
4.7.3 Environmental migration commences ....................................................................... 217
4.7.4 Income and expenses of resettled households ........................................................... 220
4.7.5 Lifeworld Impairments .............................................................................................. 232
4.7.6 Counter narratives and counter strategies about environmental migration ............... 238
4.8 General Discussions .......................................................................................................... 243
4.9 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 246
Chapter 5: Governance, Environment, Biopolitics and Political Ecology .................................. 249
5.1 Historical Reflections on Migration.................................................................................. 250
5.2 The Tibetan Environmental and Development Policies ................................................... 256
5.3 Tibetan Herders’ Environmental Conceptions vs. State Policies ..................................... 262
5.3.1 What does “degradation” mean? ................................................................................ 262
5.3.2 The causes of degradation .......................................................................................... 265
5.3.3 Environmental migration for environmental protection or political affirmation? ..... 273
5.4 Consequences of Environmental Migration...................................................................... 276
5.4.1 Mixed outcomes of livelihood reconstruction and environmental rehabilitation ...... 276
5.4.2 Triggering new environmental risks .......................................................................... 278
5.4.3 Outcomes of migration due to environmental disasters ............................................. 279
5.4.4 Social and cultural impacts of ecological migration .................................................. 280
5.5.1 Rationalizing a governable environment ................................................................... 282
5.5.2 Governing grassland in the Chinese way ................................................................... 283
5.5.3 Approaching the authoritarian environmental state ................................................... 288
5.6 A Political Ecology Approach to China’s Environmental Migration ............................... 292
5.6.1 Changing ways of conceptualizing and analyzing power in political ecology .......... 294

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5.6.2 State power: From dominant organization to governmental practices ...................... 304
5.6.3 Agency of the people: Resistance and migration decision-making ........................... 305
5.6.4 Construction of environmental knowledge ................................................................ 310
5.7 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 313
Chapter 6: Conclusion................................................................................................................. 316
6.1 From Society and Nature to Socio-Ecological Systems ................................................... 320
6.2 Environmental Migration as An Adaption to the Anthropocene ...................................... 323
6.3 Interactions between Nature and Environment ................................................................. 327
6.4 How to Decide on the Success or Failure of Environmental Migration? ......................... 331
6.5 Impacts of Environmental Migration on Policies ............................................................. 335
6.5.1 Challenges: short-term, emergency-focused institutions and policies ....................... 337
6.5.2 Opportunities to enhance resilience of migrants ........................................................ 339
6.6 Develop Alternatives to Environmental Migration for Tibetan Herders .......................... 342
6.7 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 344
References ................................................................................................................................... 350

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List of Tables

Table 1 Summary of some recent major studies exploring the links between environmental
changes and migration. ................................................................................................................. 73
Table 2 Interview questions guide .............................................................................................. 132
Table 3 Estimated average household cash income before and after resettlement (in yuan). ... 230

x

List of Figures
Figure 1 Foresight Model adapted to illustrate the climate change, livelihoods, and household
migration behavior ........................................................................................................................ 16
Figure 2 Perceived Impacts of Migration on Households according to a 2016 survey conducted
by International Organization for Migration................................................................................. 23
Figure 3 The Sanjiangyuan and Golok TAP in Qinghai ............................................................. 152
Figure 4 Distribution of ecologically vulnerable zones and national poverty-stricken counties in
western China.............................................................................................................................. 163
Figure 5 The mountains of western China and Central Asia (Mountain Societies Research
Institute, University of Central Asia). ......................................................................................... 191
Figure 6 Precipitation and human population in China. ............................................................. 193
Figure 7 Decomposition of household income in 2014 by income sources. .............................. 222
Figure 8 Decomposition of household expenditures in 2014 by income and types of expenditure.
..................................................................................................................................................... 224
Figure 9 Productive and consumption spending from 1970 to 2010. ......................................... 226

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Abstract
Migration is one of many ways by which people have adapted, and will continue to adapt,
to the rapid environmental changes of the Anthropocene. Scholarship on environmental
migration has evolved from atheoretical push-pull descriptions of environmental refugees toward
increasingly systematic investigations of how migration emerges from complex interplays of
cultural, economic, social, and environmental processes. In recent years, environmental
migration has often been conceptualized in relationship to human vulnerability to environmental
change more generally and human security. A next stage in the evolution of this scholarship is
emerging, in which scholars are examining in greater detail the relationship between
environmental migration, socio-economic inequality, and the capability of people to pursue their
chosen livelihoods. This dissertation traces these stages in the evolution of environmental
migration scholarship and presents a generic model of how social and economic inequality can
be both a stimulus for environmental migration and a consequence of it. A case study of the
environmental migration process and outcomes of Sanjiangyuan Area on Qinghai-Tibetan
Plateau in China is presented to illustrate the workings of the model. The employment and
implementation of environmental migration program by Chinese government is, I argue, closely
linked with social stability, promoted through population surveillance and territorial control.
Therefore, in this complex context, ecological strategies are combined with political-economic
interests. Suggestions are proposed for future understanding of the relationship of environmental
migration and social inequality through new conceptual, empirical, methodological, policy, and
communicative insights.

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Chapter 1: Introduction
Environmental change, particularly climate change, poses one of the greatest threats to
people, ecosystems, and development goals over the coming decades (IPCC, 2014a). Current
levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are at a 650,000-year peak. The average global
temperature has risen 1.1°C since 1880; 2016 was the warmest year on record; and 16 of 17 of
the hottest years in NASA’s 134-year record have been since 2000 (NASA, 2017). Warming
close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century is already “locked in” to the earth’s
atmosphere by past and predicted greenhouse gas emissions. Only highly ambitious mitigation
action seems likely to keep warming by end-of-century to less than 2°C above pre-industrial
levels (World Bank, 2014; Mauritsen and Pincus, 2017; Raftery et al., 2017). Environmental
change will also intensify environmental degradation and natural hazards in many regions
(UNEP, 2016). In the next few decades, for instance, climate change impacts will work together
with other stressors, such as pollution and overexploitation of resources (Olsson et al., 2014),
affecting a world population that is both urbanizing (UNDESA, 2015) and growing rapidly
(UNDESA, 2017).
When environmental change affects the drivers of human movements, it is referred to as
environmental mobility or environmental movement (Foresight, 2011). As established in the
Cancun Adaptation Framework (UNFCCC, 2010), these terms encompass the categories of
migration, displacement, and planned relocation. Migration is increasingly recognized as
heterogeneous and influenced by a range of drivers that work across spatial and temporal scales
(Black, 2011; Collinson, 2011). Empirical studies on the migration environmental change nexus
reflect this theoretical drive to explain variation: results can and do pull in different directions.
Other factors (i.e. social, political, economic, and cultural), operating at a variety of scales are

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increasingly recognized as significant influences on migration decisions. Despite these obvious
cross-scale interactions, synergies and tensions between different levels of analysis are often not
explicitly addressed, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary, multilevel research that values
local context and specificities (see, for example, Black et al., 2011a; Kniveton et al., 2008;
Laczko and Aghazarm, 2009; McLeman and Smit, 2006; Renaud et al., 2011). Migration here is
a longer-term change of habitual place of residence perceived as more voluntary.
The impacts associated with environmental change are already shifting patterns of
mobility and will increasingly do so (Adger et al., 2014). In practice, human movement seldom
falls into simple boxes. Because mobility is complex, driven by multiple, interacting processes
that vary greatly over space and time, there is no straight line of causation from environmental
stress to the movement of people (Black et al., 2011a; Black, Kniveton, and Schmidt-Verkerk,
2013). But environmental change-driven pressure can directly and indirectly alter mobility
patterns. In some cases, people migrate in an attempt to adapt to climate change (Black et al.,
2011b; McLeman, 2016; Melde, Laczko, and Gemenne, 2017). In others, the impacts of
environmental change will lead to movements under distress, induce displacement, or require
forced relocation. There is an important gray area between migration and displacement, and
migration should be seen on a continuum from voluntary to forced instances, which can include
an element of coercion such as threats to life and livelihood (Hugo, 1996; Renaud et al., 2007).
1.1 The Historical Background of Environmental Migration
As Etienne Piguet argued, the story of environment and migration is one of “a strange
disappearance and sudden reappearance” (Piguet, 2013, p. 149). The original founders of
migration research considered environmental change to be a significant driver of human
mobility. But as the field matured, and the complexities of migration became ever more

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apparent, the environment faded into the background. However, when global environmental
change became more widely popularized in the 1980s, environmentally induced migration
suddenly reappeared on the agenda. And yet what is so striking is that this emerging debate was
almost entirely disconnected from the existing migration research.
Throughout the 1980s, the Oxford biologist Norman Myers (1986) and Jessica Tuchman
Mathews (1989), the then president of the World Resources Institute, argued for acknowledging
the security dimensions of environmental change. A United Nations Environment Program study
on environmental migration tried to put more flesh on these argumentative bones, for the first
time substantiating such claims in what is now one of the founding texts in the contemporary
policy debate on environmental change and migration (El-Hinnawi, 1985). In 1988, Jodi
Jacobson (1988) published what later became a widely read study on environmental refugees for
the WorldWatch Institute, arguing that: “[t]he vision of tens of millions of persons permanently
displaced from their homes is a frightening prospect, one that could rival war in its effect on
humanity. The growing number of environmental refugees is perhaps the best single measure of
global environmental decline” (Jacobson, 1988, p. 2).
This early discourse coalition, which revolved mainly around US-based environmental
NGOs, argued that environmental change was to become a major driver of migration, which in
turn could result in conflict. This argument was echoed in some academic circles, notably the
Toronto Group and the work of Thomas Homer-Dixon, who sought to prove a relationship
between environmental change, conflict and migration and warned, among others, of “waves of
environmental refugees” (Homer-Dixon, 1991, p. 77). The former US President Bill Clinton
confessed to be “gripped” by this discourse (Hartmann, 2006). And finally, in 1995, Norman
Myers and Jennifer Kent (1995) published their seminal study entitled “Environmental Exodus”,

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which argued that by 2050, there could be almost 200 million environmental refugees. In the
ensuing years, this number was referenced in a range of publications on the issue, and even today
it is regularly cited as an unquestioned fact (Jakobeit and Methmann, 2012). In contrast to
previous decades, the environmental migration agenda had returned in full force, although this
time it was no longer dominated by migration research but by environmentalists.
It should come as no surprise that the bluntness of these early claims and predictions
provoked disagreement. Richard Bilsborrow (1992) wrote a background report on environmental
migration for the World Development Report, arguing that the debate was far more complex than
suggested by those dominating the agenda with alarmist claims. Astri Suhrke (1994) later
critiqued the maximalist position but without ever denying the possibility of displacement
through climate change. This view was echoed years later by Richard Black who claimed: “that
although environmental degradation and catastrophe may be important factors in the decision to
migrate, and issues of concern in their own right, their conceptualization as a primary cause of
forced displacement is unhelpful and unsound intellectually, and unnecessary in practical terms”
(2001, p. 1).
Although the maximalist and minimalist positions are regularly used to frame the debate
about environmental change and migration, the minimalist position seems to be gaining
prominence in international policy circles. This is partly because the minimalist critique
resonated with the human security discourse that also began to emerge in the mid-1990s. In
1994, the United Nations Development Program published a study on human security that sought
to shift the object referent of security discourse away from the nation-state towards the individual
(UNDP, 1994). This approach sought to marry security and development discourse and pointed
to the complexities of insecurity, among them the interaction between social, political and

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environmental factors. Jon Barnett (2001) and Simon Dalby (2002) translated this approach to
the field of environmental security. They argued that deterministic claims about the relationship
between environmental change, instability and migration were implausible as conflict and
mobility were complex socio-ecological phenomena. This shift remains highly influential across
large parts of today’s research on climate change and migration.
With the turn of the millennium, environmental change, particularly climate change,
received renewed attention in political and academic circles. As Mike Hulme (2010) has argued,
climate change became the “synecdoche” for environmental change. It began to represent
environmental degradation in general. This was also reflected in the debate about environment
and migration, where concern focused on the issue of environmental migration. Notably, Myers’
and Kent’s numbers from 1995 gained new attention and became popular among those debating
the issue. NGOs and international organizations published studies concerned with the issue, and
scholars initiated large-scale research projects. Michael Nash, an acclaimed film-maker, created
a documentary called “Climate Refugees” that launched with huge success in 2007. NGOs and
some governments from small-island states such as the Maldives organized public events
dramatizing the disappearance of their homelands. Environmental migration became a hot topic.
Within all the recent attention given to environmental migration, a number of things are
quite striking. First, there is a strong disconnect between popular representations of the issue and
the way in which it is viewed by policymakers and academics. Most academics have become
very leery of quantitative predictions. This is not to say that they would deny the severity of
climate change impacts. Rather, it seems that the minimalists have largely won the academic
debate. The environmental and climate change is only one factor among many that drives
migration and that it is embedded into complex socio-economic and political contexts (Foresight,

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2011). This new consensus seems to be closely associated and consistent with the notions of
human security and resilience, which suggests that this ought to be key terms through which to
assess the political consequences of environmental change-induced migration discourse.
This viewpoint contrasts, however, with large parts of the public and political debate.
Documentaries like “Climate Refugees” are still driven by an alarmist tone, and the high
estimates that had long been criticized for being methodologically unsound remain still
prominent in political assessments. For example, the 200 million climate refugees cast by Myers
and Kent in 1995 are still widely cited. And as was noted earlier, environmental migration has
become shorthand for climate security concerns in general, and it thus features prominently in
the securitization of climate change.
Today, in the context of a changing global environment, the need for improved
understanding of human migration’s environmental drivers is particularly salient. Actually,
relocating from challenging environmental settings has been an important survival strategy
throughout human history (McLeman, 2014). The topic is vital for policy (Black et al., 2011) and
also holds substantial interest among the public. Interest in the impact of anthropogenic
environmental change on population distributions and migration has grown steadily among
policy makers, scientists and academics over the past quarter of a century (Adger et al., 2014;
Baird et al., 2007; Hastrup and Olwig, 2012; Myers, 2002; Stern, 2007; White, 2011). For
example, climate change as a driver of mobility is recognized in the Sendai Framework for
Disaster Risk Reduction, the Agenda for Humanity, the 2016 United Nations Summit for
Refugees and Migrants, and the processes around the Global Compact for Migration and the
Global Compact on Refugees. Mobility was not part of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), but the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) feature an explicit target (10.7) to

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“facilitate orderly, safe, and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through
implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies”. The United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Cancun Adaptation Framework, and
the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change
recognize migration as an adaptation strategy to climate change and call for approaches to
disaster displacement. A review of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submissions
under the Paris Agreement indicates that at least 44 of 162 (about 27 percent of all submissions,
mostly in Africa and in Asia Pacific and Oceania) refer to mobility in its various forms,
including migration as an adaptation strategy. Some National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and
National Programs of Action (NAPAs) under the UNFCCC also mention mobility. More recent
developments include the Protection Agenda developed by the Nansen Initiative and its
successor, the Platform on Disaster Displacement (Gemenne and Brücker, 2015; Nansen
Initiative, 2015). Guidance and tools for planned relocation have also been developed (Brookings
Institution, Georgetown University, and UNHCR 2015; Georgetown University, UNHCR, and
IOM 2017).
Underpinning this interest is a concern that increased environmental stress will
dramatically increase the number of people migrating, potentially threatening regional and global
security (Foresight, 2011; Gemenne et al., 2014; Gray and Mueller, 2012). However, recent
theorizing and empirical evidence has revealed a considerably more complex and dynamic
picture, challenging the mainstream and essentially determinist view (Bardsley and Hugo, 2010;
Black et al., 2011a; Oliver-Smith, 2009).

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1.2 The Development Implications of Environmental Migration
All forms of environmental mobility have important development implications. Several
studies highlight the likelihood of future international environmental migration. The links are
complex: environmental change impacts can act as inhibitors or drivers of cross-border
movements. For example, excessive precipitation has increased international migration from
Senegal, whereas heat waves have decreased migration from Burkina Faso (Nawrotzki and
Bakhtsiyarava, 2017; Nawrotzki, Riosmena, and Hunter, 2013). Small Island Developing States
(SIDS) present a particularly stark illustration of this phenomenon: With some of the greatest
vulnerability to climate change impacts, they will continue losing entire swaths of land and
associated livelihoods. Cross-border movements induced by climate change are expected to be
less frequent than domestic movement (Foresight, 2011; Groschl and Steinwachs, 2016;
McLeman et al., 2016), but the political and development implications could well be
considerable (see Watts et al., 2017).
Disaster displacement, planned relocation, and immobility are also important policy
concerns. There were 24.2 million new domestic displacements brought on by sudden-onset
extreme events such as floods and cyclones in 2016 (IDMC, 2017b). Such rapid-onset extreme
events have displaced an average of more than 26 million people a year from 2008-2015 (IDMC,
2015), a number expected to rise as such disasters become more frequent and severe because of
climate change (Adger et al., 2014).
Millions of people may be unwilling or unable to leave strained environments (Adger et
al., 2015). According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2014a),
vulnerable people, such as women and children, often have the least opportunity to move or do
so only under distress conditions. Mobility is often an adaptation of last resort (McLeman, 2009).

9

Because of place attachment, negative incentives through policy, and other reasons, people may
be unable to move away or choose to stay in areas that are at high risk (McKenzie and Yang,
2014; Waldinger, 2015; Koubi et al., 2016). Relocating communities from increasingly
uninhabitable spaces may be unavoidable for large numbers of people, yet such planned
relocation could carry significant risks (de Sherbinin et al., 2011).
Specifically, domestic environmental migration needs to be addressed within countries’
development and environmental change adaptation frameworks for multiple reasons.
First of all, domestic migration is already happening at scale and is expected to increase
even without environmental change. The number of domestic migrants worldwide has been
conservatively estimated at 740-763 million (UNDESA, 2013). These figures suggest that, at
least three times more people migrated within countries than across borders in 2013, and about
twice as many people were displaced internally than across borders in 2016 (IDMC, 2017b;
UNHCR, 2017).
These numbers can be expected to rise, driven by factors such as population growth and
urbanization. The global population is currently growing by 1.1 percent (83 million people) a
year; it is expected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050. Within the 47 least developed countries,
populations will double by then (UNDESA, 2017). Domestic migration will also be driven by
urbanization. By 2050, two-thirds of the global population is expected to be living in urban areas.
These trends will not only put pressure on urban structures but also provide opportunities in
terms of agglomeration of population and economies of scale (Montgomery, 2008; UNDESA,
2015). Even without climate change impacts, rising domestic migration means that effective
management strategies are indispensable (UNDESA, 2013).

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Secondly, environmental change will add large numbers of domestic climate migrants.
People have always fled natural disasters and sought better opportunities in new areas (Hugo,
2008; IOM, 2009). What is different today is the intensity and size of environmental impacts on
human communities and ecosystems (IPCC, 2014a). They threaten to push many people into
poverty (Hallegatte et al., 2016). The cascading impacts linked to climate change are already
shifting patterns of migration and will increasingly do so, especially for domestic migration
(Adger et al., 2014).
Thirdly, environmental change will hit poorer communities disproportionately.
Vulnerabilities to environmental risks -- a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive
capacity (Adger, 2006; IPCC, 2014a) -- are often highest in poorer countries and communities
(WRI, 2016). The most vulnerable groups tend to have the fewest opportunities to adapt locally
or move away from risk—and when moving they tend to do so in adverse circumstances. This
can increase the probability of migration under distress, displacement, and planned relocation, all
of which are challenging for human development and planning (Melde, Laczko, and Gemenne,
2017). The past can give an indication of the probable locations of future challenges. Most
migration relating to environmental change over the past two decades has been in countries
outside the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (McLeman et
al., 2016), and about 97 percent of global disaster displacement from rapid-onset hazards has
been in low- and middle-income countries from 2008-2013 (IDMC, 2014).
Fourth, environmental migration needs to be managed carefully in order to secure the
resilience of all affected. The challenges and potential benefits of development associated with
environmental migration often resemble those of labor migration, irregular migration, or forced
displacement (Martin, 2010). Migration is a common strategy for survival, coping, income

11

diversification, risk management, and adaptation for people facing economic stress and adverse
climatic conditions (Ellis, 2000; Adger et al., 2014; Melde, Laczko, and Gemenne, 2017). The
benefits and costs of environmental migration go beyond the economic to include social,
cultural, and psychological effects. Environmental migration can have positive impacts on
income, health, skills, education, equality, and resilience, depending on the characteristics of
both receiving areas (including demand for labor, access to networks, credit, infrastructure,
information, and security of land tenure) and of the migrants themselves including their
preexisting vulnerability and resilience (Waldinger, 2015).
Migration can also be a costly strategy. Some people may migrate to areas at risk.
Discrimination, exclusion from social services, and higher levels of insecurity faced by migrants
can also reduce their development and adaptation prospects (Melde, Laczko, and Gemenne,
2017). Authorities and migrants, as well as sending and receiving areas, often have diverging
perspectives on the cost-benefit calculus and adaptation potential of environmental migration
(Gemenne and Blocher, 2017).
Migration under distress and displacement should be avoided as much as possible, but
there is no consensus on the desirable conditions and forms of environmental migration or how
criteria are to be measured (McLeman et al., 2016). By contrast, much can be done to improve
the outcomes of migration (DRC, 2009; UNDP, 2009) and to mitigate or prepare for
environmental impacts that lead to migration under distress or displacement. To safeguard the
resilience and well-being of affected people, development and environmental change adaptation
frameworks should urgently consider the multiple facets of environmental migration (ADB,
2012; ADB, 2017; Gemenne and Blocher, 2017; Martin and Bergmann, 2017).

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1.3 Theories and Drivers of Migration
Theories of migration provide complementary insights into a complex decision-making
process. This part will focus on three schools of thought -- classical economic approaches, push-
pull theories, and the New Economics of Labor Migration -- to illustrate the factors involved
when people decide to migrate. I will elaborate on the advances made in environmental
migration theories in Chapter 2.
Most of the migration literature since the 1950s has been based on classical
macroeconomic and microeconomic theories. Migrants are assumed to be opportunity-seekers
who weigh the financial costs and benefits of potential destinations and make rational decisions
based on the information available to them (Todaro, 1969, 1980). Classical economic approaches
assume that migration typically flows from low-wage to high-wage labor markets and from low-
opportunity to high-opportunity locales.
Other factors also affect decisions to migrate and the capability to carry them out. People
seldom have perfect information. They are rational actors only to a degree, and decisions are not
necessarily made just by the individual. The poorest people often have insufficient capabilities to
access high-wage or high-opportunity markets.
Going beyond the idea of individual cost-benefit analysis, the influential push-pull theory
suggests that four factors shape migration: factors in the sending area, factors in the destination
areas, “intervening” facilitators and obstacles, and personal factors (Lee, 1966). Push factors
(such as poverty, lack of opportunities, and migration networks) are associated with source areas.
Pull factors (such as jobs, social services, family members, and social networks) are related to
destination areas. The push-and-pull framework suggests that individual characteristics of
affected populations have an important influence on migration decisions. Personal factors

13

include age, gender, and ethnicity (Lee, 1966; Geddes et al., 2012; De Jong et al., 2013; Zickgraf
et al., 2016). Migration studies suggest, for instance, that younger people are more mobile
(Hatton and Williamson, 2005). Ethnicity, wealth, and gender all affect migration outcomes
within populations similarly affected by environmental change (Adger et al., 2014).
Push-pull theories also show that people are rarely able to migrate wherever they wish.
Movements can be restricted by natural geographic features (such as rivers and mountains) but
also by entry requirements, travel costs, and sometimes physical obstacles (such as fences),
particularly for movement over long distances (Czaika and de Haas, 2013). For instance,
concerns over loss of property rights in destination areas and other bureaucratic constraints
prevent many individuals who would benefit from moving from doing so (Waldinger, 2015).
Tight financial resources and the paucity of information also limit potential migration, as does
access to social networks to draw on for support (Palloni et al., 2001). Push-pull theories help
explain why large urban areas, with their greater range of economic opportunities and better
services, are often preferred destinations for migrants from rural areas and smaller towns and
villages. They also show that alongside factors in sending and receiving areas, intervening and
personal factors are important.
The New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) suggests that not all migration
decisions can be explained by individuals who weigh economic opportunities or are pushed from
origin and pulled toward destination areas. Through surveys, it has demonstrated that migration
decisions are often part of a household’s collective strategy to diversify its income sources and
reduce its exposure to hardships and risks (e.g. Stark and Bloom, 1985). In some dry land regions
of West Africa, for example, households send young adults to cities to seek wages in the dry
season to reduce the number of mouths to feed and benefit from remittances (Rain, 1999).

14

Household members may also migrate indefinitely, on the understanding that the migrants will
repay the costs and absence from the household workforce by remitting money home
(Mazzucato, 2011). NELM emphasizes the importance of larger households in migration
decision making and shows that migration may be related to risk reduction and livelihood
diversification as much as economic opportunity-seeking. All these factors are important in
understanding migration in the context of climate change, which is often understood to be a
livelihood, coping, risk management, or adaptation strategy by households (Adger et al., 2014).
As discussed above, research on the environmental dimensions of human migration has
made important strides in recent years. Yet these theories of migration mostly focus on more
voluntary instances of movements, but mobility occurs on a continuum, from voluntary to forced
migration and displacement (Hugo, 1996), and contributions from a sociological perspective
have been limited. Human geographers, anthropologists, and scholars focused on livelihood
vulnerability and adaptation have predominantly led the charge to better understand natural
environment push factors as they relate to migration decision making and migration patterns. But
evidence has been “varied and patchy,” with wide-ranging methodologies, little theoretical
development, and myriad geographic foci (Black et al., 2011, p. 3). With a now solid and
growing body of evidence from case studies, it is time for sociologists to expand migration-
environment inquiry to include issues of inequality, perceptions, and considerations of agency in
relation to structure.
The decision to migrate is complex. The influencing factors change over time and vary
across individuals and their larger households. Environmental change adds complexity to the
already difficult decision to stay in or leave one’s home. Understanding of four elements – (1)
the impacts of environmental change on resource quality and availability; (2) the implications for

15

livelihood strategies in particular ecological regions; (3) the role migration plays in supporting
livelihoods; and (4) how migration patterns may shift as people attempt to adapt to the changes
they experience -- is necessary.
Environmental change influences migration decisions through existing migration drivers,
especially economic, environmental, and to some extent political drivers by, for instance,
depressing rural wages, raising agricultural prices, shaping exposure to hazards, and stressing
ecosystems. Environmental change’s influence on migration choices and capabilities occurs at
macro, meso (intermediate) and micro levels (figure 1.1). Macro-level influences are beyond the
control of individuals, households, or communities but have ongoing direct effects on
livelihoods, incomes, and well-being; they shape migration possibilities and opportunities.
Macro-level factors include demographic (for example, the size of the population and the rate of
growth); economic (for example, labor markets and commodity prices); political (for example,
laws and conflict); social (for example, gender relations); and environmental variables. At the
meso level, intervening facilitators and obstacles include employment agencies or migrant-
smuggling networks. Micro-level factors include characteristics of individuals and households
(for example, health, skills, and perceptions of risks). The migration decision is not a simple
binary choice but is also based on behavioral elements (Martin et al., 2014). Such elements
include the household’s perceptions of its vulnerability to climate change-related risks, its
assessment of its future needs, household members’ beliefs and norms, and their experience of
migration.

16

Figure 1 Foresight Model adapted to illustrate the climate change, livelihoods, and household migration behavior
People can decide to migrate as a livelihood strategy when environmental change affects
overarching variables such as the economy, environment, and political system they live in.
Environmental change has the most direct impact on macro-level factors, especially through
economic channels, but affects variables at all three levels. It can act as a push or pull factor by
altering the relative attractiveness of locations. It can also affect inhibitors or facilitators of
migration and the accessibility of places or influence the livelihood capital of individuals and
households. Livelihoods depend on access to capital of various types, the quantities and qualities
of which vary by geographic region and livelihood system. Scoones (1998) identifies the
following forms of livelihood capital: natural (ecological goods and services); economic or
financial; human (skills, knowledge, physical health and abilities); and social (benefits and
opportunities that arise through social relationships). Environmental change can affect
livelihoods directly and indirectly, sometimes concurrently. Although the direct physical impacts

17

of environmental change may be the most visible, the less visible indirect effects can be just as
pernicious (Gemenne, 2011). In Figure 1.1 the impacts of environmental change represented by
the orange arrows are not uniform across space or over time.
1.4 Environmental Change Impacts on Livelihoods and Migration Patterns
How does environmental change affect people and their livelihoods? Overall,
environmental change will influence migration through warming and drought, which will affect
agricultural production and access to water; rising sea level, which makes coastal areas and
island states uninhabitable; the increasing intensity and frequency of natural disasters; and
competition over natural resources, which may contribute to drivers of conflict. For example,
regions that are already dry can expect to become dryer and experience greater frequency or
intensity of extreme heat events (Trenberth et al., 2014). This pattern is likely to affect Ethiopia
and Mexico, which have extensive dry lands. Environmental change is likely to undermine food
security through decreased crop yields and increasing risk of crop failure caused by drought.
Environmental change is also diminishing winter snowpack and leading to the retreat of
glaciers. Snowpack and glaciers act as buffers between precipitation and runoff. Their retreat
will affect the magnitude and shift the seasonality of river discharge in some of the most
populous river basins on earth (Arnell and Gosling, 2013; Bozkurt and Sen, 2013). Major rivers
such as the Ganges, Indus, and Brahmaputra are highly susceptible to glacier melt and reductions
in snowfall, but are also densely populated (World Bank, 2013). These three river basins provide
water to about 750 million people, indicating immense climate vulnerability in these areas
(Immerzeel, Van Beek, and Bierkens, 2010). A substantial loss of glacier volume and extent has
already been observed in the Andes and Central Asia. Since the 1960s, the surface area of
Central Asian glaciers has fallen by 3-14 percent, depending on location; losses of about 50

18

percent and up to 80 percent are projected, respectively, for a world 2°C and 4°C warmer than
the 1986-2005 baseline (World Bank, 2014). Increasing glacial melt poses a high risk of
flooding, severely reduces freshwater resources during crop-growing seasons, and can have a
negative impact on hydropower supply.
Environmental changes at sea level -- currently averaging three millimeters a year and
increasing (IPCC, 2013b; Hay et al., 2015; Dieng et al., 2017) -- will be the most problematic for
settlements on very low-lying land (within one meter of sea level), especially areas that
experience subsidence, erosion, or tropical cyclones and extreme storm events. Sea level rise can
salinize groundwater and surface freshwater bodies. It can also increase salt-water intrusion into
freshwater aquifers (particularly in the Middle East and North Africa), a process made worse by
other environmental impacts (such as reduced water availability). Together, these impacts
present substantial problems to agriculture and human consumption.
All populations should expect increasing variability in climatic norms and conditions and
be prepared for abrupt, nonlinear changes (Streets and Glantz, 2000; Schneider, 2004). Areas
that already experience extreme storm events, especially in mid-latitudes and the wet tropics,
should expect to experience as great or greater frequencies of such events, with the potential for
more high-intensity events through 2050 (IPCC, 2013b). The intensity of extreme storms is
likely to increase, creating greater risks of flooding and damage to homes and coastal
infrastructure (Chan et al., 2012). The greater prevalence of extreme events will affect rural and
urban communities, particularly on sloping lands and in coastal regions. Bangladesh falls into
this category. SIDS face some of the highest levels of exposure and vulnerability to extreme
storm events (World Bank, 2013).

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1.5 The Environment–Conflict–Migration Nexus
The review of the empirical evidence in the latest IPCC report concludes that
environmental change can affect known drivers of conflict, such as unstable institutions, but
finds little agreement on direct causal pathways or a strong relationship with armed conflict
(Adger et al., 2014). There is some agreement that existing patterns of conflict could be
reinforced under environmental change—in, for example, already fragile regions or areas with
ethnical divides (Schleussner et al., 2016; Buhaug, 2016). Major security actors such as the U.S.
Department of Defense (2015) have tended to frame environmental change as a “threat
multiplier” which can exacerbate existing risks. Nonetheless, the world’s development and
sustainability trajectory significantly influences how environment will influence conflict drivers
and risks (Hegre et al., 2016).
Conflict is both a process and an inherent feature of human interaction, with a raft of
expressions, stages, locations, arenas, and impacts (Galtung, 2008). However, its emergence and
evolution are always “the result of an individual context-specific mixture of interconnected
factors” (Schleussner et al., 2016, p. 216). Environmental change is hypothesized to drive or
exacerbate conflicts through, for example, pressure on resources, natural disasters, and sea level
rise. These factors can threaten livelihoods, increase competition, intensify cleavages, reduce
state capability and legitimacy, trigger poorly designed climate action with unintended
consequences, and lead to large movements of people that may have negative impacts in
receiving areas (Buhaug, Gleditsch, and Thiesen, 2010).
Some qualitative studies examine the influence of environmental stress on specific
conflicts, such as insurgencies in Assam in India (Burrows and Kinney, 2016; Homer-Dixon,
2010). Cross-case quantitative studies find significant statistical correlations between climate

20

change and violence or conflict (Burke, Hsiang, and Miguel, 2015; Carleton, Hsiang, and Burke,
2016; Mares and Moffett, 2016). They posit that if human responses to climate change remain
unchanged, climate change has the potential to increase violence and conflict.
This large-scale quantitative work has received criticism with respect to the definition of
conflict, sample selection, statistical methods, and lack of explanation of causal mechanisms at
work (Buhaug et al., 2014; Buhaug, 2010, 2014; Selby, 2014). Other empirical work and
quantitative analyses challenge their findings (Buhaug, 2010; O’Loughlin et al., 2012; Bergholt
and Lujala, 2012; Slettebak, 2012; Klomp and Bulte, 2013; Bernauer, Böhmelt, and Koubi,
2012). These analyses argue that adaptation capacity, institutions, and existing vulnerabilities
mediate the effects of climate change on factors that may drive conflict, and that other factors
than environmental ones are often more important in igniting conflict.
For climate impacts and their influence on migration, understanding uncertainty,
variability, thresholds and “tipping points” is key. A tipping point is a particular moment at
which a component of the earth’s system enters into a qualitatively different mode of operation,
as a result of a small perturbation (Levermann et al., 2012; Schellnhuber, 2009). Most regions
will become hotter and drier. There is uncertainty as to the specific manifestations of climate
change, however, partly because natural variability will remain the dominant factor in observed
climate trends in the near term and partly because the period through 2050 represents a transition
during which anthropogenic changes to the atmosphere become a more dominant influence on
climate systems (IPCC, 2013b). The spatial and temporal variability of the impacts of climate
change make it difficult to have precise predictions of the frequency or extent to which specific
areas, countries, or regions will experience particular climate risks or hazards.

21

However, abrupt climate change occurs when the system crosses the tipping point,
triggering a transition to a new state at a faster rate (Michaelowa, 2002). Tipping points exist
because of non-linearity—the fact that there is no simple proportional relationship between cause
and effect (IPCC, 2013b). Systems such as the Arctic summer sea ice, the Greenland ice sheet,
the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, and the Amazon rainforest may reach their tipping points at
different times (Lenton et al., 2008; World Bank, 2013). For instance, in about 50 years, the
tipping point for the Amazon rainforest may be triggered by changing precipitation and dry
seasonal length that would make it difficult for the rainforest to reestablish itself, resulting in
substantial biodiversity loss and further decreases in rainfall (Lenton et al., 2008). This report’s
modeling cannot capture such relationships. Their existence may rapidly affect the scale of
climate migration after a system reaches a tipping point. An indication of the approach of a
tipping point, or rapid movement toward an observed change in climate, livelihood, or climate
migration trend, underscores the urgency to scale up climate change mitigation and adaptation
efforts now.
Independently of uncertainties associated with environmental (including climate) change
projections, and potential future tipping points, evidence shows that climate migration is already
taking place (Ionesco, Gemenne, and Zickgraf, 2015). There is also consensus that the future
may see the emergence of areas where combinations of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive
capacity put whole communities at risk (de Sherbinin, 2014). People have moved and will
continue to move toward zones of environmental risk, such as coastal cities (de Sherbinin et al.,
2012; Geddes et al., 2012). Changed climate patterns will expand patterns of cyclical, seasonal,
and rural-to-urban migration (Ammer et al., 2016). The largest form of movement will be
internal; when people cross borders, most will move to neighboring countries, often from one

22

low-income country to another (Foresight, 2011; McLeman et al., 2016; Groschl and Steinwachs,
2016).
1.6 Environmental Impacts on Migrants and Their Households
Outcomes of movements depend on the conditions under which people move (UNDP,
2009). Environmental extremes erode household livelihoods and assets (Zomers et al., 2016;
Warner and Van der Geest, 2013), diminishing the capabilities needed for successful
establishment in destination areas. Hugo (2009) argues that displaced people are more likely to
find it difficult to adjust to their new destination for multiple reasons, connected with the
unexpectedness of the move, their emotional state, and the unfamiliarity of their new
surroundings.
People with greater capabilities and subsequent greater freedom to choose migration
timing and destinations often improve their economic situation after migrating. Harttgen and
Klasen (2009) find that in 14 of 16 developing countries they studied, the Human Development
Index was higher for domestic migrants than for non-migrants. For cross-border migrants
moving from low- to high-income countries, a World Bank study (2017b, p. 15) finds on average
“a 15-fold increase in income, a doubling of school enrollment rates, and a 16-fold reduction in
child mortality.” Access to better health services, water quality, and sanitation at the destination,
combined with a longer duration of stay, can have profound positive health impacts on migrants
(UNDP, 2009; Yabiku et al., 2009). People who migrate to urban centers with better access to
health services improve their chances of survival relative to rural residents, although their health
outcomes are worse than those of urban non-migrants (UNDP, 2009).
Migration generally has positive impacts on households in sending areas, although those
benefits are unevenly distributed. Respondents in surveys conducted through the Migration,

23

Environment and Climate Change: Evidence for Policy (MECLEP) project, implemented by the
International Organization for Migration (IOM) through a consortium of six universities, find
migration to have positive or neutral impacts on the household economy. Only a very small
proportion of respondents indicate that migration had negative impacts on income, employment,
safety, and education (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Perceived Impacts of Migration on Households according to a 2016 survey conducted by International Organization for
Migration.
Migration can be a positive adaptation strategy for people who migrate, but
displacements challenge adaptation, and planned relocation shows mixed results. In Haiti
seasonal migration helped reduce vulnerability. In all six countries studied by Melde, Laczko,
and Gemenne (2017), migrant households reported mainly positive impacts of migration on
income growth and diversification. Many also reported having learned, applied, and taught new
skills through migration. Most migrant households also stated that they improved their health
conditions and education thanks to migration. However, migrant households also experience
more discrimination, exclusion from employment and access to important social services and

24

systems than non-migrants and are more likely to face insecurity; some also live in less robust
houses than locals. Although these factors can undermine human development and adaptation
prospects, the report finds that migration can increase adaptive capacities, especially if policy
enables better access to social services, action against discrimination and exclusion, and
protection of migrants.
Migration often generates remittances that can buffer environmental and economic
shocks faced by household members who remain behind. Such transfers can increase and
diversify assets and resources available to the sending household, allowing for more flexibility in
livelihood strategies and less reliance on the local environment (World Bank, 2006; Acosta,
2007; Adams, 2011; Acharya Leon-Gonzalez, 2012; Le De, Gaillard, and Friesen, 2013;
Guadagno, 2017). Remittances are often spent primarily on food, but wealthy households also
spend sizable shares on education, health care, and housing (UNDP, 2009). Remittances are part
of livelihood and insurance strategies in the event of sudden shocks and slow-onset disasters. In
response to rainfall shocks in the Philippines, remittances decrease when the recipients’ income
increases and rise when local income falls. About 60 percent of exogenous declines in income
are replaced by remittance in flows from migrants overseas (Yang and Choi, 2007). Remittances
can help improve prospects for disaster recovery and limited preparedness and adaptation; the
contribution to resilience is less clear (for example, Mohapatra, Joseph, and Ratha, 2009; Joseph,
Wodon, and Blankespoor, 2014; Manandhar, 2016; Banerjee et al., 2017).
Out-migration and remittances are not altogether beneficial for sending areas, however.
Remittances may increase inequality, as the poorest households may be unable to send migrants,
and even if they do, they may not be able to send remittances (Zickgraf et al., 2016). Migration
can also lead to remittance dependence and loss of intellectual capital (de Haas, 2007), although

25

the literature has cast doubt on the universal validity of the brain drain (de Haas, 2010). In terms
of environmental impacts, out-migration sometimes leads to a reduction in environmental
pressure, through agricultural de-intensification and land abandonment, because of the decline in
the available labor force and the increase in cash income through remittances (Reichert, 1981;
Zimmerer, 1993; Rudel et al., 2005; Qin, 2010). In Albania, Bolivia, and Mexico, out-migration
is associated with an increase in vegetation cover (Preston, Macklin, and Warburton, 1997;
Lopez et al., 2006; Muller and Sikor, 2006). But out-migration can also weaken traditional forms
of community-based natural resource management, as a result of declines in the human capital
necessary to maintain it (Robson and Nayak, 2010), and remittances can finance the use of
environmentally destructive methods of natural resource extraction.
Migration-related shifts in land use may alter the local environment, with negative
impacts on health and forests. In the Brazilian Amazon, it can increase malaria risk (de Castro et
al., 2006). Environmental degradation is also associated with conflict. The effect of in-migration
on the wages and employment of existing employees depends largely on whether migrants are
substitutes for or complements of the existing labor force (Borjas, Freeman, and Katz, 1997;
Card, 2001; Borjas, 2003; Borjas, 2006; Federman, Harrington, and Krynski, 2006; Boustan,
Fishback, and Kantor, 2010). In many receiving areas, migrants may take “dirty, difficult, and
dangerous” jobs, seasonal work, and informal sector work (IOM, 2005, p. 246). Some studies
find no local wage effects on in-migration. Others find evidence of downward pressure
(Kleemans and Magruder, 2012; Maystadt, Mueller, and Sebastian, 2016; McIntosh, 2008).
Generally, the impact of migration on destination areas is context dependent, based on the
characteristics of the migrants, the receiving areas, and the larger overall structures, creating
scope for policy entry points.

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Urbanization is among the most important impacts of migration in destination areas. By
2050, it is expected that 70 percent of the world’s population will be urbanized (PRB, 2016).
Many rapidly growing cities have struggled with negative externalities, such as high
unemployment, strained infrastructure, and environmental degradation (Bencivenga and Smith,
1997; Beauchemin and Schoumaker, 2005; Yin et al., 2011; Kavzoglu, 2008). By 2030, some
two billion people -- 40 percent of urban residents -- are expected to be living in slums (UNDP,
2009). Most slum areas have inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, insecure land tenure,
and inadequate waste management, transport, and electricity (de Sherbinin et al., 2009; Connell
and Lea, 2002). Yet cities are often unfairly stigmatized; they may offer the best hope for
improved conditions for migrants, as well as environmental conservation in rural areas
(Marcotullio, Baptista, and de Sherbinin, 2011).
1.7 Environmental Migration and Social Inequalities
While migration responses to environmental changes are increasingly regarded as
strategies to improve the life chances of groups, families, and individuals (Black et al., 2011),
life chances are not evenly distributed within or across societies, and this uneven distribution
contributes to greater social inequality. Experience shows that migration-based adaptation
strategies do not always alter the larger picture of social inequalities for the better; in some
instances, they may exacerbate existing inequalities and generate new ones. The nature of that
experience is shaped by social inequalities that vary between (and within) regions, countries,
communities, and households. Furthermore, in any given example of environmental migration,
some groups or individuals may achieve improved life chances while others do not. In other
words, environmental change, social inequality, and adaptive migration are interconnected,
dynamic processes.

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1.7.1 The Role of Migration in Adaptation
Adaptation to the consequences of environmental change is receiving greater attention
from scholars and policymakers. Thorough and systematic investigations of migration -- as an
outcome of and a contributor to adaptation processes -- are needed. Despite there being a long
and well-established body of migration scholarship dating back in western countries to
Ravenstein (1889), migration scholars have been relative latecomers to the study of
environmental migration generally and to climate-related migration specifically. The first wave
of environmental migration scholarship that emerged in the 1980s was driven primarily by
natural scientists for the benefit of policymakers. These scientists sought to make descriptive and
conceptual links between forced migration and environmental changes (e.g. climate change, land
degradation, deforestation, fisheries decline, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity), and to
quantify the potential for large-scale population displacements. The resulting environmental
refugee paradigm, elucidated by El-Hinnawi (1985), led to forecasts of hundreds of millions of
people becoming involuntarily displaced by mid-21st century and was embraced by researchers
and policymakers interested in the implications of environmental change for international and
regional political security (Myers, 1989, 1993; Homer-Dixon, 1991).
The atheoretical nature of the environmental-refugee paradigm and its push/pull stimulus-
response assumptions were soon criticized by social scientists for its simplistic understanding of
migration causality (Hartmann, 1998). Scholars working within the IPCC’s vulnerability and
adaptation reporting process flagged the need to develop more theoretically grounded,
empirically reliable knowledge of the relationship between climate and migration (Adger et al.,
2007).

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For much of the last decade, migration as it occurs in the context of climate change and
other global environmental changes has been conceptualized and understood in the context of
vulnerability and adaptation (McLeman and Smit, 2006; Black et al., 2011). The term
vulnerability used in environmental change research and IPCC reporting has its origins in
political-ecology approaches to the study of natural hazards (e.g., Burton et al., 1978; Hewitt,
1983; Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987) and was strongly influenced by Sen’s (1977) entitlement
approach to the study of famine (Adger, 2006). In its simplest conceptualization, vulnerability
refers to the potential for loss or harm and is a function of the nature of the physical risks to
which a population is exposed, its inherent sensitivity to those risks, and its capacity to adapt
(Smit and Wandel, 2006).
When framed in the context of vulnerability, migration becomes part of the wider suite of
potential responses by which populations vulnerable to particular climate-change impacts might
adapt (McLeman and Smit, 2006). The actual nature of the relationship between environment
and migration is much broader than this. Environmental migration can occur for many reasons
other than vulnerability, such as the attraction of migrants to specific environmental amenities.
Further, by focusing on migration within the context of vulnerability and adaptation processes,
the agency of actors (migrants, potential migrants, and non-migrants) can easily be obscured or
overlooked. Environmental migration research has therefore benefited from the growing
attention it has received from scholars in the fields of sociology, geography, development
studies, demography, and refugee law. These academics observe that many questions and
debates that have long challenged our understanding of migration behavior and social behavior
more generally -- such as questions of structure, agency, inequality, and power -- must be

29

addressed, if we are to better understand environmental migration and provide reliable advice to
policymakers.
1.7.2 Environmental Migration and Human Security
In the 2014 report of IPCC, discussion of mobility and migration took up a significant
part of a chapter dedicated to questions of human security, the latter being defined as “a
condition that exists when the vital core of human lives is protected, and when people have the
freedom and capacity to live with dignity” (IPCC 2014, Chap. 12, p. 759). The vital core consists
of “the universal and culturally specific, material and non-material elements necessary for people
to act on behalf of their interests” (ibid.). Recall that the IPCC does not conduct original research
but is tasked with summarizing the latest research developments. By casting migration and
mobility in the context of human security, the IPCC is reorienting the study of the environment-
migration nexus. This approach is more consistent with the current trend for research which is
grounded in social science that explicitly considers livelihoods, entitlements, and rights in the
formation of vulnerability. One of the IPCC’s key conclusions is that vulnerability is inversely
correlated with mobility, implying that freedom of mobility is situated at the vital core of human
security.
The IPCC’s (2014) analysis of migration maintains many elements of past hazard-
oriented/vulnerability adaptation-response approaches. This can be seen in the descriptions and
analyses of the causal linkages between environmental changes and migration. However, the
IPCC also emphasizes the multiple causes of environmental migration -- that it arises from
complex interactions of cultural, economic, environmental, social, and political processes -- and
that the inability to migrate out of harm’s way may constitute as great a concern in terms of
future climate adaptation. These latter two observations reflect closely the findings of the

30

Foresight project (2011) and are consistent with basic understandings in migration research that
there is a huge discrepancy between potential migrants on the one hand and actual migrants on
the other (Faist, 2000). The IPCC also observes that most people adversely affected by
environmental events do not migrate but seek to cope and adapt in other ways (categorized as in
situ coping strategies or adaptations), even when inhabiting areas at considerable risk. Unless it
is already an inherent part of households’ regular livelihood strategies, migration tends to be an
adaptation of last (or close to last) resort, and those who do end up moving, voluntarily or
involuntarily, tend to remain within their home countries. This is consistent with empirical
studies of international environmental migration (Obokata et al., 2014) and, more importantly, is
yet another reminder that standard migration research -- its questions, theories, and findings --
offers considerable insights into the nexus of environmental change and human mobility.
The underlying non-environmental factors that distinguish migrants from non-migrants,
and situations that give rise to environmental migration from those that do not are identified by
the IPCC as “social differentiation in access to the resources necessary to migrate influences
migration outcomes” (IPCC 2014, Chap. 12, p. 12). In some instances, this means that particular
groups, households or individuals within a given population might wish to migrate when faced
with adverse environmental conditions but lack the ability to do so. This reflects the concerns
about trapped populations whose vulnerability increases when they cannot relocate from areas
that are inherently risky, without outside assistance (Black et al., 2012). In other instances, and
here the IPCC relies heavily on the example of displacement and resettlement patterns in New
Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, structural socio-economic differences within a population
that have been created along lines of poverty, culture, and race may prevent marginalized people
from remaining in (or returning to) their homes and force them to relocate elsewhere (Fussell et

31

al., 2010; Groen and Polivka, 2010). The IPCC also observes gender differences in the
displacement and migration outcomes following extreme events. They additionally note that
those who do migrate away from environmental hazards may be worse off having taken on debt
to finance their migration and/or by migrating to locations where social vulnerability is even
greater, such as urban slums. Although it does not explicitly do so, the IPCC is moving beyond a
simple vulnerability-based interpretation of climate-related migration toward one that
emphasizes capability.
What we see is the IPCC grappling with a complicated, dialectic relationship that
researchers are actively trying to understand better -- the role of social inequality (and its various
dimensions of resources, status, power, etc.) as a cause and an outcome of environmental
migration. We know through numerous past studies that environmental and socio-economic
processes interact with one another in complex ways. Within these interactions lie differences
and heterogeneities that vary from one place and population to the next and become manifest
along lines of wealth, education, age, gender, citizenship, and cultural norms, to name only a
few. Depending on the nature of the environmental event or condition and the socio-economic
dynamics in play at a particular time or place, different types of inequalities may heighten
vulnerability, moderate it, and/or affect the ability of those exposed to decide whether to migrate
or not. Identifying the types or categories of inequality that are most relevant and the particular
circumstances under which they become relevant is an important area for research if we are to
better understand environmental-migration dynamics. But this in itself is insufficient because
inequalities within any given population or society do not materialize out of thin air. Attention
must also be paid to the mechanisms that produce and perpetuate inequality and limit people’s
capabilities if we are to: (i) craft proactive public policies and programs to reduce vulnerability

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to environmental risks (that is, to reinforce the vital core of human security); and (ii) reduce the
likelihood of environmentally related forced displacements and distress migrations -- the least
desirable forms of environmental migration.
1.7.3 Inequality, Capability, Vulnerability, and Environmental Migration
Time after time, whenever tropical cyclones, floods, droughts, and other extreme
environmental events have occurred, it has been visibly and statistically obvious that particular
groups of people are more vulnerable than others. During the severe droughts of the 1930s on
North America’s Great Plains, it was the landless, rural poor who suffered the most (McLeman
et al., 2008) and whose faces appear in the iconic images of the Dust Bowl captured by US Farm
Security Administration photographers. This pattern repeats itself today even when droughts
strike culturally, socially, and economically different countries such as China, Iran, and India.
But landlessness and poverty are not the only factors that distinguish those who are
disproportionately vulnerable to environmental extremes. Global statistics kept since the 1980s
show that women are eight times more likely to be killed in natural disaster events compared
with men (Neumayer and Plümper, 2007). When a cyclone struck Bangladesh in 1991, five times
as many young women were killed compared with young men (Aguilar, 2004). When one recalls
media coverage of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, it is hard to forget the images of
thousands of desperate people huddled in the Superdome football stadium, most of them poor,
most of them African-American, waiting for government assistance that was slow and chaotic in
arriving. Time and again, factors such as poverty, landlessness, gender, age, and membership in a
racial, ethnic, or cultural minority are the key indicators of those who are more vulnerable to
environmental events and conditions.

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Yet, as shown in the many recent studies of environmental migration cited in this chapter
(Faist and Schade, 2013), the most vulnerable people are not necessarily those most likely to
participate in migration. There is a disconnect between the degree of harm caused by extreme
environmental events and the migration patterns observed after the event. For example, the
poorest of the poor typically did not migrate away from the Dust Bowl states; they were more
likely to be trapped in poverty and remain in their home state or region (McLeman et al., 2008).
Many rural, landless households in India, Iran, and Kenya see members migrate away in search
of work during droughts, leaving behind other household members to suffer through the hardship
(Deshingkar et al., 2008; Keshavarz et al., 2013; Eriksen and Lind, 2009). Although inequality,
vulnerability, and environmental migration are undoubtedly connected, it is not a straight-line
connection where A + B = C. We cannot say unequivocally that “inequality + vulnerability leads
to environmental migration”. Other factors also intervene.
What is often found in empirical case studies of environmental migration is that people at
the bottom of the socio-economic spectrum, who are society’s most vulnerable, often have few
migration options. Their capability in terms of having both resources to undertake migration and
the freedom or agency to choose their preferred migration (or non-migration) outcome is limited
by inequalities generated by social, economic, cultural, and political/institutional processes over
which they have little influence. The interactions of cultural, economic, social, political, and
institutional processes produce distributions of wealth, resources, and agency within a given
population. In a society where there are inequalities, particular groups get pushed to the bottom
of the spectrum in large numbers. The potential to experience loss or harm from a given
environmental event or conditions (i.e., vulnerability) is directly and positively related to a

34

household’s access to resources (Adger, 2006; IPCC, 2014). And those with the least access to
resources often live in the most exposed areas and/or have the least capacity to cope or adapt.
If we wish to better identify the influences of inequality in the patterns and outcomes that
environmental migration may take, we need to pay attention to how inequalities are embedded in
formal institutional arrangements. Examples of places to look could be in land-tenure
arrangements and housing markets, or labor markets and how they are regulated (or not).
Inequalities along lines of gender, age, and health can have a significant influence on the
capability of households to adapt and place severe constraints on their mobility and migration
agency. Further, we must recognize that not only can inequality influence environmental
migration, it can also be a product or outcome of environmental migration. Environmental
migration can reveal new concerns about citizenship (i.e., state-based recognition of who is
legal), power(less)ness, who can access or influence formal institutions and who cannot.
1.8 Gendered Impacts of Migration Patterns on Vulnerable Groups
As we have discussed above, environmental change adds a new complexity to the areas
of human mobility and settlement. The gradual process of environmental deterioration is likely to
increase the flows of both domestic and cross-border human migration over the next decades.
Increased human migration entails that a greater number of people are being displaced due to
severe coastal weather events, the erosion of shorelines, coastal flooding, droughts and
agricultural disruption. The migratory consequences of environmental factors result in higher
death rates for women in least developed countries, as a direct link to their socioeconomic status,
to behavioral restrictions and poor access to information.
The impacts of shocks to ecosystems and livelihoods from environmental change are not
distributed evenly across population subgroups (Soares et al., 2012). In many places, social

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groups in vulnerable situations -- the poor and underprivileged, women, the elderly, children --
are also the most severely affected by environmental change impacts (for example, Reckien et
al., 2017). These subgroups are less able to cope with and respond to hazards or shocks because
of their disadvantaged position: socially because of marginalized status; economically because
they are poorer; and politically because of lack of independence, decision-making power, and
under-representation (Gaillard, 2010; Alston, 2015). Beyond embodied vulnerabilities, the Office
of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reports that vulnerabilities can arise
from the circumstances that people on the move encounter in transit, at borders, and at reception
or destination, particularly in lengthy and fragmented journeys.
Women are more vulnerable to the effects of environmental change than men, primarily
as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent for their livelihood on
natural resources that are threatened by environmental change in additional to the social,
economic and political barriers that limit women’s coping capacity. As Bereuter et al. (2014, p.
58) argue: “Women have varying roles in food systems in different parts of the world. Effective
planning for adaptation should anticipate the consequences on gender-specific workloads and
effects on existing inequalities between men and women both within households and
communities. Institutional and social changes are often essential elements of adaptation.” Indeed,
women in rural areas in developing countries are especially vulnerable when they are highly
dependent on local natural resources for their livelihood. Those charged with the responsibility to
secure water, food and fuel for cooking and heating face the greatest challenges. Particularly,
when coupled with unequal access to resources and to decision-making processes, limited
mobility places women in rural areas in a position where they are disproportionately affected by

36

environmental change. It is thus important to identify gender-sensitive strategies to respond to
the environmental and humanitarian crises caused by environmental change.
Migration shows wide regional variation by gender. African countries and Mexico have
seen increased migration by men in recent decades (Donato and Gabbacia, 2015); other parts of
the world have seen increases in migration by women. Asian countries have recorded increases
in the proportion of female emigrants since 1960; emigrants from the Philippines include more
women than men (IOM, 2014). These streams are shaped by globalization, which has shifted
labor demands and resulted in new migration “pulls” for women. The increase in dual-income
households and aging populations in destination countries, for example, has fueled a rise in
demand for care-giving services, for which women are most often sought.
A handful of studies offer insights on the effect of environmental migration on gender
issues. Gender norms often shape the ways in which men and women engage in agricultural and
natural resource tasks; changes in these aspects of the local environment have gendered impacts,
including on migration. In rural Nepal, for instance, men are responsible for gathering fuel wood
and women for gathering fodder (Bohra-Mishra and Massey, 2011). In these areas,
environmental changes that make wood collection more time consuming are associated with
local migration by men but not women; increases in the collection time for fodder are associated
with increases in local migration by women but not men (Massey, Axinn, and Ghimire, 2010).
Women and girls also experience greater disadvantage than men from pervasive
discrimination and structural inequalities in access to, and control of, resources. For instance,
women with low socioeconomic status are more likely to get injured or die in natural disasters
(Cannon, 2002; Frankenberg et al., 2011; Ikeda, 1995; Hunter et al., 2016; Paul, 2010); greater
socioeconomic gender equality mitigates this dynamic (Neumayer and Plümper, 2007). Such

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inequalities also shape post-disaster experience. Women sometimes have less access to relief
resources (Bradshaw, 2004) and may be subject to additional workloads (Enarson, Fothergill,
and Peek, 2002). Women displaced by disasters are often at increased risk of sexual violence
(Felten-Biermann, 2006; Anastario, Shehab, and Lawry, 2009) and mental health problems (Dell
Osso et al., 2013; Viswanath et al., 2013), in part because of exposure to violence (Anastario,
Shehab, and Lawry, 2009) and heavy caregiving burdens, which can increase anxiety and post-
traumatic stress (Mills, Edmondson, and Park, 2007).
Gender mainstreaming, the intentional strategic action used by policymakers to reduce
gender-based discrimination, has been a key discourse in global efforts to ensure human rights
for women (Preet et al., 2010). Incorporating gender into the development of policies and
legislation is an ongoing process and, consequently, must be continually initiated as new issues
arise, including the gender-based discrimination that is intensified by climate change. Birks and
colleagues (Birks et al., 2011) articulate the pernicious nature of gender-based differentials in
power, revealing variable manifestations of gender-based discrimination. Failure to acknowledge
and engage the unique experiences and perspectives of women on the part of researchers and
policy makers reinforces gender inequity (Glazenbrook, 2011).
It is also important to note that women are not only vulnerable to environmental change,
but they are also effective actors or agents of change in relation to both mitigation and
adaptation. Domestic rural to urban migration patterns have led to shifts in traditional gender
roles and some empowerment of women in their communities and households. In Vietnam, for
example, women’s migration to urban areas has increased since the mid-1990s, influenced in
part by the economic reforms of the late 1980s (Thao and Agergaard, 2012). Rural women,
particularly single women, are now heavily employed in light manufacturing, social work, and

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health care sectors in urban areas. Married female migrants are more likely to be employed in the
informal sector. In their wives’ absence, husbands have taken on greater responsibilities for child
care, housework, and agriculture. These changes in the division of labor have seen women gain
influence in household purchasing and investment decisions, especially concerning remittances
(World Bank, 2012b). Women’s responsibilities in households and communities, as stewards of
natural and household resources, positions them well to contribute to livelihood strategies
adapted to changing environmental realities. Where male household heads migrate for work,
women may increasingly manage household finances. In agriculture, for example, male
migration leaves many women as the de facto head of household, with more responsibility for
overseeing and maintaining subsistence production for the family (Griener and Sakdapolrak,
2013; Deere 2005; Radel and Schmook, 2008). Therefore, gender analysis facilitates improved
understanding of local contexts and development of appropriate interventions that yield
maximum impact.
Nonetheless, a gendered approach to understanding and responding to issues associated
with environmental change and related migration is not being systematically applied despite
significant research indicating that: (i) environmental change differentially impacts poor, women
and children (Alderman, 2010); (ii) the local context of gender roles, attitudes and norms play an
important role in shaping patterns of vulnerability to environmental change (Glazenbrook, 2011);
and (iii) environmental change will disproportionately impact nutritional status of poor and
otherwise vulnerable populations (Alderman, 2010; Blackwell, 2010; Lloyd et al., 2011).
Existing gender inequalities are likely to intensify with increases in climate change related
phenomena (Denton, 2002). Women and men have different capacity to cope with these changes.
Greater emphasis needs to be placed in research on how to support women in adapting to climate

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change related events because they play a crucial role in household labor, livestock keeping, food
security and nutrition. Environmental change mitigation and adaptation policies must assess
gender inequalities and involve both men and women in finding solutions that address variability
in adaptive response to environmental change.
1.9 Challenging Environmental Migration as “A Win-Win Strategy”
It should be noted that development, or improving the living standards of people, is
always addressed as a dual objective along with ecological restoration. A win-win scenario is set
up by political and popular discourses between ecological restoration and resettled people
becoming better off. Accordingly, another two types of figure are often highlighted to argue for
the achievements – the amount of finance that has been given to the migrated people, either in
terms of subsidies or materials such as housing, and improvements to vegetation in terms of
height, coverage and productivity. However, for an improved understanding of the nexus
between vulnerability and migration induced by environmental stressors, it is important to
examine whether environmental migration is a secondary disaster or an opportunity for
vulnerability reduction. Since the scale of such migration flows linked to environmental stressors
is expected to rise with unprecedented impacts on lives and livelihoods, these questions need
more attention. Temporary displacement from natural catastrophes can further lead to permanent
migration, as illustrated by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. The
Indian Ocean Tsunami in late 2004 displaced over 2 million people (AidWatch, 2006). The UN
Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery estimates that 1.5 million people lost their
livelihoods in the aftermath of the tsunami, further complicating the resettlement of migrants
(ibid). Another devastating natural catastrophe, Hurricane Katrina, resulted in the largest
displacement of Americans in the country’s history. Hurricane Katrina ultimately caused about

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1.5 million people to be displaced temporarily and an estimated 300,000 people permanently
(Grier, 2005). Of the 1.5 million displaced people, an estimated 107,000 illegal immigrants and
temporary guest workers experienced secondary displacement due to Katrina – these affected
people were already migrants when Katrina forced them to move again (Castillo, 2005). As the
number of economic and other forms of migrants grows world-wide, the potential for displacing
people who are already uprooted grows. This presents a new challenge for humanitarian
assistance, emergency and evacuation planning, and post-disaster rehabilitation programs.
Numerous estimates of environmental migration fluxes have been published, and there is
a growing consensus that migration will increase substantially in the future (e.g. Myers, 2005).
Estimates of potential environmentally displaced people range widely, from 17 million
(Leighton, 2006) to 29 million people around the world who have fled because of floods, famine,
and other environmental factors by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (2015). The Almeria Statement (1994) mentioned that 135 million people could be at
risk of being displaced as a consequence of severe desertification. In a 2002 paper by MEP Jean
Lambert, a Green Party member of the European Parliament, the author estimated that the
number of people displaced by climate change in China alone was 30 million (Lambert, 2002).
Myers (2002, 2005) estimated that 25 million people in 1995 had migrated with a doubling of
that number by 2010 to 50 million. A widely cited projection for the period leading up to the
year 2050 is 200 million environmentally induced migrants (Brown, 2008). By 2050, one
estimate reaches almost 700 million people on the move because of environmental factors or
almost 1 in every 11 people living on the Earth at that time (Christian Aid, 2007).
All these estimates, including their underlying methods and assumptions, are subject to
debate. Patterns of migration and displacement will evolve and intermingle differently with

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social, economic, and political factors, depending on whether the environmental hazard is a slow
or fast-onset event (Renaud et al., 2007). The complexity of interactions makes reliable
estimations of environmentally induced migrants challenging (Warner, 2008). Quantification is
further complicated by the fact that environmentally induced migration is mostly internal.
Few authors contest that environmentally induced migration falls much below 20 million
environmentally induced migrants today. Even the most widely cited estimate of 200 million
migrants by 2050 (Brown, 2008) suggests that environmentally induced migration could soon
involve up to 3% of the current world population in just four decades from now. The social and
economic costs of this uprooting, accounting for both losses and responses, have not been
estimated yet.
1.10 Object of Study
My research is located in China that has experienced massive changes since 1978 and the
beginning of the reform era. Living standards have increased dramatically for nearly all sections
of society and the country has transitioned from one that is predominantly rural to one with a
majority urban population. A key driver of this change has been massive and sustained rural to
urban migration. Due, in part, to the large volumes of people moving, migration has been much
studied in China yet there has been limited attention to the role of the environment within this
body of literature. This is evidenced by the surprising lack of Chinese case studies that address
migration in the context of environmental change (Hunter, 2005; Laczko and Aghazarm, 2009;
and Obokata et al., 2014). In my study, a scenario between restoration of degraded grasslands of
original homes in Tibet and better living standards of migrated Tibetan herders in destination is
envisioned and discoursed by China’s State government.

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Deshingkar (2005) argues that the diversity of movement patterns is historically, socially
and culturally specific. Indeed, migration is not new but is associated with varied motivations
and rationales in the contemporary history of China. Between the 1950s and 1970s, migration
was extensively applied to relocating people across the country, from urban to rural areas, and
from central to peripheral areas. At that time, engineering of the population was done primarily
for geopolitical, military and ideological reasons. Migration since the 1980s has mostly been
related to large-scale infrastructure construction projects, pursuing economic development, and is
often called “involuntary resettlement”. A well-known example is the construction of the Three
Gorges Dam (Cheng, 2006; Duan and Steil, 2003; Fruggle et al., 2000; Heggelund, 2004;
McDonald 2006; McDonald and Michael, 2002; Meikle and Walkter, 2000; Tan, 2008; Wilmsen
et al., 2011). More generally, the continued importance of other socialist era instruments of state
control is a point commonly acknowledged by scholars writing on China including Zhang
(2008), Fan (2004) and Chan (2010a). These examples of Chinese institutional uniqueness
highlight the need for “country-specific” research that is able to understand or explain the
changes in modern China (Zhang, 2008).
However, the recent applications of migration in China have become associated with new
policy objectives. Besides Yidi Fupin Yimin (“Trans-local Poverty Alleviation Migration” in
English and briefly called “Anti-poverty Migration”) for rural poverty reduction (Merkle, 2003;
Xue et al., 2013), environmental migration names a number of resettlement schemes in large-
scale environmental programs which aim to restore the environment, mostly in western China.
Empirical studies have shown the impact of ecological resettlement projects on ethnic minorities
in western China, including Mongolian herders in Inner Mongolia (Chu and Meng, 2005),

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Tibetan herders in the Three-River Headwater region (Wang et al., 2010), and Uighur herders in
Xinjiang (Shi et al., 2007).
In one of the national guiding environmental policy documents, Several Opinions on
Improving the Measures of the Returning Farmland to Forestry Policy, environmental migration
is addressed as a restrictive measure to move out “people living in ecologically significant areas,
ecologically fragile areas and areas losing basic subsistence conditions” (State Council of China,
2002; Guofa 2002, No. 10). Although migration has long been used in environmental
management in China, for example, moving people out of affected areas after natural disasters
(Elvin, 2004), the current environmental migration, instead of being responsive, is a proactive
policy measure to adjust the human relationship to the environment. Empirical cases show that
some of the environmental problems that environmental migration aims to address are classical
conservation issues such as wildlife, forestry and biodiversity conservation (e.g. Foggin, 2008;
Xie, 2010; Xinjiletu, 2005c). From an international perspective, this reminds one of the
displacement and resettlement experiences related to the construction of national parks and
natural reserves (Cernea and Schmidt-Soltau, 2006; Chatty and Colchester, 2002; Hendriks,
1989; Schmidt-Soltau, 2003). However, other empirical cases of environmental migration also
aim to address other types of environmental problems such as grassland degradation, soil
erosion, water shortages, drought and landslides (Bao and Xun, 2007; Dickinson and Webber,
2007; Rogers and Mark, 2006; Tan and Wang, 2004). These problems are thought likely to
become increasingly stressful in the context of climate change.
Accounts of the processes and outcomes of environmental migration projects in West
China demonstrate two groups of contrasting views. One group of positive accounts, together
with the official accounts, suggests that the win-win scenario is taking place. The official

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grassland monitoring reports claim that vegetation in the project areas is much better than in non-
project areas in terms of height, coverage and productivity. Empirical studies argue that the
income and material wellbeing of the resettled people have been raised. Although they also
acknowledge the existence of problems in the specific projects, most Chinese researchers suggest
that the negative outcomes are temporary and they can be solved through technical and
managerial improvements, for instance, increasing provision of compensation (Zhang, 2007),
modifying assessment criteria (Hong, 2006), adding social integration evaluation (Li, 2007), and
institutionalizing rules for regulating implementation (Zhu and Shi, 2007).
In contrast, the other group of negative accounts is rather critical. They draw attention not
only to the planning problems and rationale behind the ambitious schemes, but also to the
negative economic, social and cultural consequences for the wellbeing of the affected people
(Bao and Meng, 2005; Bao and Xun, 2007; Dickinson and Webber, 2007; Du, 2009, 2012;
Foggin, 2008, 2011; Gegengaowa, 2006; Liu, 2002; Sein and Zhang, 2009; Ptackova, 2012;
Taishi and Foggin, 2011; Taogesi, 2007; Xun, 2006; Xinjiletu, 2005a; Yan, 2005; Zhao, 2006).
Despite the increase of income due to compensation, the rise of non-farming income, and
improvements of material wellbeing in some cases, inequality is on the rise at the village level,
the sustainability of the new livelihood models (West, 2009) and having a continued source of
funding (Tan and Wang, 2004) are questionable, and the impoverishment trend is more prevalent
in most cases. In addition to the economic dimension, the social and cultural challenges, such as
the protection of the rights of the affected people (Shi et al., 2007), identity recognition (Li et al.,
2006a), social and cultural adaptation (Liu, 2007; Taogesi, 2007), societal integration (Li et al.,
2006b; Ma, 2007; Tan and Wang, 2004), social equity (Wuligeng, 2006) and community
building (Yu, 2004), are especially highlighted due to the relevance to the ethnic minority

45

groups. Return migration is also addressed as a sign of failure of some projects (Du, 2009; Qi,
2006; Taogesi, 2007).
Together with Dalintai (2003), and Wu and Bao (2013), they further contest whether
enclosure is an appropriate measure for restoring grasslands due to the non-equilibrium nature of
the local ecosystems. Nevertheless, Gegengaowa (2006) argues that to enforce the enclosure
measure is economically and socially difficult, and Xun and Bao (2008) contend that there was a
lack of political incentives for enforcing it locally. Moreover, Kodama (2005), West (2009) and
Xu (2001) draw attention to the new environmental risks for the destinations such as overuse of
underground water through adopting new practices such as irrigation farming. They suggest that
environmental migration projects have not solved problems but only shifted environmental and
social problems between places. The most extreme view is that there is another implicit agenda
of the state than conserving the environment, namely to assimilate the ethnic minorities, and
resettlement is nothing but a mechanism (Human Rights Watch, 2007).
The above criticisms of the planning and the consequences for the affected people are in
several ways similar to those in the international studies of development-oriented resettlement.
However, interestingly, instead of being related to the critical group of international studies,
international interests in ecological and environmental resettlement so far stem rather from a
technical perspective to look into how planned relocation could work as a policy response to
climate change in the future (Sherbinin et al., 2011). This, on the one hand, is in the context that
in recent years, international attitudes among donors, policymakers and some scholars seem to
have become increasingly positive towards resettlement in relation to development and climate
change. Empirical studies argue that resettlement is a viable development tool which is able to
generate positive outcomes if participatory, bottom-up and voluntary approaches are

46

incorporated (Chaterjee, 2009 ; Karanth, 2007; Petit, 2008); and the Chinese state has been
particularly praised by international donors as a good example of following the “Resettlement
with Development” model in involuntary resettlement projects (McDonald and Webber, 2002).
On the other hand, an embrace of resettlement in relation to addressing climate change has been
driven by a shifting way of talking about migration from “environmental refugee” to “migration
as adaptation” and a shifting view of seeing migration from a problem to a solution. International
organizations nowadays show a pro-attitude to organized migration or resettlement. For instance,
the director general of International Organization of Migration, William Lacy Swing claims that,
“well-managed migration can be an effective climate change adaptation strategy, an innovative
response that empowers migrants and strengthens communities” (Gemenne et al., 2012, p. 135).
The Cancún agreement further promotes “measures to enhance understanding, coordination and
cooperation with regard to climate change induced displacement, migration and planned
relocation” (UNFCCC, 2011, p. 5).
In turn, a trend has emerged in the Chinese state’s discourses to reframe environmental
migration in a similar way as “an adaptation strategy to climate change in the regions that are
vulnerable to climate change impacts” (Tan 2011) and environmental migration has also been
written into the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy (NDRC, 2013). Although the
shifting discourse has received increasing criticism for the underlying neoliberal logic (Bettini,
2014; Felli and Castree, 2012), such debate has not yet been extended to discussions in the
Chinese context. Researchers’ positions are divided regarding “migration as adaptation”.
Proponents (Black et al., 2011; McLeman and Smiths, 2006; Sherbinin et al., 2011) argue that
organized migration would become a virtually unavoidable response in some regions of the
world and a support to communities which lack of the resources to migrate by themselves.

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Middle-range scholars stress that resettlement should only be used as the last resort and in cases
where in situ adaptation is impossible (Barnett and Webber, 2011). Critical researchers such as
Felli and Castree (2012) condemn the fact that the logic and language of the current adaptation
approach of migration to environmental change are just consistent with the wider neoliberal
views in contemporary global environmental governance; and migration means “people’s
incorporation into waged labor abroad or in other parts of their home country” (2012, p. 3),
which is consistent with the neoliberal practice of constituting a new global reserve army of
labor.
China is in a great transformation where much economic progress has been made.
However, the global warming is occurring, and the environment is being threatened. China is
leading the world rhetorically in its international commitments to the environment. Thus, it is no
surprising that China’s transformation includes strategies towards environmental change, such as
environmental migration programs. The state government is working to move people out of an
area that is ecologically and environmentally vulnerable. However, it is important to note that
such a transformation occurs before an area becomes unsustainable, and these acts of governance
set up complex relations between states and populations who are moving and subject to
subsequent resettlement. In this sense, China’s efforts can be understood as models of
anticipatory action.
As Deleuze (2003) argues in his A Thousand Plateaus, there are two levels of inquiries.
The molar level, or rigid segmentarity, is defined as a clear-cut or calculated arrangement. Molar
aggregates are segmented “to ensure and control the identity of each agency, including personal
identity” (p. 195). On the other hand, there is also a molecular line, or a supple line of
segmentarity. Instead of a well-defined segmentarity, the molecular level develops transitory

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segmentations-in-progress that are defined by quanta of deterritorialization on an intensive scale.
An analogy between the molecular and the molar is the case of light, which can be seen as
continuous and concrete in its waves (the molar level) but also quantifiable and discrete as
photons (the molecular level). In my dissertation, the molar level follows government policies,
programs, and policing of the environmental migration; whereas the molecular level examines
the politics of the everyday as people face new necessities, new changes in life style, challenges
in relocated environments, and strong dependency on governmental subsidies and supplements.
Thus, my ethnographical study uncovers the tensions and resonances of the relation of the molar
to the molecular inquiry as Tibetan households try to adapt to resettlement and new life in urban
settings.
Environmental problems are time and space/place-specific. My dissertation studies the
process and challenges of environmental migration through focusing on a specific type of
environmental problem: grassland degradation in Sanjiangyuan area (“Source of Three River” in
English because Sanjiangyuan area contains the headwaters of three great rivers of Asia: the
Yellow, the Yangtze, and the Mekong) on Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, to look into the relationship
between environmental migration and the Chinese state’s transformative way of governing the
environment. The Sanjiangyuan, located in southern Qinghai at an average elevation of 4,000
meters above sea level, has a total area of 363,000 km² (50.4 per cent of Qinghai’s total area) and
includes the four Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures (TAP) of Yushu, Golok, Hainan and
Huangnan, 16 counties and 127 rural townships. The Sanjiangyuan area is known as the “Water
Tower” of Asia because it supplies 60 billion water annually to lower lying lands of the region.
The nature reserve comprises 42 per cent of the Sanjiangyuan, covering an area of 152,300 km².
It has been divided into three zones: the core zone of 31,218 km², 20.49 per cent of the nature

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reserve area; a buffer zone of 39,242 km², 25.76 per cent of the reserve; and an experimental
zone of 81,882 km², 53.75 per cent of the reserve (Xun and Zhang, 2007, p. 40).
Moving people off the land is considered by Chinese government to be one of the most
effective approaches for reducing human pressures on land cover. The Sanjiangyuan General
Plan was approved by the State Council in 2004, and it contained three main projects and
twenty-two sub-projects. The environmental protection project was the first of these three main
projects. It received funds of around RMB 4.9 billion that were designated for restoring former
grazing land to natural pasture, restoring cropland to forest, treating land that had been degraded
by pika infestation, launching fire prevention work in forests and on the grassland, initiating
water and soil conservation projects, and protecting infrastructure. The second main project
focused on building infrastructure. It includes the migration sub-project, the building of new
towns and rural townships, other grassland preservation projects and drinking water
infrastructure for livestock and human consumption. It received funds of around RMB 2.3
billion. The third main project focused on supporting environmental protection and received
funds of around RMB 300 million to support projects for cloud seeding, providing technical
support and environmental monitoring.
The Sanjiangyuan General Plan closely links environmental migration with efforts to
restore grazing land to grassland. The plan called for the relocation of 55,774 people (10,142
herding households), the reduction of livestock by 3.2 million sheep units, the imposition of a
ten-year grazing ban on the abandoned grasslands, and a period of off-season and rotational
grazing (QECC, 2003). Herders who agreed to be resettled would receive compensation. Data
from the Environmental Migration Management Office of the Qinghai Development and Reform
Commission indicates that eighty-six new settlement villages were built between 2004 and 2010

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(EMMO, 2011). Small towns or suburbs were also established to house herders who left the
grassland. As a result, eighty-six migration communities sprouted up in urban areas or rural
townships, near markets along the state highway, and in neighborhoods around fodder bases in
the Sanjiangyuan.
However, can the goals be achieved? What are the consequences? In recent years,
environmental migration programs for pastoral communities have received great attention not
only from governments, but also from NGOs, social scientists and conservationists. Western
scholars looking at environmental migration in China interpret it as a government-initiated
“permanent migration” of nomadic herders and pastoral farmers from fragile environmental
environments to new or existing settlements outside these environmentally vulnerable regions
(Dickinson and Webber, 2007; West, 2009). Some researchers have indicated that its logic,
benefits and costs need careful examination and discreet rethinking, especially in the
Sangjiangyuan region of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, where Tibetan herders have sustained their
livelihoods in these grassland areas for hundreds of years (Yeh, 2010; Qi, 2011; Foggin, 2011;
Ptackova, 2011).
Environmental migration in Sanjiangyuan was launched to protect and restore its
grassland and to improve herder livelihoods. The rationale of environmental migration is that
overgrazing is the main cause of grassland degradation. However, apart from grazing, local
herders point out that climate change, mining, and problems of grassland management contribute
to grassland degradation as well. In fact, it is hard to identity which factor is the most significant.
Therefore, the idea of protecting grassland by simply implementing environmental migration
projects may be implausible. Herders decided to resettle for various reasons such as economic
benefits and educational resources for their children, but their resettled life is accompanied by

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uncertainties. The implementation of environmental migration has raised several key quandaries.
It dramatically transforms traditional nomadic communities into settled urban ones. Many
herders adapt poorly to the new urban lifestyle and some have identity crises. Although they are
provided with free accommodation and a certain number of subsidies, their quality of life after
migration is in general not very satisfactory due to the higher living expenses in cities and towns.
Environmental migrants have difficulty obtaining jobs because of their low skills and the lack of
industries in their resettled communities. As for the results of grazing bans, it seems that these
are not well managed, and the strategy causes new problems such as fragmenting grassland via
fencing and the lack of necessary livestock activities on the grassland.
Environmental migration is a complex issue with both significant policy implications and
important economic, social, political, cultural and environmental consequences. But at the same
time, contrary to the win-win scenario, there is always a gap between what is envisioned,
attempted and promised by the politicians and what is accomplished in reality. Moreover, it is
why the well-meaning plans have always resulted in unintended consequences, “something that
is neither deliberately created nor anticipated, but is exactly the reverse of the original intention
of a particular social action or public policy” (Jing, 2007, p. 147), such as impoverishment and
new ecological problems. The gap and the unintended consequences in turn demand further
interventions even though it is uncertain whether the persistent will to improve will lead to
improvement or new and unintended consequences.
These features in the sequence in environmental migration are nevertheless not unique
but similar to, for instance, what Tania Li calls “the parasitic relationship between the persistence
of the will to improve and the unintended shortcomings and failures” (2007, p. 1) in the
improvement schemes of Indonesia, and when James Ferguson says that “failures appear to be

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the norm” (1994, p. 8) in the “constructed development industry” of Lesotho. Both Li and
Ferguson ascribe the root causes of the failures to the technical ways of thinking and doing, the
approach of “rendering technical” a set of political questions (Li, 2007, p. 7). By doing so, the
structural conditions that create the troubles in the first place are ignored; and, accordingly,
whenever interventions failed, and problems became worse, there was always a need for more
interventions (ibid., pp. 122-123). In the case of Lesotho, the apparatus of planned development
works as an “anti-politics machine” which “insistently repose(s) political questions of land,
resources, jobs, or wages as technical ‘problems’ responsive to the technical ‘development’
intervention” and construct the country that “bears little relation to prevailing realities”
(Ferguson, 1994, p. 270). The analytical insights from their works draw my attention to the need
to unpack the role of power/knowledge and the rationality it promotes behind environmental
migration, to expose what it is, how it works and why.
However, what makes environmental migration different from the above development
projects is a strong environmental dimension, in terms of reasons, discourses and consequences. I
argue that it is crucial to relate the examination of environmental migration to the state’s
transforming ways of governing the environment or environmentalization. Environmental
migration has been part of China’s state-led greening actions since the 2000s. These actions in
the form of programs aim to “restore the ecological functions of the degraded ecosystems”
through “ecological construction” (Shengtai Jianshe in Chinese) (Wang et al., 2010). In addition
to these actions, the state has been active in carrying out environmental reforms: creating new
institutions and regulations, implementing green technologies, and tolerating more non-state
actors in their green activities (Ho, 2001c, 2006; Carter and Mol, 2007). Meanwhile, the state
uses green discourses such as “green development”, “sustainable development” and “an

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environmentally concerned growth model” to address the green actions in political texts. These
actions and discourses are in sharp contrast to the old image of a passive state facing mounting
environmental problems (Economy, 2004; Smil, 1993).
Do the above new green actions and discourses signify a new role of the state in
governing the environment? Scholars have different views. While some researchers have
depicted the state’s actions as reactive and unsystematic, for example, Lang (2002) thinks that
the environmental disasters stimulated the state’s strong actions because they threatened the
regime’s legitimacy, Bao and Xun (2007) argue that Chinese environmental policies are “crisis-
coping”. This is because China had neither specific policy or legislation on the environment, nor
consideration of environmental factors in the general development plan before the 1970s; and the
state’s actions and policies, regulations and laws for dealing with environmental problems
usually came about as reactive responses to cope with the eruption of the accumulated negative
consequences of the longstanding environmental problems (Bao and Xun, 2007). More have
raised notions such as “the greening of the state” and “environmental state” to suggest that a
highly rational, strategic and fundamental process of transformation is taking place behind the
scenes (Cann et al., 2005; Chen, 2013; Economy, 2006; Fridman, 2008; Mol, 2006; Yeh, 2005,
2009; Zhang et al., 2007). Such debate regarding the macro-level changes has nevertheless
hardly been integrated into the analysis of environmental migration. Being focused on reporting
the micro-processes of individual cases, most existing studies of environmental migration only
take the wider changes as background and their analytical significance is underestimated. My
study is instead intended to show how the formulation, implementation and effects of
environmental migration have been enabled by the processes of environmental politics at
different scales and across scales.

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Moreover, in the analysis of environmentalization, there has been a similar tendency with
the analysis of environmental migration – “rendering technical”. Technical and managerial
approaches have been identified to be dominant in the previous review of environmental
migration studies, and environment in particular is either examined in technical terms separated
from the social ones or is ignored. Regarding environmentalization, an analytical approach as
well as an official articulation, namely, “ecological modernization” (shengtai xiandaihua in
Chinese), is dominant. These address the advance of technocratic and market-based approaches
as positive signs for achieving ecological sustainability (Cann et al., 2005; Carter and Mol, 2007;
Fridman, 2008; Zhang et al., 2007). As Adger et al. (2001) point out, a techno-centric worldview
invites external interventions to solve environmental problems. Nevertheless, the major problem
with such “rendering technical” analyses is that they take for granted the effectiveness and
sufficiency of the logic, and of the ideas and knowledge behind the governmental strategies and
thus cannot explain why problematic local consequences are repeated.
Taking the same line as critical scholars (Muldavin, 2007; Yeh, 2005, 2009), my study
proposes an alternative approach to a techno-centric perspective, mainly framed by insights from
political ecology, to analyze China’s environmental migration as social and political processes.
Taking a political ecology approach means that I believe that environmental problems are “at
their core social and political problems, not technical or managerial, and demanded a theoretical
foundation to analyze the complex social, economic and political relations in which
environmental change is embedded” (Neumann, 2005, p. 5). To put it simply, environmental
problems are highly politicized. Therefore, rather than taking for granted the current ways of
governing the environment, my study scrutinizes the logic, ideas and knowledge of
environmentalization; and on top of that examines the empirical effects.

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First of all, my analysis of power and power relations in environmental migration is
based on reflecting upon the alternative ways of conceptualizing and analyzing power and power
relations. Power has been theorized by social scientists from the top down, and the bottom up, as
structure and as capillary, as productive and destructive, and as both immaterial and material.
This is well illustrated by the different engagements of political ecologists with power based on
their different positions along “the epistemological spectrum, between naive positivism and
extreme relativism” (Neumann, 2008, p. 730). I synthesize three phases of political ecology: in
the first phase, power is conceived to be top-down, structural, negative, repressive and material.
This view has been utilized to trace the sources of environmental degradation upscale and to
analyze the state-society conflicts over access to resources (Bassett, 1988; Blaikie, 1985; Blaikie
and Brookfield, 1987; Hershkovitz, 1993; Kull, 2002; Moore, 1993; Peluso, 1992); in the second
phase, power is conceived to be constructive and immaterial while the analytical focus has
shifted to discerning the social construction of policy, discourse and knowledge (Bassett and
Zueli, 2003; Bryant, 1998; Fairhead and Leach, 1995, 1996, 1997; Forsyth, 2003; Leach and
Mearns, 1996; Peet and Watts, 1996; Robbins, 2000; Stott and Sullivan, 2000); in the third
phase, power is conceived to be capillary and productive upon incorporating Foucault-inspired
governmentality studies. Instead of following only one thread of the way of conceptualizing
power, I choose to remain open to the relevance of the different threads of thought to my
empirical materials and seek to experiment with a way of combining them. Meanwhile, I also
seek to incorporate insights from political scientists’ studies on China’s environmental
governance, given that power analysis of environmental politics in China has been mainly
carried out by them. Despite being limited to what occurs within the political system, the views
of the political scientists have drawn attention to how the dynamics of power within the political

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system have structured the environmental arena (Economy, 2004; Lieberthal, 1997; Ran, 2013;
Wu, 2009).
Second, environmental migration is embedded in a specific way of thinking and talking
about the human-environment relationship. This is a further investigation of the knowledge and
power dimension of power and power relations. Environmental knowledge and discourses are
always associated with different positions and competing constructions implicated in power
relations. Problematizing the social processes of discourse and knowledge production has
become the analytical focus of post-structualist political ecology (Bassett and Zueli, 2003;
Bryant, 1998; Fairhead and Leach, 1995, 1996, 1997; Forsyth, 2003; Leach and Mearns, 1996;
Peet and Watts, 1996; Robbins, 2000; Stott and Sullivan, 2000). Knowledge-power is further
made an agent for transforming human life from the governmentality perspective. Many
geographers consider governmentality in terms of the mechanisms of knowledge production that
the states have used to constitute their subjects and territories as “governable” (Rose-Redwood,
2006).
The construction of environmental knowledge in environmental migration is to be
explored. As Yeh (2010) reasons, if environmental migration is a rational policy decision with
the objective of restoring grasslands as it is claimed, several conditions must hold true: first of
all, grasslands must be degraded; secondly, overgrazing must be a primary cause of the problem;
and thirdly, removal of grazing must be able to move the ecosystem out of its undesirable state.
These conditions must be evaluated with a set of measures, and the measures are embedded in
specific types of knowledge. Yeh’s interrogation is actually intended to draw attention to the
simplicity of the policy basis behind the grassland degradation issue without carefully
considering the complex knowledge. A similar critique towards grassland policy by Jiang (2006)

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points out that the failure of local grassland improvements is linked to two contradicting realities:
the natural constraints to landscape change and the tenacious persistence of policies to improve
it. My intention here is not to evaluate whether grassland degradation is the truth; instead, I am
concerned with how the different positions of knowledge shape the processes and effects of
environmental migration. I assume that the problematic consequences of environmental
migration are related not only to how it is practiced, as this is addressed by policy advisers who
believe that improving enforcement is going to solve the problems, but firstly and fundamentally
to how it is conceived.
Third, the processes of environmental migration occur on multiple scales and across
scales. Scale is a key concept for defining and explaining environmental problems to political
ecologists (Neumann 2005, p. 10; Zimmerer and Bassett 2003, p. 3). In studying my case, scale
in the sense of level remains fundamental to understanding the mechanisms of environmental
policy flows within the political system, but I also seek to pay attention to the production of scale
(Neumann, 2009; Rangan and Kull, 2008). This means that scale is not only related to what
happens on any particular scale but is also “used to interpret the experience of spatio-temporal
difference and change so as to make ecology the object of politics, policy-making and political
action” (Rangan and Kull, 2008, p. 28). The relevance to this analytical perspective is based on
my observation that, in the political discourses of environmental migration, desertification and
grassland degradation, those problems that used to be addressed in relation to poverty in a
specific “peripheral” place, are articulated as being “upscaled” to threaten the national security
(located in the “central” places). At the same time, the relation of the “peripheral” place to the
state is also re-coordinated according to its ecological function.

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1.11 Clarifying the Conception of Environmental Migration
The key term and subject of this study, environmental migration, has been used in varied
ways by policy-makers and researchers with nebulous understandings. This section will clarify
its meaning by reviewing its use in policy and literature and by explaining my use of the term.
There is no universally agreed upon terminology for human movement in the context of
environmental change (Dun and Gemenne, 2008). Particularly in China’s case, confusion
regarding the notion of environmental migration first arises from it being mixed up with poverty
alleviation policy and practices. The notion “environmental migration” emerged later than the
notion “Anti-poverty Resettlement” in policy texts but it they have been used in an
interchangeable manner in the field of poverty alleviation (SCWRDO, 2005a). An extreme claim
in the periodic guideline Non-Local Poverty Alleviation Resettlement 11th Five-Year Plan,
simply claims that environmental migration is a synonym of Anti-poverty Resettlement (NDRC,
2007). Taking the term as coined in practice, Xinjiletu (2005b) traces the first use of
environmental migration to an anti-poverty resettlement project in an environmentally extremely
degraded area of Guizhou province in 1982. In a similar way, Sun et al. (2009) count a poverty
alleviation resettlement program in the Sanxi areas of western China as the beginning of
environmental migration. Later environmental migration projects name both projects with prior
environmental concerns and those with severe poverty problems (Sein and Zhang, 2009;
Xinjiletu, 2005a). The intersection of poverty and environmental problems are common in
reality, but why did the notion “environmental migration” emerge and why has it become a more
popular way of talking about resettlement? Bao and Ren (2011) think that naming projects with
such as notion in Inner Mongolia was done to follow the path of the state’s developing discourse
on combating eco-environmental deterioration. Minjian Zhang (2006) explicitly states that

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environmental migration in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is just a more fashionable
name for anti-poverty resettlement; and the prime objective of the projects is still to alleviate
poverty.
Such a mix of policy and practices is reflected in the mixed association of environmental
migration with other types of resettlement in research. “Shengtai Yimin” in China has been
mixed with both poverty alleviation resettlement (Sein and Zhang, 2009; Tan, 2011; Tan and
Guo, 2007, 2009; Xinjiletu, 2005a; Xu and Ju, 2009) and with involuntary resettlement
(Dickinson and Webber, 2007) even though no claim across the policy text suggests any linkage
between involuntary resettlement and environmental migration. Following its wider use, Chinese
scholars have also sought to better define the notion of “Shengtai Yimin”. I identify four
approaches among them.
The first approach, as used by Gegengaowa and Wuyunbatu (2003), addresses “Shengtai
Yimin” as the cause of environmental migration. They define environmental migration as “a kind
of economic behavior in which people are forced to change place of residence and adjust
lifestyle due to the degradation of the ecological environment which has jeopardized the short-
term and long-term subsistence interests of the people” (2003, p. 118).
The second approach, as used by Liu (2002) addresses the central role of the government
and the (multiple) objectives including environmental protection, economic development and
others. For example, Liu defines “Shengtai Yimin” as “an activity stemming from the concern
with improving and protecting the ecological environment together with developing the
economy. It collects a highly dispersed population living in environmentally fragile areas
through resettlement to form new villages and towns so as to achieve the coordinated
development of population, resources, environment, economy and society” (2002, p. 48).

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The third approach simultaneously addresses environmental degradation as the cause and
environmental protection as the objective of “Shengtai Yimin”. Bao provides a simple definition
of it: “the movement activities including population movement due to ecological environmental
degradation or for protecting ecological environment” (2006, p. 27). Guo and Shi give a similar
but more elaborate version “the voluntary population movement activities due to the loss of
subsistence conditions caused by the destruction or degradation of ecological system; it can also
be planned resettlement of a population from ecologically fragile areas to new settlements in
order to rebuild social and economic life. It can also be the resettlement of a population due to
restrictions and forced change of resource use for restoring ecological systems, and the
associated livelihood restoration activities” (2010, p. 97).
The fourth approach, as used by Zheng (2013) addresses the environment as the objective
of environmental migration. She claims that “Shengtai Yimin essentially refers to population
movement with the prime aim of ecological protection and the principle of enhancing ecological
system service functions and values” (p. 98). Like Rogers and Wang (2006), Zheng (2013)
further distinguishes two types of “Shengtai Yimin”: one proactive type for wildlife conservation
and biodiversity, and the other a passive type for ecosystem restoration in environmentally
fragile areas.
While the policy of Chinese “Shengtai Yimin” has sometimes been translated into
English as “ecological migration” or “ecological resettlement”, my preferred translation is
“environmental migration” in my research because, in my opinion, this term properly reflects
and incorporates all three major elements of this fundamentally transformative development
strategy: (i) the environmental rationale of the policy; (ii) the movement of rural residents away
from marginal or ecologically fragile lands; and (iii) a concomitant change of people’s

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livelihoods. The term should also be distinguished at the outset from the notion of
“environmental refugees”, people who may undertake permanent movement, or migration, for
example as an adaptive response to multi-year drought with intense desertification. In the case of
the implementation of development policies or the establishment of nature reserves, however,
rural people move away from their original homes to new residences in response to development
plans or policies, not in response to the environmental situation per se.
In addition, the concept of migration can be further expanded to include not only the
obvious geographic element, but equally the planners’ aim that the relocated people should find
or develop alternative livelihoods, which they will settle into and where they may find a level of
contentment, fulfillment, sense of purpose and ultimately a new living situation, a new status
quo, and social stability. In short, while environmental migration plans have been advocated in
China primarily on the basis of an environmental rhetoric, certain socio-economic development
benefits have been promised or implied as well. Whether none, some, most or all of the hoped-
for social development or environmental benefits of relocation and settlement programs have
been (or are being) achieved is a widespread area of current inquiry in China.
The Chinese government has already endorsed the resettlement of large numbers of
people, livestock and communities across vast tracts of grassland throughout the country.
However, environmental migration should still be recognized for what it is: an untested social
experiment continuing to the present time, with little attention given to monitoring and learning
lessons from the social impacts, whether positive or negative, on the resettled people. Where
post-implementation social impact studies have been undertaken, the overall time frame is still
relatively short (that is, only a few years). To help to fill this gap in knowledge, local perceptions
regarding some of the main social and development outcomes of the first environmental

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migration project undertaken in the Tibet Autonomous Region (hereafter, TAR) are introduced,
analyzed and reviewed in this dissertation.
1.12 Structure of the Dissertation
My dissertation is composed of six chapters.
Chapter 1 introduces the research topic, background, aims and research questions. I set
my main argument in the context of China’s great transformation particularly in terms of
environmental policies and coping strategies. At the end, it clarifies the definition of
environmental migration.
Chapter 2 reviews and conceptualizes the theoretical inspirations that guide the
formulation of my conceptual and methodological approaches. A model of the relationship
between inequality, vulnerability, and environmental migration is proposed.
Chapter 3 describes the methodological considerations. It introduces the specific methods
that I have used to collect qualitative and quantitative data. Meanwhile, I explain the sources of
materials and the research design. At the end, I reflect upon my conduct.
Chapter 4 explores the concerns about environmental migration through case studies on
Tibetan migration communities in Sangjiangyuan Area. I first argue that grassland degradation
cannot simply be attributed to overgrazing and population growth, hence the idea of improving
grassland by simply implementing migration projects may sound implausible. I then analyze the
process and policies of migration and examines its socio-economic changes and worsened social
inequalities from Tibetan migrants’ perspective.
Chapter 5 reflects on the findings from field research and provides political, cultural and
communicative implications.

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Chapter 6 is the concluding chapter, in which I summarize and discuss the main
arguments of this dissertation against the background of the Anthropocene. Then I give
methodological reflections on the influence of inequalities on environmental migration in my
findings, methodological approaches, and policy discussions. I also consider how social
inequality is presently addressed in policy instruments and communication inquiry that address
environmentally induced migration and offer suggestions for future research and discussion.

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Chapter 2: Conceptualizing Migration-Social Equality Nexus in
Environmental Change

In the first chapter I introduced some key issues that surround the environment-migration
nexus and set out the objectives of my dissertation. In order to conduct the analysis, the
dissertation develops environmental migration as a phenomenon. The literature on human
mobility chops up human movement into a number of theories, categories, and definitional
arrangements. The literature review develops a coherent analytic that identifies environmental
migration as a category of decision and governance. This sets the context for ethnographic
interviews and interpreting the success and limits of the migration efforts that I will focus on in
chapter 3.
The first section of this chapter explores the changing ways in which the causes of
migration has been understood and theorized by academics (predominantly in the 20th century).
In this section, I also address the conceptualization of migration within environmental change
literature. Sections two and three present a critical review of scholarly work on social
inequalities, resilience and livelihoods, which provide the theoretical bedrock for the dissertation.
In section four, I examine the environmental migration from a gendered perspective. I finish the
chapter with a brief summary.
2.1 Theorizing the Environment and Migration
2.1.1 Different approaches to theorizing the role of environment in migration
Migration first became an issue worthy of study in the developed world in the late 19th
and 20th century with the advent of the industrial revolution and the transformation of societies
from predominantly rural to urban (see, for example, Ravenstein’s The Laws of Migration,

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1889). Since this early work, the study of migration has diversified to include perspectives from
across the social sciences (Brettell and Hollifield, 2000). However, by the mid to late 20th
century, political and economic explanations of migration were increasingly dominant and
represented two ends of a philosophical and methodological spectrum characterizing approaches
to the study of migration (Boyle et al., 1998; Piguet et al., 2011).
At one end, theories tended to focus on variations in income across space as driving
migration, with the individual regarded as a rational player making informed decisions in perfect
market conditions based on actual or expected costs and benefits (Deshingkar, 2005; McLeman
and Smit, 2006). In a review of economic theories of migration, Lilleør and Van den Broeck
(2004) identify three broad groupings. The first grouping is wage differentials between areas
(Lewis, 1954; Ranis and Fei, 1961); the second is expected wage differentials between areas
(Todaro, 1969; Harris and Todaro, 1970); and the third is the New Economics of Labor
Migration (NELM) (Mincer, 1978; Stark and Levhari, 1982; Stark and Bloom, 1985; Stark and
Lucas, 1988). The third grouping stands apart from the previous two, owing to the
conceptualization of decisions set within a broader household strategy. To these groupings
“Push-Pull” explanations, whilst not a theory in the strictest sense, can also be added: first
proposed by Lee (1966) they are considered an “inseparable companion” to economic
explanations and necessary to “animate their models” (Massey et al, 1998, p. 12).
At the other end of the spectrum are the more historical structural approaches that
highlight the differences in economic, political and human capital between places that result in
flows of labor and capital (Boyle et al., 1998). These approaches (particularly for international
migration), rooted within Marxist political economy and world systems theory, emphasize the
importance of historical and contextual factors in migratory decisions. Advocates of a more

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structural approach to migration rejected the primacy of the individual evident in economic
theories of migration (Castles and Miller, 2003) and argued that more explanatory power would
be gained from understanding the “‘hidden’ logic of the capitalist mode of production” (Boyle et
al., 1998, p. 68). Notable examples of a more structuralist approach to migration include Piore’s
(1979) dual labor market theory, Shrestha’s (1988) structural framework of migration and
Wallerstein’s (1974; 1979; 1983) world system theory.
At their heart, Marxist structuralist explanations have the notion of uneven development
and spatial differences. In Piore’s (1979) dual labor market theory the difference is between two
sectors within an economy. Shrestha (1988) argues that migration is the result of the increasing
penetration of capitalism into the rural sector and concurrent spatial differences between rural
and urban centers. Wallerstein (1974; 1979; 1983), in conceptualizing the world as one capitalist
system, believes that migration is due, in part, to differences between core (such as Europe) and
periphery regions (such as Africa).
The rise of the economic and historical structural theories of migration saw a decrease in
the prominence of the environment as a driver, becoming progressively less visible through the
20th century (Suhrke, 1993). Hunter (2005) argues that, while many classic migration theories
provide the foundations to examine the role of the environment within migration decision-
making (incorporated as a contextual factor), it is rarely given more than a cursory consideration.
This invisibility of the role of the environment in migration frameworks throughout the 20th
century is attributed to the rise in the Western-centric belief that technology would diminish the
importance of the environment and a paradigmatic shift that favored more political and economic
explanations over environmental determinism (Piguet et al., 2011). That is not say that the
environment was completely invisible and ignored as a contributory factor. Black et al. (2011c)

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argue that environmental factors are included in key migration frameworks but tend to be
regarded as a contextual consideration.
Both approaches (economic and historical structural) to conceptualizing migration have
been critiqued as being simplistic and reductionist and overly deterministic (Boyle et al., 1998;
Castles and Miller, 2003). In part as a response to the deterministic critique, a number
intermediary or pluralist approaches to understanding migration have come to the fore (Greiner
and Sakdapolrak, 2013; Samers, 2010) in an attempt to capture more of the complexity and
representing what Faist (1997) labels the “crucial meso level”. These conceptualizations of
migration include the NELM (Stark and Bloom, 1985; Stark and Levhari, 1982; Stark and Lucas,
1988), residential mobility decision-making model (Speare et al., 1974), value expectancy model
(De Jong and Fawcett, 1981), migrant networks and systems (Fawcett, 1989; Hugo, 1998;
Massey et al., 1987; Singer and Massey, 1998), and approaches based on the livelihood
framework (Bebbington, 1999; Ellis, 2000; Scoones, 1998).
A common theme running through the approaches outlined above is the desire to embrace
the complexity of migration. The approaches often rely on multiple levels of analysis and seek to
embed decisions within broader contexts: combining the micro and macro levels of analysis with
the household a key site of decision-making and often the primary unit of analysis (Castles and
Miller, 2003). Migration was viewed in a more dynamic way and with multiple drivers working
across scales (Bakewell, 2010; Bardsley and Hugo, 2010; Castles, 2010; Massey et al., 1998).
Underpinning much of this thinking is an increased awareness of the fundamental tension that
exists between agency and structure. A key critique of the economic and historical structural
approaches is the importance they place on agency and structure respectively, without
incorporating the other.

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McLaughlin and Dietz (2008), in writing about human vulnerability and environmental
change, argue that further progress will only be achieved if researchers “develop a more robust,
integrated perspective on vulnerability, one capable of addressing the interrelated dynamics of
social structure, human agency and the environment” (pp. 99-100). Similar points are made by
Bakewell (2010) and Obokata et al. (2014) who both call for a better integration of agency and
structure within conceptualizations of migration. Migration decisions, although made by an
individual, are done so within broader social, political and cultural contexts. Privileging the
individual over the context portrays a very simplistic and incomplete picture of a complex
process.
King (2011), in addressing the agency structure dualism within migration research,
argues that the application of combined methods and approaches offers a potentially successful
means to help ensure a more holistic representation of migration going forward. However, even
within this raft of new approaches, the role of the environment has still tended to be excluded
from the broader dynamics of migration (Gemenne, 2011).
2.1.2 Putting Environment Back into Migration
As early as 1992, the International Organization for Migration reported that
environmental degradation was already resulting in large numbers of migrants, with the
possibility of substantial increases due to environmental change (IOM/RPG, 1992). In that same
year, Bilsborrow (1992) put forward an early attempt to theorize the environmental dimensions
of migration. He linked demographic changes, namely population growth, with economic
motivations for land extensification (increase in food demand) and therefore out-migration to
rural frontier regions (Bilsborrow, 1992). Presaging lessons learned from more contemporary
research, Bilsborrow himself ended with a plea for within-country analyses given that the

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migration–environment association is dramatically shaped by local sociopolitical,
socioeconomic, and socio-environmental realities. In response to Malthusian arguments of
population growth outpacing agriculture production, Boserup (1965) argued that population
pressures may intensify rural land use, yielding greater output. Bilsborrow argued that another
response to population pressure could be land extensification -- the expansion of agriculture --
through migration. Davis’s (1963) theory of multi-phasic response aimed to explain how rural
households adapted to threats to their standard of living due to increases in family size. Per Davis
(1963), feasible demographic responses included fertility reduction and postponement of
marriage. Building on this theory, Bilsborrow (1992) argued that migration represents another
feasible demographic response as households face challenging times.
Current interest in the relationship between migration and environmental change can be
traced back to the late 1980s and early 1990s and the work of El-Hinnawi (1985), Jacobsen
(1988) and Myers (1993). A key reason for the appeal and attention this work received was the
doomsday meta-narrative that foresaw millions of people displaced and increasing demands on
host countries threatening regional security as a result of an increasingly unpredictable, variable
and hostile environment brought about by climate change (Black, 2001). Central to this narrative
was an orthodoxy that viewed migration as a failure to adapt and an assumption that exposure to
risk would inevitably lead to increased human mobility.
In an effort to further bridge environmental considerations and classic migration theory,
Hunter (2005) reached to, for example, Wolpert’s (1966) stress-threshold model and Speare’s
(1974) thoughts on residential satisfaction. Environmental factors play a role in many of these
classic theories, yet details are sparse. For example, the stress-threshold model notes the potential
placement of environmental hazards as a stressor; environmental amenities and dis-amenities

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were, by and large, considered locational characteristics within the residential satisfaction
perspective. Still, Hunter argued that classic migration theory has much to offer in terms of
guidance for the emerging migration-environment literature.
These classic theories cannot, however, sufficiently tackle the nuance required for a
thorough consideration of environmental factors. Hugo (1996) argued, for example, that
environmental factors act on a continuum ranging from slow-onset stresses to rapid-onset
disasters. Slow-onset environmental changes, such as drought (Findley, 1994) and rainfall
variability (Warner & Afifi, 2014), can lead to migration (McLeman & Smit, 2006), as
households aim to change or diversify livelihoods. On the other hand, rapid-onset natural
disasters can result in long-term displacement (Sastry & Gregory, 2014), although in some cases,
such as flooding in Bangladesh, poverty may constrain migration even under such dire
circumstances (Gray & Mueller, 2012b). This argument further demonstrates that theory must
effectively integrate the interactions between environmental factors and other migration
determinants operating differently across scales and across time. Other determinants include
regional and national socioeconomic and sociopolitical conditions as well as household
compositional characteristics.
A comprehensive migration–environment theory remains elusive, yet an important step
toward conceptualization was recently offered by Black et al. (2011) in the interdisciplinary
journal Global Environmental Change. The framework is influenced by the working paper
Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: A Framework for Analysis (Scoones, 1998) through explicit
integration of a variety of household capitals including social, physical, and economic. Yet it
also considers the continuum of environmental influence, international versus internal migration,
and broader contextual determinants operating at a variety of scales.

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Two key messages are worth highlighting from the discussion above. First, and
regardless of the conceptualization of migration as a failure to adapt, a successful strategy or
distress migration, understanding the links between migration and what it means for the
resilience or vulnerability of social actors in specific circumstances is very important and
necessary. Second, the debate concerning migration and development has evolved from one that
considered migration as separate to development to one in which migration and development
outcomes are increasingly intertwined (Black and Sward, 2008; Deshingkar, 2006; Geiger and
Pécoud, 2013; Sutherland, 2013).
2.1.3 Examining the evidence for environmental migration
As with developments in migration studies, links between the environment and migration
began to be viewed in a more dynamic way, with multiple drivers working at scale and where
agency and structure interact and feedback on each on other (Bakewell, 2010; Bardsley and
Hugo, 2010; Castles, 2010; Massey et al., 1998).
Theorizing on migration and the environment is becoming increasingly complex as
academics seek to capture the dynamic processes at work and explain context specific variations.
Cumulatively, the impact of these developments can be seen in more recent work on migration
where the environment is once again considered as one of many drivers influencing the decision-
making process (see, for example, Black et al., 2011a; Kniveton et al., 2008; Laczko and
Aghazarm, 2009; McLeman and Smit, 2006; Perch- Nielsen et al., 2008; Renaud et al., 2011).
Migration has been found to increase and decrease with environmental change and it can
be a proactive choice or an option of last resort once all other options have failed (McLeman,
2010). Furthermore, the use of migration as a precautionary adaptation due to increased
perceptions of risk cannot be discounted (Bardsley and Hugo, 2010). Migration may also provide

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a means through which households spread risk and an important livelihood strategy (Ellis, 1998).
Migration is an incredibly complex process caused by a number of drivers acting at different
temporal and spatial scales (McLeman and Smit, 2006). Bardsley and Hugo (2010) argue that it
is important to see the relationship between environmental change and population movement in a
number of ways to avoid privileging certain types of movements. Furthermore, they argue that
mobility is just one likely response among many to environmental change and one of the many
potential components that contribute to a migration decision.
The discussion above portrays the relationship between the environment and migration as
one directional without exploring the more recursive elements through which migration changes
the environment. Although this framing of the relationship is common in migration environment
research it does not capture the processes through which agents can impinge on the environment
(Bonfiglio, 2012). Migration can and does influence the environment in both sending and
receiving locations that in turn has the potential to influence the environmental drivers of
migration. For example, migration can lead to environmental degradation in receiving locations
due to increasing demands on water and other resources causing further migration (Hugo, 2008;
Hummel et al., 2013; Hummel et al., 2009).
Three types of environmental change event have been commonly used to study the links
between climate change and migration: (i) slower onset events such as droughts and
desertification; (ii) faster onset events such as floods and landslides; and (3) change associated
with increasing sea levels such as inundation and salinization (Tacoli, 2009). The environmental
changes associated with faster and slower onset events (groups one and two above) have been
extensively studied using present day and past analogues. Environmental changes associated
with sea-level rise are much less studied using analogues. Instead these types of events are

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explored through the identification of at-risk groups and inferences about possible impacts and
effects. Moving from the abstract to a more specific focus, Table 2.1 summarizes some of the
major recent studies that explore links between faster and slower onset environmental changes
and migration.
Table 1 Summary of some recent major studies exploring the links between environmental changes and migration.
Authors Study area Method Type of
environmental change
Key findings
Etzold et
al. (2013)
Bangladesh Mixed methods
using interviews and
questionnaires in
several villages
Rainfall variability
and food insecurity
(Slow/Variability)
Migration not driven by climatic
variability but existing livelihood
and labor market systems.
Impacts and migration
socially contingent.
Dun
(2011)
Vietnam Mixed methods
approach using
interviews and
questionnaires with a
focus on one region
Flooding in the
Mekong delta (Rapid)
Flooding that triggers seasonal
labor migration can cause
disruptions for those directly
dependent on the environment
leading to migration by
individuals and households and is
also a cause for government-led
resettlement initiatives.

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Gray and
Mueller
(2012)
Bangladesh Quantitative
approach using
longitudinal (three
waves in 1994, 2003
and 2006) survey
data for 1,700
households covering
up to 47communities
in rural Bangladesh
Flooding, crop failure
and long-term
mobility (Rapid)
Exposure to disaster did not have
consistently positive impact on
migration. Migration is used as a
coping strategy but not
universally applicable. The
impact of flooding is not as large
as the impact of crop failures on
Migration.
Fussell et
al. (2014)
US Place-based
migration systems
approach to
migration, exploring
existence and
magnitude of county
to county flowing
hazard event.
Impact of Hurricane
Katrina on New
Orleans (Rapid)
Focused on recovery migration
and found that it is a combination
of returning and new residents.
Post-disaster ties with spatially
proximate counties increased.
Feng et
al. (2010)
Mexico - US Quantitative
instrumental
variables
approach exploring
links between
climatic
Focus on corn and
wheat yields for all
states in
Mexico during
drought years
(Slow)
Find that decreases in crop (corn
or wheat) yield (associated with
climate variability) increases the
fraction of population
emigrating.

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variability, crop
yield and emigration
in Mexico for two
five-year time
periods
Feng et al.
(2011)
US Quantitative
instrumental
variables approach
exploring links
between climatic
variability, crop
yield and emigration
at a county level
from 1970 to 2009
Focus on corn and
soybean yield losses
associated with
variability in weather
for counties in
Midwestern states
(Slow/Variability)
Find a relationship between
decreasing yield and increases in
out-migration for the adult
population.
Doevenspeck
(2011)
Benin Mixed methods
approach using
interviews and
questionnaires with a
focus on one region
over a period of five
years
Focus on drivers of
migration
(Slow)
Environmental degradation not
sufficient to explain migration in
rural Benin. Migration is a
social process, different people
respond in different ways when
presented with threats and
opportunities.

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Henry et al.
(2003); Henry
et al. (2004)
Burkina
Faso
Quantitative
approach using a
multi-level event
history analysis.
Data drawn from
nationally
representative
sample and
retrospective
community surveys
Focus on the
causes of the
first out-migration of
adults over the
age of 15
(Slow)
In ecologically marginal zones
environmental variables had
greater explanatory power than
socio-demographic variables.
Nationally, the impact of
environmental variables was
less powerful.
Ezra and
Kiros
(2001)
Ethiopia Multilevel event
history analysis for
a 10-year period.
Data drawn from a
household survey
in rural areas
Focus on causes of
out-migration during
drought years (Slow)
Life course events were very
important in determining
migration. At a community level
vulnerability to food crises also
had a positive effect on
migration.
Findley
(1994)
Mali Quantitative
approach using
longitudinal panel
data (two cohorts in
1982 and 1989) for
99 villages in first
region of Mali
Focus on the causes
of migration during
the drought years
of 1983 – 1985
(Slow)
Level of overall migration for the
region did not rise. There was an
increase in the numbers of
women and children migrating
and a shift to shorter cycle
patterns of migration.

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(Upper Senegal
River Valley)

Focusing solely on the studies in Table 2.1 that look at the impacts of drought provides
an example of the often-contradictory nature of the relationship between the environment and
migration. Ezra and Kiros (2001), in their study in Ethiopia, find that life course events at an
individual level and vulnerability of the community to food crises at a community level are both
significant determinants of migration. Henry and colleagues (2003; 2004) were interested in the
impact of drought on inter-provincial migration in Burkina Faso. They found that the explanatory
power of environmental variables was significant when examining migration from ecologically
marginal provinces with rainfall, land degradation and land availability all representing
significant push factors. However, when exploring the impact of changing rainfall patterns on the
first out migration of adults, life course events were found to be much more important, echoing
the findings of Ezra and Kiros. Findley (1994), when examining the impact of drought in Mali,
found that, overall, the level of migration within the region of study remained constant, although
its character changed significantly; shorter, circular migration increased (especially among
women and children) whilst longer, permanent migration remained static. Lastly, Doevenspeck
reported that environmental changes were not sufficient to explain the patterns of migration in
rural Benin. He concluded that social, political and cultural contexts were very important in
explaining the different patterns of movement.
Drawing on all of the examples in Table 2.1, I make five general points as follows:

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First, environmental change tends to be investigated through disruptions to the resource
base and associated impact on livelihoods or through the disruption to lives associated with the
event itself.
Second, the relationships between environmental change and migration are complex with
no consistent signal regarding the role of the environment; empirical results can and do pull in
different directions.
Third, the actual pathways through which the environment manifests itself on migration
are often only postulated, limiting the analytical and explanatory power of the studies (this is
especially the case for the more quantitative approaches).
Fourth, the studies also highlight the importance of social, historical and political
contexts and their influence on migration patterns and decisions. Acknowledging and capturing
this potentially complex range of factors requires novel theoretical approaches and robust
methodologies.
Finally, there are few examples of studies in the English-speaking world that examine the
relationship between the environment and migration in China (Tan and Guo, 2007). Of the
studies that do exist, most tend to focus on resettlement programs (CEDEM, 2009; Li et al.,
2013; Tan, 2011; Tan et al., 2013) and a minority focus on the impact on the environment as a
result of migration (in sending or receiving locations) (Hao et al., 2013; Qin, 2010; Song et al.,
2008).
At a more abstract level, an additional observation concerning the issue of scale is also
worthy of note. Research on the migration environmental change nexus tends to fracture along
lines of scale (mirroring to a certain extent the earlier discussion concerning the agency structure
dichotomy). On the one hand, intensive case studies are employed to focus on a set of

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individuals, households or communities with the intention of establishing how they are
responding to a change in circumstances and on the other, extensive approaches focus on
regional surveys to identify risk and hence vulnerability (Gemenne, 2011; Piguet, 2010). Scale is
important in informing what and how research is framed, implemented and the conclusions that
are drawn; yet it is rarely problematized (Adger et al., 2009a; Birkenholtz, 2011).
Migration is an event or process that works across both temporal and spatial scales and
does not fit neatly into predefined categories. This is especially the case when one considers
migration in the context of environmental change where the validity and utility of single scale
explanations has been questioned (Neumann, 2009; Polsky and Easterling III, 2001). Indeed,
Engel di-Mauro (2009) argues that issues of scale are often at the core of explanations for people
environment interactions. Developing this analysis further Sayre asserts that scale is not about
size but links (specifically processes and relationships) and argues that this necessitates cross-
scale and interdisciplinary research (2005). This is a call echoed by other scholars working in the
field of migration studies (Adger et al., 2009a; Black et al., 2011b; Castles, 2010; Curran, 2002;
Kniveton et al., 2008).
In this section I have summarized some of the key developments in migration theorizing
highlighting the dominance of historical structural and economic models of migration. More
recently, theorizing on migration and the migration environmental change nexus has increased in
complexity mirroring developments across the social sciences. Although limited, empirical work
on the migration environmental change nexus has revealed a complex picture with results often
pulling in different directions. Contextual social, economic and political factors are found to be
as important, emphasizing the importance of an interdisciplinary, multilevel approach to
empirical work. In the next two sections I introduce two broad theoretical approaches to

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understand human environment relationships and interactions: resilience and social inequality
approaches.
2.2 Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems
2.2.1 Resilience and Social Ecological Systems
The concept of resilience was first introduced in the 1970s in the field of ecology as a
way to understand non-linear dynamics and the means by which ecosystems are able to maintain
themselves during periods of change or perturbation (Berkes et al., 2003). Within ecology,
resilience has been defined in two different ways: “engineered resilience” and “ecological
resilience”. Engineered resilience is commonly conceived of as return time or the time required
for a system to return to equilibrium following a disturbance. Ecological resilience is defined as
“the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its structure by
changing the variables and processes that control behavior” (Holling and Gunderson, 2002, p.
28). Ecological resilience rejects ideas of determinism, predictability, and mechanistic properties
implied in engineered resilience, highlighting instead heterogeneity, surprise, and self-
organization (Folke, 2006; Folke et al., 2010). Carpenter et al. (2001) argue that engineered
resilience focuses on the ability of a system to resist a disturbance whereas the ecological
definition focuses on the ability of a system to persist. This crucial difference, between resistance
and persistence, helps to shift attention from the overarching paradigm of stability towards
something more dynamic (Adger, 2003).
A key attribute of the resilience approach is to change the focus from an assumption of
stability to one of stability and flexibility (Davidson, 2010). The duality of stability and
flexibility is conceptualized through basins of attraction, stability domains or multiple stable
states. A system can flip to an alternative state as a result of an external perturbation or internal

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dynamics that moves the system beyond a certain threshold (Folke et al., 2010). Once this
threshold has been reached the system changes into a new state, recovering to the previous state
is often very difficult. Examples include collapse of the cod fishery in the Northwest Atlantic
(MEA, 2005) and lake eutrophication resulting in turbidity (Carpenter et al., 2001). Resilience
thinking is framed within the idea of complex adaptive systems, these systems are defined by
non-linearity, aggregation, diversity and flows that generate path dependencies giving rise to
multiple possible basins of attraction (Folke, 2006; Folke et al., 2010). The greater a system’s
resilience the harder it is for it to change into a fundamentally new state.
The idea of resilience has been extended to the social domain. Adger (2000, p. 347)
defines social resilience as “the ability of groups or communities to cope with external stresses
and disturbances as a result of social, political and environmental change.” Adger (ibid) argues
that, through social resilience, groups and communities are able to adapt to environmental
changes (they are resilient). Crucially, the definition and subsequent explanation emphasizes that
social and ecological resilience are linked in some way, framed within a social ecological
system. Humans and nature are not seen as merely interdependent systems but one in the same
system with cultural, political, technological, social, economic and ecological components
interacting (Adger, 2003; Resilience Alliance, 2010; Resilience Alliance, 2014a).
The broadening conceptualization of social-ecological systems resulted in a synthesized
version of the ecological definition of resilience: (i) the amount of change the system can
undergo and still remain in the same state (the same controls on structure and function); (ii) the
capacity to self-organize; and (iii) the capacity to adapt and learn (Carpenter et al., 2001).
The application of resilience set within a social-ecological system framing has a number
of potential benefits. First, taking a systems approach enables problems to be framed holistically

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and solutions to be identified in an integrated manner. Shocks and stresses are often co-variant
affecting different parts of the system in distinct but related ways; the system focus provides a
conceptual framework through which these interdependencies can be revealed. Second, issues
associated with trade-offs and synergies and temporal and spatial interactions at scale can be
made explicit all set within specific cultural and historical contexts. Third, the focus on social
and ecological attributes highlights the dependencies and risks of communities more dependent
on natural resources (Adger, 2000; Beichler et al., 2014; Béné et al., 2014; Goulden, 2006; Keck
and Sakdapolrak, 2013).
2.2.2 Locating the actor within a resilience framing
The purpose of the following discussion is not to review the evolution of the terms or
draw out the differences in meanings across the different fields of study; this is dealt with
extensively in existing literature (Adger, 2006; Folke, 2006; Gallopín, 2006; Martin-Breen and
Anderies, 2011; Walker et al., 2006; Walker et al., 2004). Rather, I wish to highlight that the
concept of adaptation (and adaptive capacity) provides a means to bridge the divide between
actor and system approaches and, at a more fundamental level, issues of agency and structure.
Vulnerability and resilience literature both acknowledge the very close relationship
between vulnerability, resilience, adaptation and adaptive capacity. Smit and Wandel (2006, p.
282) state that the concepts of “adaptation, adaptive capacity, vulnerability, resilience, exposure
and sensitivity are interrelated and have wide applicability”. Similarly, Gallopín (2006, p. 301)
argues that the “concepts of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptive capacity … are related in non-
trivial ways”. Resilience literature, while tending not to focus on the concept of vulnerability,
does highlight the close links between resilience, adaptability, adaptive capacity, and
vulnerability.

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For example, Miller et al. (2010, p. 1) states that “resilience and vulnerability, as well as
the related concepts of adaptation and transformation, are central concepts in highly influential
but somewhat different ways of framing our analysis of social-ecological change.” The
connections between the different concepts highlighted by Miller and colleagues is also apparent
in the paper by Folke (2006, p. 262). He states that, “[a] vulnerable social-ecological system has
lost resilience. Losing resilience implies loss of adaptability. Adaptability in a resilience
framework does not only imply adaptive capacity to respond to the social domain but also to
respond to and shape ecosystem dynamics.” These quotes highlight the close relationship
between the concepts, specifically the central role that adaptation plays in both resilience and
vulnerability literature (Coulthard, 2012).
Within resilience literature, adaptability describes the processes through which a system
is able to use knowledge and experience, adjust behavior and modes of operating in response to
external or internal processes to continue to exist within a current stability domain. Specifically,
adaptability is defined as “the capacity of actors in a system to influence resilience” and is
predicated on the notion that systems are in a state of flux rather than stasis (Walker et al., 2004,
p. 1). Resilience and adaptability are closely linked and relate to the dynamics of a specific
system (Walker et al., 2004). The concept of adaptation, as approached from a vulnerability
perspective, is derived from a broader disciplinary field compared to that of resilience including
hazard research, political ecology, human ecology, political economy, constructionism and
entitlements (Adger, 2006; Miller et al., 2010). Adaptation is defined as the “adjustment in
ecological, social, or economic systems in response to observed or expected changes in
environmental stimuli and their effects and impacts in order to alleviate adverse impacts of
change” (Nelson et al., 2007, p. 398).

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Notwithstanding the similarity in definitions, a major difference in the two literatures is
the focal scale of analysis. In the vulnerability literature, the unit of analysis (a catchment,
economic sector, household or individual) is the focal point of interest rather than the system and
the relationship between its component parts. Within the analysis, the role of the broader political
economy of resource use, that is the historical, social, political and economic contingencies in
structuring vulnerability or adaptation are more likely to be examined. Issues such as power,
access and entitlements as well as the agency of actors are addressed (Adger, 2006; Nelson et al.,
2007; Smit and Wandel, 2006). In resilience literature (as outlined in section 2.2.1 above), the
system is the focus of the analysis and the interactions between the component parts is more
normally of interest. Underpinning these differences is the dialectic between the actor and the
system; vulnerability literature tends to take an actor-orientated approach compared to the
systems-orientated approach of resilience literature (Miller et al., 2010).
The conceptualization of adaptation within the vulnerability literature is the ability (or
otherwise) of actors to take decisions and implement them (Nelson et al., 2007). Such notions are
also implicit in many of the definitions of adaptation in resilience literature (see, for example,
Carpenter et al., 2001; Gallopín, 2006; Walker et al., 2004). Brown and Westaway (2011) argue
that adaptive capacity can be seen to correspond to resources, agency and structure. As such,
adaptation and adaptive capacity can act as a bridging concept between different approaches
(actor and system), providing an ideal conceptual vehicle to try to engage different disciplinary
strands.
2.2.3 Whose Resilience?
Social-ecological systems sometimes get locked in very resilient but undesirable regimes,
examples of such regimes include poverty or states that decrease social welfare (Carpenter et al.,

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2001). In such circumstances, it may be considered expedient to transform the system state to
something more desirable. Transformability is the “capacity to create a fundamentally new
system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable”
(Walker et al., 2004, p. 1). Whereas resilience and adaptation focus on managing change to
maintain essentially the same system structure and function, transformation implies something
more fundamental. Although, as Walker et al. (2004, p. 2) state, the dividing line between
adaptation and transformation can be “fuzzy, and subject to interpretation”. Within resilience
literature these states are the basins of attraction mentioned earlier.
Here, I want to make two specific comments regarding the concept of transformation
before making a more general observation about the way in which issues of power and social
difference have been addressed within resilience thinking. First, moving between basins of
attraction introduces the ideas of intentionality and desirability. Variability is a fundamental
aspect of any system and, over time, change to different states is inevitable. Transformational
change can be deliberated or forced by changing environmental and socio-economic
circumstances (Folke et al., 2010). From a societal perspective, certain states will be more or less
desirable dependent on their perceived costs and benefits. Furthermore, different actors can and
do have different perspectives on the relative merits of the same state.
Resilience describes properties of a system, in its pure sense it is not normative. Yet this
apparent neutrality masks many normative elements that characterize social (and political)
systems. Defining what constitutes a desirable system and for whom requires normative
judgments that tend not to be addressed within resilience thinking. Within resilience literature,
outcomes are often presented as desirable or natural with an assumed consensus (Brown, 2014;
Davoudi et al., 2012). Cote and Nightingale (2012, p. 479) make the important point that the

86

application of ecological principles within the social realm has reduced opportunities to ask
important normative questions such as “resilience of what?” and “for whom?”
The second related point is the issue of bounding. In choosing the focal point of the
study, in identifying the system, some things are included whilst others are, inevitably, excluded
(Davoudi et al., 2012). While the system may be self-evident in ecological terms the choice is
that much more difficult and more normative for open social-ecological systems (Turner, 2014).
Cote and Nightingale (2012, pp. 484-485) state that resilience thinking “is a power-laden
framing that creates certain windows of visibility on the processes of change, while obscuring
others”. Indeed, the choice of scale or focal point for the analysis is vital in determining the
identification of system variables, processes of change, perceptions and choices about the
desirability of system configurations and management approaches (Armitage et al., 2012).
Underpinning both of the points made above is the relative inability of resilience
frameworks to address the issue of power. Davoudi et al. (2012) describes resilience as “power-
blind” and Berkes and Ross (2013) refer to the “relative resilience” in regard to issues of power.
Similarly, Davidson (2010, p. 1135) asserts that resilience theory “is not readily applicable to
social systems”. In making her argument, Davidson highlights the unequal nature of human
agency bringing to the fore issues of social difference and questions concerning who has access
to what and why? At the heart of the matter is the systems focus that tends to exclude more local
explanations centered upon individual actors and agency (Nelson et al., 2007). This arises from
the abstraction of political and economic issues from social and ecological processes and limits
the explanatory power of the theory.
In response to such critiques, recent developments in resilience thinking have sought to
integrate resilience with other theoretical approaches to address the shortcoming (Brown, 2014).

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Examples include the interplay of resilience and wellbeing (Armitage et al., 2012; Coulthard,
2012), adaptation (in a more actor-orientated approach) and vulnerability (Béné et al., 2011;
Davoudi et al., 2012; Miller et al., 2010; Nelson et al., 2007; Shaw et al., 2014), access
(Langridge et al., 2006), actor network theory (Dwiartama and Rosin, 2014), as an explicitly
social concept (Marshall and Marshall, 2007) and with political ecology approaches (Peterson,
2000). These theoretical advances suggest that considerable potential does exist to broaden the
scope of resilience approaches to more explicitly deal with some of the normative and power
issues associated with the more social of social sciences.
In summary, this section has described the theory of resilience and key concepts.
Resilience is categorized as the amount of change a system can experience whilst retaining the
same function and structure, the degree to which the system can self-organize and the degree to
which a system can learn and adapt (Carpenter et al., 2001; Walker et al., 2009; Walker et al.,
2006). Adaptability or adaptive capacity is acknowledged as a key aspect of a resilient system or
individual and reflects a system’s ability to learn and respond to external or internal dynamics
(Adger and Kelly, 1999; Folke et al., 2010; Gallopín, 2006; Gunderson et al., 2006; Nelson et al.,
2007; Smit and Wandel, 2006; Walker et al., 2009; Walker et al., 2004). Transformability, in
contrast has been defined as the ability to create a fundamentally new system when existing
economic, social or ecological changes make the current system untenable (Folke et al., 2010;
Gunderson et al., 2006; Walker et al., 2009; Walker et al., 2004). Adaptability and
transformability both capture change within a system. The two terms are related but differ in the
amount of change they represent. Adaptability captures the changes and adjustments that social
components of the system make to remain in the same basin of attraction.

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Transformability refers to a change that creates a fundamentally new system structure and
function. Systems can be transformed either intentionally or unintentionally through recognition
of past failures or through changing social values for example (such as the abolition of slavery).
This intentionality is key in understanding resilience during periods of transformation: if change
is intentional a system is resilient, if change is unintentional a system has lost resilience.
Furthermore, the focus on integrated social and ecological systems permits the
incorporation of human elements within the system dynamics (although this is not without
criticism) that cannot be viewed in isolation but need to be considered in relation to each other
(Nelson et al., 2007). However, the systems approach has been critiqued for failing to address
issues of power and social difference. Despite this, a resilience lens does appear to offer good
potential and levels of explanatory power especially if combined with other frameworks that
address some of the shortcomings of a resilience approach. Adaptability and adaptive capacity
provide a useful conceptual vehicle through which a resilience framing can be combined with
other more actor-orientated approaches that foregrounds the issue social difference and, to a
certain extent, power. In the next section I discuss the relationships between environmental
migration and social inequalities from the perspectives of a political ecology of translocal
relations.
2.3 Translocal Political Ecology and Environmental Migration
In this section I will apply the concept of a translocal political ecology to the study of the
migration-environment nexus, and to the environmental impacts of migration. I am aware of the
large body of literature on vulnerability in the context of famine, drought, and disaster (Little et
al., 2001; Oliver-Smith, 2009; Smucker and Wisner, 2008; Watts and Bohle, 1993) that has
addressed the issues of displacement and forced migration. This strand of research has

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thoroughly interrogated environmental hazards while analyzing the political ecology of risk
exposure. It concludes that vulnerability is mediated by unequal power relations and varying
combinations of factors, the environment being only one and not even the most prominent in
most circumstances. While this literature points to important (potential) drivers of migration, it
usually deals with migration as one of several response options and often does not examine
migration processes in more detail. As such, migration tends to appear only as an emergency
response and forced reaction to external pressures or shocks, and not as an everyday life
experience and proactive adaptation. I hold that factoring in the concept of translocality (Brickell
and Datta, 2011; Greiner and Sakdapolrak, 2013b), which explicitly acknowledges place as a
historically specific node where migrant networks are rooted and where particular flows
converge, offers a chance to grasp the manifold dimensions of human mobility in relation to
environmental factors. A marriage of translocality and political ecology presents an important
step toward a more holistic understanding of the interlinked dynamics of environment, migration,
and inequality. I propose that this notion of place as an arena for the “power geometry of time-
space compression” (Massey 1991, p. 25) renders the concept of translocality a field with
potential for fruitful engagement with political ecology approaches.
2.3.1 Environmental Factors as Drivers of Migration
In the literature on the migration-environment nexus, most studies focus on the
environment as a driver, determinant or trigger causing different mobility patterns. This includes
a broad range of types of threat, such as fast- (e.g., tropical storm) and slow-onset events (e.g.,
drought, desertification) as well as processes that are more (e.g., industrial accidents) or less
(e.g., tsunami) linked to human activities (Morrissey, 2009). The array of mobility patterns in the
context of environmental stress -- expressed in terms such as environmental migrants and

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refugees or environmentally related displacement and relocation -- can be found on several axes
that are part of multiple continuum. Oliver-Smith (2006, p. 3) identifies them as: (i) proactive--
reactive, (ii) voluntary--forced, (iii) temporary--permanent, and (iv) administrated--non-
administrated. Recently, the complex issue of migration into risk areas has been highlighted as a
dynamic that exacerbates people’s exposure to environmental hazards (De Sherbinin et al.,
2012). Examples include the massive population increases in the Bangladeshi floodplains or in
hurricane-prone areas of the U.S. (Hunter, 2005), or the rapid urbanization and slum formation
(Sakdapolrak, 2010).
In environmental migration literature, a distinction has been made between the so-called
alarmists or maximalists on one hand and the skeptics or minimalists on the other (Morrissey,
2012; Piguet, 2013). Maximalists (e.g., El-Hinnawi, 1985; Jacobson, 1988; Myers, 2002)
consider environmental factors as the primary and often sole cause of migration. In this
literature—which is strongly fueled by environment and security discourses—the discussion
often revolves around the concept of environmental refugees. Emphasis is put on the question of
who can legitimately be categorized as such, and on estimates and predictions of their potential
numbers. In some of the literature, alarmist concerns focus on how environmental migration
poses potential security threats and/or may result in social unrest in destination areas (WBGU,
2007). Following the lead of authors like Homer-Dixon (1999), human-environmental interaction
in this latter perspective is often considered in a more or less straightforward neo-Malthusian
eco-scarcity chain of arguments (e.g. Scheffran and Battaglini, 2011). An example is Myers
(2002, p. 609) who refers to “drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other
environmental problems, together with the associated problems of population pressures and
profound poverty” as the causes of migration.

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Minimalists or skeptics criticize such approaches on political, empirical, and theoretical
grounds (Oliver-Smith, 2012). On a political level, they question the alarmist narrative from a
discursive and political-economic perspective, asking whose interest the environmental
migration narrative serves and what effects it has, while pointing to the hegemony of the
discourse and the role played by power relations (e.g., Bettini, 2013; Farbotko and Lazrus, 2012;
Hartmann, 2010; Kibreab, 1997; Wisner, 2009).
On a theoretical level, minimalists argue that migration decisions are not triggered by
environmental factors in a simple and mechanistic way, and that such factors cannot be separated
from other factors that have an impact on migration, be they social, political, or economic
(Black, 2001). Environmental change is considered an amplifier of existing migration processes
(Tacoli, 2009). This understanding, which is promoted by the UK government-sponsored
Foresight Report (2011), has recently become the authoritative view in the research community.
This framework, however, as Black et al. (2011) highlight, only provides a checklist of potential
factors influencing the migration decision without specifying the relationships among these
factors.
In the approaches outlined above, I identify three ways in which human-environmental
relations are conceptualized:
Firstly, environmental pressure as external, hard fact. In most studies, environmental
changes, as well as the exposure and impact of environmental events on population, are
considered as given, external facts. These studies often start with the description of specific
trends and events and seek to relate them to specific patterns of migration (e.g., Henry et al.,
2004).

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Secondly, environmental pressure as an outcome of population-resource interaction.
Environment determinism and reductionism prevails (Hulme, 2011) and the focus is on the
unidirectional and often quantitative relationship between resource availability, population
growth, and migration (Homer-Dixon, 1999; Reuveny, 2007; Myers, 2002; Bogardi and Warner,
2009; Scheffran and Battaglini, 2011).
Thirdly, environmental pressure as mediated by socio-economic factors. Environmental
pressure is seen to affect migration through a range of mediating factors. Often, however, it is
not explicit how the environment is linked to other factors and how these inter-linkages influence
the migration decision (e.g., Carr, 2005).
To sum up, I argue that current perspectives of the migration-environment nexus often
suffer from a problematic naturalization and a depoliticization of human-environmental relations.
Where this is not the case, the relation between migration and environment is often
conceptualized only vaguely. I now turn our attention to the question of how migration is
conceived in much of the current environment-migration literature.
2.3.2 Between Permanent Displacement and Feedback Processes
Looking at the way migration is conceptualized in the environmental migration literature,
I observe a preoccupation with terms such as environmental refugees, environmental migrants
and climate refugees. These are emerging and not clearly defined categories of migrants, the
empirical significance of which is still debated (for instance, Bates, 2002). Related to this debate,
the dynamics of migration described in this literature are often framed as one-time movements,
individual acts of permanent relocation in response to emergency, and a last resort for dealing
with environmental stress. As a consequence, there is a tendency to view migration as a severing
of social ties to the place of origin. The various ways in which migrants maintain relations to

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their places of origin, the resulting dynamics of that connectedness, simultaneity and feedback
processes, and the impact permanent relocation has on the former home areas are seldom
considered.
These shortcomings do not pertain solely to the environment-migration nexus and have
been pointed out repeatedly by migration scholars. De Haas (2010, p. 158), for example,
deplores the neglect of the “indirect feedback dynamics that operate through the impact of
migration on the sending and receiving contexts.” There is also the concern that the impact of
migrant social networks on the environment, according to Curran and Agardy (2002, p. 97), is
among “the least theorized or conceptually evolved in the migration and environment literature.”
Scholars of rural-to-urban migration have highlighted the importance of such processes of
circulation and interaction in Asia (Deshingkar and Farrington, 2009), Africa (Geschiere and
Gugler, 1998), and Latin America (Paerregaard, 1997), and pointed to their growing importance.
In a similar vein, the World Development Report (2014) concludes that “temporary migration for
work from rural to urban areas is the dominant form of migration; there are 740 million internal
migrants worldwide, nearly four times the number of international migrants” (World Bank 2013,
p. 121).
While stressing the importance of internal circular migration, I do not mean to downplay
the importance of international migration and displacement. Yet, I hold that future dynamics of
the migration-environment nexus are highly uncertain, and it therefore remains notional if
environmentally associated migration in the 21st century resembles past patterns of migration.
Tacoli (2009, p. 523) notes “…it seems unlikely that the alarmist predictions of hundreds of
millions of environmental refugees will translate into reality. What is more likely is that the
current trends of high mobility, linked to income diversification, will continue and intensify.”

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This view is also reflected in the lPCC reports of 2007 (Parry et al., 2007) and 2014
(IPCC, 2014), which, although acknowledging the fact that climate change will increase
displacement, refrain from making definitive statements on future flows and dramatic changes of
patterns of mobility (Bettini 2013, pp. 65-66; Ober, 2014). I therefore argue that it is important to
have a better understanding of the dynamics of the multifaceted and often neglected
environmental impacts of migration, in order to understand future scenarios. This is particularly
important with respect to the emergence, patterns, and functions of migrant networks, the
consequences of simultaneity, and the multi-local embeddedness of those involved and their
impact on migrants’ home and host areas.
Two recent strands of literature address these points. The migration-development-nexus
literature emphasizes the increasing importance of hometown associations, business networks,
and diaspora in the context of international migration for the development of the areas of origin
of migrants (Faist, 2008). There is also a growing body of literature that examines the
environmental impact of migration on areas of origin (Davis and Lopez-Carr, 2010; Greiner and
Sakdapolrak, 2013a; Moran-Taylor and Taylor, 2010; Robson and Nayak, 2010; Qin, 2010).
This literature provides evidence of a distinct relationship between migration and the
environment in rural-sending areas, particularly as it relates to agricultural change, land-use
patterns, and soil conservation.
To summarize, while there is still a tendency to view environmental migration as a one-
time emergency response, there is a growing body of literature that acknowledges that migrants
and non-migrants are embedded in multi-local networks of social and socio-ecological relations.
In light of these trends, it is important to reflect on the entanglements and feedback loops in the
environment-migration network and search for suitable, non-deterministic frameworks instead of

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ringing the alarmist bell. It can be argued that the emerging concept of translocality provides a
promising research perspective to capture this relationship. In what follows, I will describe a
translocal perspective on migration then introduce the idea of a political ecology.
2.3.3 A Proper Marriage: Translocality Meets Political Ecology
Conceptualizations of translocality usually build on early research into migration
networks and remittances, and on the concepts of transnationalism (Smith, 2011; Greiner and
Sakdapolrak, 2013b). While acknowledging the important contributions of transnationalism,
especially with respect to the dynamics of multi-local embeddedness, simultaneity, and spatial
connectedness, a translocality approach seeks to overcome some of the conceptual limitations of
this well-established research perspective. The analytical focus of translocality expands beyond
the limits of the nation state and seeks to integrate socio-spatial configurations, not just those
induced by human migration. This includes symbolic flows, memories, imaginations, and
immobile populations (Brickell and Datta, 2011). Scholars of translocality question the
overemphasis on de-territorialization, unboundedness, and fluidity of social spaces described by
supporters of transnationalism (Pries, 2003). In short, while earlier transnationalist approaches
tended to emphasize space over place, translocality acknowledges that migrants remain anchored
to specific places. As Brickell and Datta (2011, p. 3) put it, there is always some degree of
“situatedness during mobility”. Place, in the translocal perspective, constitutes a historically
specific node where migrant networks are rooted and where particular flows converge (Greiner,
2010; Zoomers and Westen, 2011).
The concept of translocality, while explicitly addressing dynamics that transcend local
arenas, was born of a skepticism of the approaches that do not acknowledge the local
embeddedness of socio-spatial relations. By contrast, political ecology, a concept that emerged

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from a critique of bounded and isolated local arenas, has only recently begun to theoretically
engage with the networks and relational dimensions of human-environmental relations
(Neumann, 2009).
To begin, as with the concept of translocality, there are many definitions of political
ecology and several home disciplines—such as anthropology, geography, and history—within
which political ecology has currency. Suffice to say that most political-ecology approaches draw
on a broad and heterogeneous range of literature from feminist, institutional, and discursive
approaches to cultural ecology and neo-Marxist theories to explore the complex sets of human-
environmental relations and to counter apolitical eco-scarcity, ecosystem, and modernization
accounts (Robbins, 2004).
The term political ecology was first coined by anthropologist Wolf (1972), who pointed
to the need to enrich earlier cultural-ecology approaches with concerns about ownership and
political institutions, particularly with property relations and decision-making power. Since then,
many scholars have developed the concept of political ecology, producing “a number of high
quality but dispersed studies, that have significantly contributed to our understanding of nature
and society relations” (Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003, p. 1). Many critical scholars have used
notions of a political ecology to counter neo-Malthusian-informed understandings of
environmental crisis and resource scarcity, which often focus on the quantitative assessment of
the relationship between resources and population and interpret crisis and scarcity as natural
results of population growth. The basic premise of political ecology, as represented for example
by the work of Blaikie and Brookfield (1987), is to embed ecological processes in the context
and dynamics of a broader political economy. The central hypothesis of political ecology is that
environmental changes, crises, and conflicts are the products of social relations across scales

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(Büttner, 2001). These changes, crises, and conflicts are the results of interactions between actors
who pursue different interests and have unequal agency and power (Bohle, 2006). These
interactions result in an unequal distribution of environmental profits and costs, in accumulation
processes, and in marginalization and inequality. Political ecology therefore explains why the
poor and marginalized are often at highest risk from hazards (Adger 2006, p. 271) and
contributes to the understanding of root causes of social vulnerability (Watts and Bohle, 1993;
Wisner et al., 2004). In fact, both strands of literature -- political ecology and social vulnerability
-- show a great deal of overlap and cross-references (Adger, 2006; Collins, 2008; McLaughlin
and Dietz, 2008; Oliver-Smith, 2004).
From the political ecology perspective, certain questions come into focus. These include
questions about structural context and framework conditions, the role of power and agency (both
place-based and non-place-based actors), and poverty and vulnerability in the context of a
politicized environment. A political ecology-informed perspective on what is sometimes framed
as environmental conflicts, for example, views such conflicts primarily as negotiations over
access and control rooted in histories and social relations (Le Billon, 2001; Peluso and Watts,
2001).
Drawing from scholarly work on political ecology and transnationalism (especially that
of Biersack, 2006 and Taylor, 2011), I argue that a synthesis of the perspectives of translocality
and political ecology is a productive way to enhance the understanding of the migration-
environment nexus in general and environmental migration in particular. I hold that this
synthesis allows research to address issues and concerns raised in the first section of this chapter.
While both perspectives have conceptual commonalities, sharing terms and dimensions, they are
nevertheless complementary as they differ in their emphases.

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With regard to the commonalities, translocality and political ecology both emphasize the
importance of place and scale. Place is viewed in a dynamic and multidimensional way as a node
where local-local negotiations (Brickell and Datta, 2011) between migrants and non-migrants are
grounded (translocality). This is where particular multi-scalar flows converge, and where
different sets of actors negotiate to produce a specific configuration of human-environmental
relations along with specific technologies and institutions of resource use (political ecology).
Both approaches have a shared notion of place as an arena for the “power geometry of time-
space compression” (Massey, 1991, p. 189), i.e., for processes of social differentiation and for
the generation and perpetuation of social inequalities. Translocality and political ecology
approaches also share the basic notion that an understanding of local processes must take cross-
scale dynamics and interactions into account. While political ecology emphasizes how local
environments are shaped by political, economic, and other forces at levels beyond the local
(Bebbington and Batterbury, 2001), translocality is concerned with local-to-local connections,
simultaneity, and multi-local engagements of mobile and non-mobile actors. I now suggest some
research questions that would benefit from the union of these two concepts.
2.3.4 Toward a Political Ecology of Translocal Relations
The combination of political ecology and translocality has promising potential for the
analysis of the migration-environment nexus. On the one hand, the concept of translocality
provides us with a framework that allows a better understanding of phenomena related to
migration. On the other hand, political ecology gives us a conceptual framework with which to
capture the characteristics of the environment and human-environmental interaction in a non-
deterministic manner. Building on the work of critical scholars such as Hartmann (2010) and
Wisner (2009), I posit that a political ecology of translocal relations should aim to understand

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human mobility in a politicized environment -- an environment that is a product of unequal
social relations across scales. The following questions emerge from this approach:
Firstly, who is exposed, where, and why? In case studies on environmental migration, the
exposure of a certain population to environmental stress is taken as fact. In doing so, the
overlooked question is why segments of the population are residing in or being forced to move to
and make their living in certain places where they are exposed to environmental stress and/or
face the threat of being forced to leave. Drawing on insights from work on social vulnerability
(Wisner et al., 2004), a political ecology of translocal relations considers a specific configuration
of population and environment—the fact that certain people are in certain places—not as a
random or chance situation but as an outcome of unequal social relations, which often places
subordinate populations in areas of higher risks. Environmental migration understood in this
manner is a direct result of poverty, inequalities, and risk exposure.
Secondly, who is forced to leave? Who is forced to stay? Studies show that those who
migrate are often not those who are most negatively affected by adverse environmental
conditions. Mendola’s study (2008) in rural Bangladesh demonstrates that better-off households
that participate in international migration are likely to employ modern farming technologies, and
thus achieve higher yields. Households that are not able to finance cross-border movements are
trapped in internal migration, which usually does not produce enough revenue to allow
investment, but rather proves to be a poverty trap. A political ecology of translocal relations
addresses the question of inequality within networks and directs attention to participants and
outsiders, to winners and losers from cross-scalar practices (Greiner, 2011), and highlights the
consequences of these relations for those dealing with environmental risks.

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Thirdly, what are the social-ecological consequences of migration? We have pointed out
that environmental change will likely intensify existing migration patterns, which often are
circular and non-permanent, and which are correlated with increasing connectedness between
areas of origin and areas of destination. A political ecology of translocal relations examines the
social and ecological consequences of this relationship. Studies show that feedback processes of
migration on migrants’ places of origin have an impact on the environment (Davis and Lopez-
Carr, 2010; Greiner and Sakdapolrak, 2013a) as well as on the way people deal with
environmental risks (Deshingkar, 2012; Sakdapolrak et al., 2013). An example of the former—
the impact of migration on the environment—is the well-known study from Machakos District,
Kenya, that shows how migration, urban-derived incomes, and remittances have been used to
invest in sustainable and successful agricultural production techniques in migrant-sending areas.
This has led to an environmental recovery in a formerly highly degraded area (Tiffen et al.,
1994). Less well known is the observation that this went along with a “significant polarization of
wealth” (Murton, 1999, p. 41) and sharp declines in the agricultural productivity of those
households that did not manage to successfully diversify their incomes. An example of the latter
-- the impact of migration on the way people deal with environmental risks -- is the study by
Sakdapolrak et al. (2013) in Northern Thailand. This study shows how feedback processes of
migration initiated a transformation of agricultural practices and social organization in a way that
enhanced the resilience of the population against environmental risks.
In the next section I will analyze how the approaches of resilience and social inequality
can be applied to understand the relationships between gender and environmental migration.

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2.4 Gendering Resilience in the Discourse on Environmental Migration
In line with resilience and social inequality thinking, environmental migration discourse
stresses the complexity and multi-causality of migration. Environmental migration has been
normatively reevaluated – from posing a threat to (inter)national security to a potential
adaptation measure that might reduce the vulnerability of communities in environmental hotspot
regions (Scheffran et al., 2012).
This section seeks to contribute to this ongoing debate by bringing in a fresh perspective
on this debate that has so far been neglected: the perspective of gender discourse. It asks how we
can evaluate the recent shift in discourses of environmental migration, when they are read
through the lens of gender. Drawing on a poststructuralist understanding of gender, I intend to
reveal the gendered subject positions and narratives in resilience thinking. For this, the first part
briefly introduces the poststructuralist understanding of gender and its operationalization. The
second part distinguishes between two discourses of environmental change, migration and
security: a discourse that focuses on the linkages of environmental change, conflict and
migration revolving around a narrow concept of security, and a discourse of environmental
change, migration and adaptation, drawing upon the broader concept of resilience. The third part
asks how we can explain the rise of the resilience concept when we read it through a lens of
gender discourse. The final part uses this perspective to discuss the merits, problems and pitfalls
of a resilience discourse as opposed to a narrow security discourse.
2.4.1 Gender and vulnerability to environmental migration
The effects of environmental change are not gender neutral and impact the poor,
marginalized and vulnerable population groups such as women (Hunter & David, 2009;
Canadian International Development Agency, 2002). Unequal gender relations and access to

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resources may make women more vulnerable to environment change than men. For example,
environment-induced women migrants are at a greater risk of sexual and gender-based violence
(Brown, 2008). Many women regard the lack of safe shelters upon being forced to migrate as one
of their primary concerns after climatic events (Mitchell, Tanner & Lussier, 2007). There are
also other issues of safety and security arising from women's health status and disintegration of
social networks. Mitchell et al. (2007) observe that women suffer from psycho-social impacts of
natural disasters to a greater degree as compared to men. The extra burden of looking after their
family members under distress situation results in many women suffering from anxiety and post-
traumatic stress.
Further, the breaking of social ties and separation of families also has a severe impact on
women. Environmental events may not only directly impact women and vulnerable populations,
but also make them more vulnerable because of their interaction with socio-cultural factors. In
addition, often women are not allowed direct access to relief aid because they are not the “head
of the household” (Spring, 2008). Such exclusion is likely to make them more vulnerable.
Similarly, in Nepal, as more and more males migrate from vulnerable areas to the cities, women
are becoming heads of households. These women are highly vulnerable to adverse climatic
events as they have to survive in already fragile landscapes (UNFPA, 2009). If the migrant is the
father or household head, the family is seasonally separated, and the woman becomes the de
facto head of household. Although this increases women’s autonomy and decision-making power
(Brown, 2008), it places additional burden to care for the household, the children, elderly, and
themselves. In particularly hard times, girls drop out of school to help their mothers and the
probability for domestic violence increases (Bernabe & Penunia, 2009).

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Though women’s vulnerability has been a focus of both policy and research in the
context of climate change (Adger et al, 2007; Parikh, 2009; Rao et al, 2017), what is missing is
the focus on women’s agency and adaptive capability. In the context of environmental stresses,
women tend to put themselves forward in order to protect their children and the elderly. Also, in
the case of environmental migration, women have little opportunity in terms of alternative
livelihoods, which leads to wage discrimination, least paid jobs as well as sexual harassment and
exploitation in the workplace. Divorced women or widowed women with children find it difficult
to migrate, since leaving behind their young ones is not an option and migrating with them poses
a lot of problems (Chakraborty, 2016).
Vulnerability provides a conceptual framework for evaluating the impact of
environmental change on gender equality. Vulnerability comprises exposure and sensitivity to
environmental threats, and capacity to cope with environmental crises (IPCC, 2001).
Impoverished populations face higher levels of risk: they are more reliant on ecosystem services
for livelihoods; more likely to live in environmentally exposed locations such as a flood plain or
on a degraded hill slope; and possess fewer resources to adapt to changing environmental
conditions and to recover from disasters. However, the poor are not a homogenous entity.
Disproportionate household and familial burdens and a relative lack of control over productive
assets can enhance female vulnerability beyond that of men (Goh, 2012). In many cases,
discriminatory legal institutions and social customs exacerbate these vulnerabilities by
heightening exposure and undermining coping capacity. The result is that women are more likely
to be impoverished than men, less capable of adapting to present and future climate change
impacts, and less likely to participate in and contribute knowledge to policy-making processes
that facilitate gender-specific adaptation or mitigation efforts (Van Aelst & Holvoet, 2016).

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Scientists now agree with a high level of certainty that contemporary changes to the
Earth’s climate are unparalleled in recorded human history (IPCC, 2014). Increases in average
global temperatures are fueling environmental processes that decrease the predictability of
rainfall and moisture content of soils, elevate the intensity of environmental hazards, reduce
biodiversity, and alter wildlife migration. Although some areas in far northern latitudes might
experience benefits in the form of prolonged growing seasons, the macro-level impacts of
climate change—increasing seasonal variability, glacial melting, rising sea levels, and altered
precipitation patterns—are expected to increase proximate risks from storms, droughts, floods,
landslides, fires, disease epidemics, and heat waves across much of the world. These effects will
be especially pernicious in developing nations located in tropic and sub-tropic latitudes that rely
on agriculture for subsistence and livelihoods, because these states are acutely vulnerable to
climatological hazards that undermine agricultural productivity, and because they possess fewer
resources to invest in adaptation. The poor, who tend to rely most heavily on ecosystem services,
will be among the hardest hit, especially (but not exclusively) in rural areas where reduced water
availability and agricultural output diminish livelihood options, undermine food security and
subsistence capabilities, and necessitate outward labor migration.
Although these processes affect both women and men, the nature and degree of the
impacts can vary accordingly. Prior scholarship in feminist political ecology and disaster studies
offers insight into the causal drivers of gender disparities in environmental change vulnerability
(Mies & Shiva, 1993; Mies, 1998; Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter, & Wangari, 1996; Salleh, 1997;
Terry, 2009). These works assess how social and economic structures that ascribe distinct roles
to women in society also expose them to distinct constellations of environmental risk. Gender
imbalances in the division of labor and asset ownership, and the persistence of discriminatory

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laws and social norms that restrict women’s rights and opportunities magnify the hardships
women face in adapting to environmental conditions that reduce livelihood opportunities and
heighten resource scarcities.
Gendered divisions of household labor common across the developing world
disproportionately amplify women’s vulnerability to environmental change. While both sexes
contribute to household preservation, men’s responsibilities include cash-cropping or wage labor,
while women’s concern the management of resources necessary to ensure family nutrition and
health—tending subsistence crops and small livestock, collecting water, and gathering fuel wood
(FAO, 2003). When an environmental shock disrupts income flows or food cultivation or
necessitates changes to water supplies or the distribution of crops, women often face greater
challenges with adaptation. Buechler (2009), for example, finds that reduced water supplies due
to higher temperatures in Sonora, Mexico amplify women’s household responsibilities, as their
traditional role as caregivers require them to remain stationary while men migrate to find
employment. At the same time, decreasing employment opportunities in agricultural processing
sectors diminish women’s livelihoods, which undermine their economic self-sufficiency and
reduce their ability to participate in customs such as gift giving that confer social status among
female community members. In this case, the combination of rising household burdens,
declining access to subsistence and financial resources, and limited opportunities to participate in
the workforce and develop human and social capital serve to exacerbate gendered disparities in
climate change vulnerability.
For example, some media reports suggest that women in the Indian Sundarbans are
increasingly migrating to the red-light district of Kolkata due to environmental distress.
According to Samarajit Jana, an epidemiologist who set up a collective that fights for the rights

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of sex workers, the number of women who moved to Kolkat’s red-light district increased by 20%
to 25% in the aftermath of cyclone Aila (Verchot et al 2016). Many of these sex workers
identified themselves as bhasha (environmental refugees). Women struggle to get even basic
necessities such as sanitary napkins and baby food in the aftermath of natural disasters. They are
often bereft of a safe place to live and end up being susceptible to sexual violence. Thus, they
have no choice but to migrate to slums in cities, where it is difficult to get work and live in
derogatory conditions without any recognition of their rights. Women who are forced to enter
into prostitution in order to look after their family and children face social ostracism and the
threat of sexual exploitation at the hands of their clients and fall prey to sexually transmitted
diseases like HIV/AIDS (Verchot et al., 2016).
Inequalities in the ownership and control of tangible assets such as land, housing,
livestock, and agricultural inputs can magnify these effects. Naraya, Patel, Schafft, Rademacher,
and Koch-Schulte (2000, p. 5) argue that: “poor people rarely speak of income but focus instead
on managing assets -- physical, human, social, and environmental -- as a way to cope with their
vulnerability, which in many areas takes on gendered dimensions.” Assets, especially land, are
critical because ownership can provide physical protection, a way to mitigate and manage crises,
and adapt livelihood strategies to changing environmental conditions (Deere and Doss, 2006).
Across much of the developing world, land ownership is overwhelmingly male. In Africa,
women are responsible for between 50 and 80% of agricultural production but hold title to less
than a 20% all agricultural land (FAO, 2016). This disparity can create acute hardships for
women when climatic changes undermine agricultural livelihoods, because ownership increases
access to formal credit markets, which can enable individuals to cope with lost harvests, invest in

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new livelihood strategies, or purchase agricultural inputs that can reduce production volatility
(Nuryartono, 2005).
This “gender-asset gap” can magnify female vulnerabilities in other ways as well (Deere
& Doss, 2006; Deere & Leon, 2003). Dillon and Gill (2014) find that gender inequalities in
access to agricultural technologies (irrigation equipment, motorized tillers, etc.) can aggravate
disparities in crop production during a climate shock. While men’s control over these resources
enables them to maintain output sufficient to almost offset the shock, women experienced
proportionally diminished harvests.
Moreover, patriarchal social and legal institutions prevalent in many developing states
exacerbate both gendered disparities in vulnerability as well as the relative difficulties women
face in adapting to climate change. For example, traditional inheritance and marriage dissolution
practices exacerbate the gender asset gap (Peterman, 2012). Greater inheritances for women are
associated with higher socio-economic status, indicating that this problem is especially acute
among the poor. Customs such as these can even conflict with formal laws. In Tajikistan, the law
authorizes joint land ownership between husbands and wives, yet few women are registered
landowners because many rural marriages are not documented, and therefore not covered under
the law (Djusaeva, 2012). In India, men and women hold equal land ownership rights, but
women own less than 10% of all private landholdings. One reason for this disparity is that
families view dowries paid to sons-in-law as a portion of daughters’ inheritances even though the
assets are transferred to the husband and his family (Scalise, 2009). The result is that in cases of
disagreement, divorce, separation, or death, women stand to lose not only assets, but also future
income sources and a hedge against disaster.

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The effects of discriminatory institutions on female vulnerability to environmental
change are also evident when assessing gender disparities in health and wellbeing. Because
women’s responsibilities in the household division of labor usually include gathering resources
necessary for family subsistence, environmental changes that decrease resource access and
amplify domestic burdens can also undermine women’s health, in some cases placing them direct
physical jeopardy. Reductions in the availability of water and fuel-wood increase the risk of
sexual assault when women are forced to travel farther for collection (Brody, Demetriades, &
Esplen, 2008). This scenario is especially prevalent in conflict zones, refugee camps, and other
ungoverned or insecure spaces. Scholars have also found that drought-induced economic shocks
and crop failures can increase the risk of disease when women are compelled to engage in
transactional sex as a means of income generation, or when husbands expose wives to sexually
transmitted infections upon returning from labor migrations (Burke, Gong, & Jones, 2015; See
also: Swidler & Watkins, 2007; Dinkelman, Lam, & Leibbrandt, 2008; Robinson & Yeh, 2011).
Natural disasters, which are expected to grow in magnitude as climate change progresses,
pose similar challenges. Customs such as traditional dress codes and norms against teaching
women to swim can heighten female death rates during floods (Alam & Collins, 2010), while
women’s responsibilities as familial caregivers can magnify the difficulties of self-rescue
because of the need to attend to children and the elderly (Schwoebel & Menon, 2004). Similarly,
discriminatory practices in a disaster’s post-crisis phase can undermine women’s access to relief
resources and increase interpersonal violence against them (Neumayer & Plümper, 2007). Case
analyses provide supportive evidence. In Namibia, the tendency for wives to act submissively
toward their husbands increases physical and psychological stress in times of food insecurity,
because it is expected that women will attempt to exhaust all available means of resolving

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scarcities before speaking with their husbands (Angula, 2010). In Kenya, it is common for
women to deliberately decrease food consumption in response to drought-induced food
shortages, which increases health risks among women, children, and pregnant and lactating
mothers (Serna, 2011).
Building on these insights, I argue that gender disparities in environmental change
vulnerability not only reflect preexisting gender inequalities, they also reinforce them. The result
can perpetuate a “vicious circle [whereby] the more women are affected negatively by climate
change, the worse the inequalities get. And the worse the inequalities get, the worse the impact
becomes” (Panitchpakdi, 2008, p. 107). Work in neoclassical and feminist economics on intra-
household bargaining behavior lends insight into causal dynamics (Folbre, 1986, 1989). In
household bargaining models, household decision-making outcomes are conceptualized as the
product of preference contestation among household members. An individual’s contribution to
household income and their control over household assets determine the bargaining power they
command (Rogers, 1990). For women, gains in bargaining power can promote empowerment by
increasing their participation in decisions over childbearing and care, allocation of household
resources, mobility, and occupational participation (Iversen & Rosenbluth, 2006; Ashraf, Karlan,
& Yin, 2010; Aslam & Kingdon, 2012; Thomas, Contreras, & Frankenberg, 1997).
In the context of environmental change, gender disparities in vulnerability are likely to
magnify inequalities in intra-household bargaining power, with implications for gender equality
and women’s rights at both the micro- and macro-levels. Rising familial burdens due to male
out-migration and declining food and water security, coupled with a relative inability to employ
productive assets to cope with climatic shocks, should decrease female income generation
capabilities, mobility, opportunities to build human capital, and access to formal credit markets.

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The result can reinforce gender disparities in the household division of labor and heighten female
reliance on male income, which increases the opportunity costs of divorce and reduces women’s
independence. These effects can also increase the likelihood that gender discrimination and
stereotypes will persist across generational divides. Because parents have an incentive to prepare
children for what they expect their adult responsibilities to be, and because children learn via
socialization, the greater the level of female subordination in the household, the more likely these
norms will be passed along (Iversen & Rosenbluth, 2006; Eagly & Steffen, 1984).
Environmental changes that undermine women’s ability to generate independent revenue
streams can also affect gender equality by reducing children’s health and educational
opportunities (Mishra & Sam, 2016; Menon, Van Der Meulen Rodgers, & Nguyen, 2014).
Education is important because it enables girls to enhance their human capital and future
earnings potential, delay marriage and childbirth, and encourage contraceptive use, and because
female education can facilitate the development of social norms that discourage gender
discrimination. The greater the share of women’s contribution to household income, and the
greater her control over household assets, the more likely girls will be to attend school. Qian
(2008), for example, finds that increasing women’s share of household revenue in China
increases educational participation for both male and female children. In contrast, when a man’s
share of household revenue increases relative to woman’s, girls’ educational participation
declines and boys’ remains static. Thus, while children of both sexes can benefit from increasing
female empowerment, reductions in female income disproportionately hurt girls (Foster, 1995).
Additionally, when household livelihood and subsistence capabilities diminish overall—when
both male and female income declines—girls also bear greater costs. In a study of the effects of
climate variability on children’s education in Uganda, Björkman-Nyqvist, (2013) finds that

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negative deviations in mean annual rainfall (droughts), have a significant adverse impact on
primary school enrollment and test scores for older girls, but no impact on school attendance or
performance for boys or younger girls. The findings suggest that during episodes of resource
scarcity: (i) households prioritize resource access for male over female children, and (ii) are
more likely to use girls as supplementary domestic labor, which reduces their school attendance.
Similar findings hold true for girls’ health: Qian’s (2008) study also finds that increasing a
woman’s share of household revenue improves daughters’ survival rates. This outcome occurs
because greater bargaining power enables women to demand a larger share of household
resources for daughters, and because the potential that girls hold future value in the labor market
can increase the opportunity costs of childhood gender discrimination in access to these
resources.
As this discussion indicates, the impact of increased vulnerability to climate change
should not only affect gender relations at the household level but should also have consequences
for women’s rights at the macro (societal) level. Factors that magnify domestic burdens and
undermine women’s status within the home should also reduce their ability to develop human
capital, build robust social networks, and join civil society organizations. Consequences can
include: increasing constraints on women’s ability to achieve gainful employment, especially in
non-sexually stratified occupations; achieve authoritative positions in the workforce; and to
collectively mobilize for public goods to support women’s issues. The outcome can reduce
public support for laws and norms that promote coequal status and increase impediments to the
development of post-materialist values that discourage gender discrimination (Inglehart, 1977,
1997).

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Adaptation, that is, the ability to adapt to and cope with changes due to environment
change, is also gendered. Adaptive capacities of individuals depend on income, education, health
and access to natural resources. Women’s ability to cope is another aspect of their vulnerability
to environment change-induced migration. Lambrou and Piana (2006) argue that women’s ability
to adapt to environment change depends on their control over land and money; access to credit
and safeguards; low dependency ratios; good health; personal mobility; and household
entitlements. These arguments are supported by ethnographic evidence which was collected by
ActionAid and the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) in a report on the impacts of
environment change on poor South Asian women (India, Bangladesh and Nepal) and their
adaptation needs and priorities (Mitchell et al., 2007). The study, which was conducted in the
Ganga river basin in the aftermath of massive riparian flooding, also finds that poor women
particularly from Nepal were forced to migrate locally due to their low adaptive capacity
(Mitchell et al. 2007, p. 16). Furthermore, studies and surveys conducted in post-Hurricane
Katrina New Orleans find that poor women who lacked home or renter’s insurance were the ones
who not only lost their shelter but also were not rehoused during the post-disaster reconstruction
process thus making it difficult for them to return (Enarson, 2006). Given that women tend to be
poorer, less educated, have a lower health status and have limited direct access to or ownership
of natural resources, they are disproportionately affected by climatic risks (Demetriades &
Esplen, 2010). For example, research shows that women in Bangladesh were found to be more
vulnerable during cyclones because cultural norms prevented them from leaving their homes in
time and learning to swim (Nelson, Kate, Terry & John, 2002). Water stress due to environment
change is expected to cause further difficulties for women in West Africa (Denton, 2002). In
many cases displaced women are forced into labor-intensive and low-paying jobs due to low

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levels of education. Women from the fishing community in the Philippines facing environment
disasters were forced to work as domestic helps due to lack of skills (United Nations Population
Fund, 2009). Although migration bridges the income gaps, it also has social costs such as
inequality within the community and a substantial increase in workload of women (Meza, 2010).
In addition to environmental degradation and reduced access to natural resources,
environment variability and natural disasters also have an impact on women’s likelihood of
migration. Using a cross-sectional survey of North Carolina coastal residents conducted in 1999
following the disastrous Hurricane Bonnie, Bateman and Edwards (2002) argue that women are
more likely than men to evacuate in the wake of a natural disaster. Their findings indicate that
women are more likely to evacuate than men because of socially constructed gender differences
such as family obligations and caregiving; greater response to evacuation incentives such as
availability of a vehicle and neighbor evacuation; higher exposure to risk due to their low
economic status and special medical needs; and higher perceived risk due to caregiving
responsibilities (Bateman and Edwards 2002, p. 107). In contrast, however, in developing
countries where women’s mobility is highly restricted such as Bangladesh, women are more
likely to not evacuate and die due to natural disasters (Fothergill 1996, p. 41). Therefore, even
voluntary migration of women due to environment change is highly correlated to social contexts.
In sum, inequalities in the ownership and control of household assets and rising familial
burdens due to male out-migration, declining food and water access, and increased disaster
exposure can undermine women’s ability to achieve economic independence, enhance human
capital, and maintain health and wellbeing. Consequences for gender equality include reductions
in intra-household bargaining power, as women become less capable of generating independent
revenue. Outside the home, norms of gender discrimination and gender imbalances in socio-

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economic status should increase as women are less able to participate in formal labor markets,
join civil society organizations, or collectively mobilize for political change. The outcome of
these processes can reduce a society’s level of gender equality by increasing constraints on the
advancement of laws and norms that promote co-equal status. While we should not expect these
findings to apply to all women in equal measure, those of lower socio-economic status and those
who rely on agriculture as a means of subsistence and production should be acutely vulnerable.
2.4.2 A poststructuralist perspective on gender and the environment
The discourse theoretical approach to gender applied in this study is based on three core
ideas: anti-essentialism, post-foundationalism and the intrinsic relation between gender
discourses and political power.
First, a poststructuralist take on gender opposes the idea that differences between the
sexes are naturally given. In doing so, this perspective poses a challenge to essentialist feminist
approaches including radical or ecofeminism, which held that women would behave more
peacefully or environmentally sustainable than men (Mies and Shiva, 1993; Tickner, 1992). A
poststructuralist perspective does not deny that biological and material differences between the
sexes exist but assumes these do not have any meaning unless they become discursively
mediated (Butler, 1990). Following Hajer (1995, p. 44) discourses can be understood as
historically “specific ensembles of ideas, concepts and categorization that are produced,
reproduced and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given
to physical and social realities”. Gender discourses produce historically specific gendered subject
positions, related attributions and behavioral norms, that are embedded within and structured by
broader discursive narratives and stories.

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Second, post-foundationalism means that these discursive structures are considered to be
unstable and in constant flux as there is no historical ground, no universal center of any
discourse. Hence, the meaning of reality is contingent and gender discourses as well as related
gendered subject positions, norms, and stereotypes shift over time (Nightingale, 2006, p. 165).
However, by acting in accord with existing subject positions and by re-articulating dominant
gender narratives, individuals also constantly reproduce discourses.
Third, discourses are intrinsically linked to political power (Foucault, 1991). By framing
social and political problems in particular ways, discourses create a field of possibility for certain
political instruments – or put more simply: they define which policy measures appear possible
and appropriate to cope with the identified problems.
Following the assumption that environmental discourses are often highly gendered
discourses (Arora-Jonsson, 2011; Leach, 2007; MacGregor, 2010), I intend to reveal the
gendered subjectivities, myths, and stereotypes in discourses on the relation between
environmental change and human migration by drawing on a variety of empirical sources, which
each fulfill different tasks in the analytical process. The aim is to show how these discourses
essentialize and naturalize gendered categories such as “women in the Global South” as well as
related vulnerabilities and to study the political implications of these essentialisms. Earlier
research of the author (Boas and Rothe, 2016; Rothe, 2016) and additional secondary literature is
used to identify two ideal-typical discourses on climate change, migration and security. On the
basis of this typology, the most recent resilience discourse on climate change and migration is re-
read through the gender lens.
The theoretical perspective outlined above has been used to develop an analytical
heuristic including categories such as gendered subject-positions and relating attributions,

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metaphors, as well as gender narratives and storylines. This heuristic has been used to code the
empirical materials. Subsequently, the coded text parts have been interpreted and systematized to
identify broader gender narratives and stereotypical patterns as well as to discuss their political
implications.
2.4.3 The hyper-masculinized discourse of environmental migration
The “Limits of Growth” report which was published by the Club of Rome in 1972
painted a bleak scenario of a collapse of human and earth systems in the 21st century due to
population growth and environmental degradation (Meadows et al., 1972). This rationale was re-
articulated in prominent environmentalist publications of the late 20th century including, for
example, the 1987 report “Our Common Future” of Brundtland Commission (Hartmann et al.,
2016). At the same time, it strongly influenced scientific inquiries into the links between
population growth, natural resource scarcity, violent conflict and migration (Homer-Dixon,
1991; Myers, 2002). In the 2000s, such ideas then became connected to the notion of
environmental change and conflicts (Burke et al., 2009). Arguments that linked environmental
change to violent conflict were accompanied by alarmist projections of large numbers of
environmental or climate refugees in the near future. Most famously Myers (2002, pp. 609–611)
anticipated that 200 million people could be fleeing from sea-level rise and other negative effects
of global warming in 2050. Different scholars have criticized the early environmental change,
conflict and migration discourse for its alarmist tone that constructs the vulnerability of the poor
as a danger for the industrialized world – since environmental change-induced instabilities might
spillover to the Global North through processes of international migration or regional conflicts
(e.g. Bettini, 2014; Hartmann, 2014; Oels, 2013).

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This discourse on environmental change and migration is highly gendered. MacGregor
(2010, p. 231), for example, holds that: “By securitizing and militarizing it, the environmental
crisis becomes a problem that requires technical, diplomatic and military solutions, entirely
consistent with hegemonic (hyper)masculinity.” The alarmist climate security discourse was
embedded in a broader project of masculine-coded scientific rationalization of climate change
related threats driven by a network of largely male, white scientists (MacGregor, 2010, p. 225).
The aim was to measure, calculate, and visualize security risks – thereby making them
“controllable” and “manageable”. This masculinized image of global scientific control was then
opposed to the gendered image of “women’s day-to-day work and knowledge” (Leach, 2007, p.
80).
Described largely from the perspective of the environmental sciences (i.e., astrophysics,
atmospheric chemistry, geography, meteorology, oceanography, paleoclimatology),
environmental change has been most widely discussed as a scientific problem requiring
technological and scientific solutions without substantially transforming ideologies and
economies of domination, exploitation and colonialism: this misrepresentation of climate change
root causes is one part of the problem, misdirecting those who ground climate change solutions
on incomplete analyses. On an international level, solutions mitigating climate change include
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD Initiative), the Kyoto
Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that encourages emission trading, sustainable
development funding for Two-Thirds countries, genetically modified crops, renewable energy
technologies, and the more recent strategy, geo-engineering (Klein, 2012). On an individual
level, citizen-consumers of the North/One-Thirds world are urged toward green consumerism
and carbon-footprint reduction. Indeed, renewable energy is a necessary and possible shift;

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moreover, it carries within its practice the ideological shift needed to make a wider
transformation in the North/One-Thirds consumers’ relationship with environments and
ecosystems. From a gendered perspective, however, the problem remains that at the highest
levels of (inter)national discussion, environmental change is cast as a human crisis in which
gender has no relevance and “man” is supposed to mean “everyone.” Such gender-blind analysis
leads to excluding data and perspectives that are crucial in solving climate change problems,
while the issues that women traditionally organize around -- environmental health, habitats,
livelihoods -- are marginalized by techno-science solutions which take center stage in climate
change discussions and funding. LGBTQ issues such as bullying in the schools, hate crimes
legislation, equity in housing and the workplace, same-sex marriage do not appear in
environmental discussions either.
The masculine-coded discourse of rationalization is accompanied by a strong call for
global scientific management and control of the global threat of climate change (Agarwal, 1992,
pp. 191–192). Whereas the discourse positions men as the scientific and political managers of
global security problems, women are framed as part of the problem. The key link that holds the
causal chain between environmental change and migration together is the one between
population growth and resource scarcity (Hartmann et al., 2016). The rationale of this “neo-
Malthusian” narrative is that environmental conflicts in the Global South result from
environmental change, paired with the problem of overpopulation and resulting overgrazing and
over-farming of already deteriorating land. Along with these neo-Malthusian narratives comes
thus a problematization of the fertility and reproductive behavior of women in the Global South
(Hartmann, 2014, p. 772). This neo-Malthusian degradation narrative produces a strong demand
for paternalistic forms of control. During European imperialism, it supported political colonial

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interventions into domestic affairs such as the restructuring of agricultural systems. In the
environmental security discourse of the 2000s it supported calls for the development of
governance mechanisms to manage and control environmental migration globally (Methmann
and Oels, 2015, p. 56).
Some of the policy proposals even went beyond this paternalistic form of control and
openly promoted population control to reduce environmental threats (Sasser, 2012, p. 35). An
emerging “population-environment-development triangle” (Hartmann et al., 2016) comprising
Western defense actors, women’s rights activists and environmental NGOs promoted family
planning measures in developing countries as a solution to problems like environmental
degradation (MacGregor, 2010, p. 234; Sasser, 2012, p. 111). This adds a win-win spin to the
neo-Malthusian narrative outlined above: reducing women’s fertility helps mitigate climate
change related security risks, but at the same time empowers women in vulnerable regions. What
this win-win narrative masks is that forms of population control in the name of the environment
can take very violent forms. Reid (2014), for example, describes how the problematization of the
rural illiterate poor in the Indian regions of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh as possible environmental
migrants by the UK Department of International Development (DfID) as well as Greenpeace
India has helped legitimizing forced sterilization programs in these regions (Reid, 2014, p. 200).
The link was first revealed by an article in The Observer, which points to a 2010 DfID report, in
which the fight against environmental change is cited as one of the “key reasons for pressing
ahead with such (sterilization) programs” (Chamberlain, 2012, p. 53).
To date, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
“Gender and Climate Change” website addresses these problems by drawing on both reformist
liberal ecofeminisms and cultural (essentialist) ecofeminisms. In its statement on women’s

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vulnerability, inclusion, and agency, the UNFCCC website asserts: “It is increasingly evident
that women are at the center of the climate change challenge. Women are disproportionately
affected by climate change impacts, such as droughts, floods and other extreme weather events,
but they also have a critical role in combating environmental change.” In order to perform that
“critical role,” however, gender parity in environmental change discussions is a minimum
requirement: women need to be equal members in policy-setting and decision-making on
environmental migration. And to have authentic, inclusive feminism, gender justice and sexual
justice must be partnered with climate justice, for women of all genders and sexualities form the
grassroots force within these three movements (Olson, 2002).
2.4.4 Gender dimensions of the process and outcomes of environmental migration
As discussed above, studies have examined the linkages between environment change,
migration, and gender. Besides empirically supporting the theories, these studies are also
methodologically relevant. However, a more thorough analysis of women’s vulnerability to
environment change-induced migration is required to understand the gender dimensions of
factors that lead to environmental migration and the differential impacts that the process and
outcomes of environment change-induced migration have on women. The questions that need to
be examined are: (i) What are the gender dimensions of the process of environment change-
induced migration, that is, actual movement of people? (ii) What are the gender dimensions of
the outcomes of environmental migration?
The main issues facing women during environmental migration are security and adequate
emergency relief (Gururaja, 2000; Enarson, 2006; Mitchell et al., 2007; Brown, 2008; Brody et
al., 2008). Brown (2008, p. 34) states that just like other internally displaced women,
environment-induced women migrants are at a greater risk of sexual and gender-based violence.

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Evidence on this can be found in the ActionAid and IDS report (Mitchell et al., 2007, p. 10),
where many women state lack of safe shelters upon being evacuated or forced to migrate as one
of their primary concerns. There are also other issues of safety and security arising from
women’s health status and disintegration of social networks. Mitchell et al. (2007, p. 10) observe
that women suffer from psychosocial impacts of natural disasters to a greater degree as compared
to men. The extra burden of looking after their family members even when they themselves were
in great distress resulted in many women to suffer from anxiety and post-traumatic stress.
A related issue is that of providing timely and adequate emergency relief to women who
have been displaced due to environment change. A study by Enarson (1999) conducted in-depth
interviews and focus groups sessions with women who were displaced due to two major natural
disasters in the US—Hurricane Andrew that hit Miami in 1992, and the 1997 Red River Valley
flood. She found that temporary trailer camps provided by emergency relief workers were not
designed for the needs of women and children. There were no provisions for their safety, and
mental and reproductive health (Enarson, 1999, p. 16). Another qualitative survey of African
American women displaced by Hurricane Katrina found that they had difficulties in receiving
timely emergency aid suggesting that gender interacts with race to make some women even
worse off (Murakami-Ramalho and Durodoye, 2008).
Though there is yet no research on this, a potential problem pertaining to security and
emergency relief is international environmental migration and the debate over whether
environment migrants need to be given “refugee” status. There is a clear division among the
development and human rights community. One side favors the inclusion of environment
migrants in the 1951 Refugee Convention in order to provide them with protection similar to that
provided to refugees. While the other side argues that the existence of “environmental migrants”

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itself is exaggerated and their need for refugee-like protection is politically motivated
(Stavropoulou 2008, p. 11). This debate can have serious repercussions for women who are
already facing the adverse consequences of environment change-induced migration and not
receiving enough relief aid.
Thus, women are differentially impacted during the process of environment change-
induced migration. There are safety and security issues pertaining to internal as well as
international migration. environment change policy aimed at environment migrants needs to be
sensitive to these issues and also incorporate legal and human rights frameworks necessary to
assist women environment migrants.
Environment change will result in different migration outcomes depending on the degree
of vulnerability. Specifically, there would be temporary versus permanent environment change-
induced migration. Even within these there are variations in adaptive strategies such as internal
(local) versus international, and rural–rural versus rural–urban. An important sub-component of
these from a gendered perspective is out-migration of men. Less is known about environment
change as a push factor for these migration outcomes, and even less is known about their gender
dimensions. We can draw upon the limited literature, case studies, and experiences of countries
in other regions.
Hunter and David (2009, p. 21) argue that migration outcomes are not uniform across
men and women. This is especially true when the effects of environment change are felt
gradually and a member of the family, usually a male member, migrates in search of alternative
livelihoods. Even when women are not the ones who are forced to migrate in search of
livelihoods, environment change-induced migration has an impact on them. In a study conducted
in the Sonora state of Mexico, where many communities are engaged in processing fruits and

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vegetables, it was found that declines in water availability due to environment change reduced
the prospects in the food processing industry forcing a lot of men in the community to migrate.
However, this increased the workload of women, as many of them had to care for their families
in addition to working part time in the food processing industry (Buechler 2009, p. 51).
Similarly, in Nepal, as more and more males migrate from mountainous regions and rural areas
to newly developed cities, more and more women are becoming heads of households, remaining
in areas prone to flooding and are therefore most vulnerable to environment-related disasters
(UNFPA 2009, p. 33). A study on environment change and migration in Somalia and Burundi by
Kolmannskog (2009) found that men in many pastoral families migrated in search of work due to
severe drought conditions.
Consequently, women who were left behind faced increasing risks of expulsion from
their families and communities, and sexual violence. In contrast, drawing upon the literature on
gender and migration, Brown (2008, p. 34) posits that male out-migration due to environment
change can also have positive impacts such as increased autonomy and decision-making power
for the female members of the family.
Women who are forced to migrate due to environment change with their families or by
themselves also face unique problems. It was found that women from poor families in rural
Bangladesh, who migrate to cities such as Dhaka are often forced into long hours and low-paying
jobs such as domestic servants and sweatshops due to their lack of education and skills (Kakissis
2010). Similar observations were made in the Philippines where women from the fishing
communities, who were grappling with the harsh impacts of environment change, migrated
locally to work as domestic helps for affluent families (UNFPA 2009, p. 3). In a report titled
Katrina and the Women of New Orleans, Willinger (2008) combined data from the US Census

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and the American Community Survey to find that post-Katrina there was a decrease of
approximately 60% in the number of female-headed households, especially of those who were
African American and had children under age 18. She further finds that the main reasons due to
which many of them could not return were affordability of housing and health care, and lack of
employment opportunities. Thus, environment change-induced migration can potentially push
women into a poverty trap or permanently displace them from their homes.
Drawing upon the broader literature on gender and international or cross-border
migration, it can be said that overcoming cultural barriers while maintaining their identities will
be a significant problem for women environment migrants. Ramachandran (2005, p. 9) finds that
many women who migrated to India from Bangladesh had to or were forced to assume Hindu
religious markers, such as vermilion on their forehead, to evade detection and deportation. The
increasing threat of environment change in Bangladesh and tightening of the immigration policy
in India will only intensify these problems. Concerns regarding loss of culture and identity were
also observed among women in Kiribati, where inhabitants are increasingly facing the risk of
resettlement due to sea-level rise (UNFPA, 2009, p. 30).
Thus, migration outcomes of environmental change are gendered. On one hand they may
seem to be empowering women, while on the other they may actually exacerbate their socio-
economic status and make them worse off. Gender distinctions in vulnerabilities not only
determine who migrates, but also, for who is it easier to return and restore their lives.
2.4.5 Toward a gender-sensitive discourse on environmental migration
As Methmann and Oels (2015, p. 52) note, the discourse on environmental migration as
an adaptation measure draws on an understanding of resilience as transformation. Accordingly,
resilience requires more than the adaptation of a system to changing environmental conditions:

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“Transformational resilience refers to the emergent transformation of these very systems into
something new” (Methmann and Oels, 2015, p. 54). Indeed, loosely defined as the capability of
individuals, communities or systems to bounce back after external shocks and to adapt to
changing environmental conditions, resilience has become a dominant governance paradigm in
fields including development, security and environmental governance. With the rise of resilience
thinking, the masculinized discourse on global threats and managerial solutions is replaced with
a focus on livelihoods and vulnerabilities of local communities (Hunter, 2016). Along with this
shifting focus on livelihoods and households comes a new sensitivity for the gendered
experiences of environmental migration, and the unequal gender relations that lead to different
vulnerabilities of men, women, boys, girls in specific local contexts (Chindarkar, 2012; World
Bank, 2011). Women are now seen as particularly endangered by the negative impacts of
environmental change and related migration, but at the same time, given their central positions in
local households, seen as important agents of change (Annecke, 2014; Swarup et al., 2011;
UNISDR, 2012).
Several analyzed empirical sources point to the fact that temporary migration might help
vulnerable communities to transform themselves by providing additional economic and cultural
capital that could be used to transform infrastructures or local economic structures (e.g. Matthe,
2016; Mercy Corps, 2015; Swarup et al., 2011). For example, it is argued that migration might
help transforming ingrained gender structures and traditional mores (Mercy Corps, 2015, pp. ii–
iii). The underlying argument is that “male migration may leave women and girls behind to take
on new roles (e.g., managing food stocks), which can create opportunities to challenge
discriminatory social norms” (Mercy Corps, 2015, p. 6). This notion of transformation resonates
strongly with the dominant idea of gender mainstreaming – that is “the transformation of

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discriminatory social institutions such as laws, cultural norms and practices that limit women’s
access to rights and opportunities” (UNFCCC, 2016, p. 5).
The close marriage of strategic thinking and gender mainstreaming discourse becomes
even more obvious when one considers another key concept in resilience discourse: the notion of
empowerment. In the resilience literature, empowerment is seen as the key to producing resilient
communities and subjects (Chandler and Reid, 2016). It implies providing vulnerable people or
communities with the means to build up adaptive capacities and self-help potential that make
them capable to recover from external shocks, for example, through awareness-raising,
education, and knowledge transfer. Yet, there is a second discursive trajectory around a
progressive notion of empowerment, which was developed by feminist political ecologists
(Agarwal, 2009). Here, empowerment refers to practices of challenging power imbalances and of
providing marginalized genders, i.e., depending on the context, women, boys, transgender
people, etc., with the resources needed to achieve equality. The surprising convergence of
strategic thinking and the rationale of gender mainstreaming in climate, migration and resilience
discourse then goes back to a creative mixing of these two notions of empowerment: the
empowerment of marginalized women and girls in many communities is seen as desirable not
only from a gender equality perspective, but also from a strategic point of view. On the one hand,
the argument is that women and girls are often the most vulnerable among the vulnerable – and
thus empowering them would increase the resilience of the whole community (UNISDR, 2012,
p. 3). On the other hand, climate resilience discourse draws on the assumption that women and
girls, due to their traditional roles within households, are bearers of particular local and tacit
forms of knowledge (Annecke, 2014). Exactly this specialized knowledge is seen as essential for
the development of adaptive capacities and thus resilience against climate change. Hence, the

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“[e]mpowerment of women is an important ingredient in building climate resilience” (Mercy
Corps, 2015, p. 10). In line with this argument, many empirical sources stress that women and
girls should not just be considered victims, but potentially as “effective agents of change”
(Mercy Corps, 2015, p. 10; Swarup et al., 2011, p. 5; UNISDR, 2012, p. 3; World Bank, 2011, p.
9).
2.5 Summary
This chapter reviews tremendous advancements in scholarly understanding of the
environmental dimensions of migration in the past 20 years. When populations are faced with
environmental change, migration is one adaptation strategy which is contextualized by numerous
factors, including the scope and scale of environmental change, the vulnerability of populations
to environmental change, the ability of vulnerable populations to relocate and the responses of
source communities and destination communities (Raleigh et al., 2008). This illustrates the
complexities involved in environmental migration processes. The complex nature of the
problem, coupled with the social justice aspects of migration makes it important to engage social
theory and issues of gender inequalities, including inequalities in culturally shaped livelihood
options and natural resource governance and access. Specifically, a gendered environmental
migration discourse includes narratives that call scholarly and policy attention to the risks,
threats and vulnerabilities that confront people in the face of climate change. Gender lenses serve
as an important way to both acknowledge the gendered nature of environmental migration and
highlight many of the significant human security aspects of migration in the face of
environmental factors.
In this chapter, I have traced the role of the environment within theories of migration
arguing that much of the debate can be boiled down to the tension between explanations that

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focus on the individual and those that highlight structural drivers. More recently, theorizing has
become more complex as academics have sought to explain the heterogeneity around them and
better represent the recursive relationship between agency and structure. Evidence on the role of
the environment within migration research is contradictory and with multiple drivers working at
different scales.
To explore the migration environmental change nexus, I have drawn upon two literatures:
resilience and social inequalities. I argue that a key attribute of resilience thinking is the holistic
approach and the ability to explore the relationships between different system components.
However, resilience thinking has been critiqued for not addressing the fundamental issues of
power and social difference. In response, a number of scholars have proposed to integrate
resilience with other approaches. Within the literature, adaptation and adaptive capacity provide
an appropriate means to combine resilience with other, more actor-orientated, approaches. These
approaches provide a canvass to explore the role of mobility within a rural setting and to explore
the relationship between mobility and resilience. At a more abstract level the framework
represents an attempt to bridge the divide between actor- and system-orientated approaches
utilizing adaptation and adaptive capacity as bridging concepts.
In the next chapter I set out my methodological approach before presenting the main
empirical findings in the subsequent chapters.

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Chapter 3: Methodologies
Chapter 2 reviewed migration theories and the key theoretical concepts that underpin this
research as well as identified some key gaps in existing knowledge. This chapter describes the
research approach that I adopt to explore environmental change with specific reference to human
mobility. The chapter begins by summarizing the interdisciplinary research design before
describing the research methods and techniques employed in the field in addition to the
analytical strategies used. Section three describes the research sites in more detail (in relation to
their social, demographic, economic and environmental characteristics) including summary
statistics of the populations and settlements that were sampled. The chapter concludes with
reflections on some limitations of the research and key ethical issues experienced through the
research process.
3.1 The General Methodological Approach
Approaches to assessing the impact of the environment on migration can be divided into
two broad groups within the literature: first, an identification of environmental hotspots and
some form of integrated assessment to establish those at risk, of which all or a proportion will be
expected to migrate. The second, more analytical approach, attempts to discern the
environmental signal from other drivers of migration through a variety of methods including
ecological interference, individual analysis, time series analysis, multi-level analysis, agent-
based modelling and ethnographies (Findlay, 2011; Kniveton et al., 2008; Piguet et al., 2011).
For the purposes of this research, I will undertake a multi-level analysis of migration under
conditions of environmental change that draws on a number of the analytical methods outlined
above.

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I take a similar approach to O’Brien’s (2006) strategy which treats research design as an
ongoing process and emphasizes discovery rather than verification. In other words, my approach
is exploratory and flexible in order to be open to unforeseen ideas. My inquiry into
environmental migration starts from empirical observations during the fieldwork. Therefore,
fieldwork was taken as the starting point and key method of this research. I stayed for three
weeks in the field site the first time in order to immerse myself in the local environment.
Through traveling between the urban and pastoral villages, observing people’s social and
economic lives in different places, and talking extensively with people of different by gender,
age and class, I tried to get an idea of what environmental migration really meant to the Tibetan
herders’ households so as to give logical explanations of its processes and effects. Through
participant observations and semi-structured interviews, I realized that the processes of
environmental migration are associated with a number of decisions and strategies for the pastoral
households: to migrate or stay, to accept the resettlement conditions or to bargain or to reject, to
sell livestock or to entrust them to others, to find a new job or to find odd jobs in the relocated
villages. Narratives on the decisions and strategies, involving imagined and realistic
opportunities and constraints, suggest a series of social linkages between migrant and non-
migrant households, and a spatial linkage between the pastoral and urban spaces. Therefore,
contrary to the dominant approach in my readings of resettlement studies, which study the origin
and destination of migration as non-related and separated spaces, my empirical learning
developed a strong linkage perspective. This perspective frames both the empirical analysis in
Chapters 4 and 5.
In addition to doing fieldwork, I have also engaged in extensive reading of policy
documents on environmental governance. While the initial purpose was to collect background

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materials for contextualizing the ground-level analysis, study of the background was developed
into the first research question on analyzing the environmentalization of the state. A main
question in my mind when I was processing the policy documents was how to understand the
state’s rapid advance in generating environmental governance discourses and in coping with
social inequalities. Furthermore, I considered what the relationship was between the processes
that I empirically recorded in the field and the processes I read about in papers in the office. It
was through such a constant process of relational thinking that I decided to situate my
examination of the theme within a larger theme of China becoming an environmental state.
The mixed methods approach I employed has been utilized in recent research on the
migration-climate change nexus (Piguet, 2010; Warner, 2011; Warner et al., 2012; Warner et al.,
2009) and interdisciplinary research more generally (Nuijten, 2011). One of the key strengths of
this sort of approach is the different perspectives and layers of understanding that are generated
through the data collection and analysis. The multiple methods (such as biophysical climate data,
surveying, rural appraisal activities, and interviews) used, enabled me to gain a broad
understanding of the ways in which individuals, households, and communities responded to
floods and droughts and role of mobility within this response. A further important benefit of the
multi-method approach is the enhanced level of analytical rigor engendered by working
iteratively across the different data. In sum, the methodology allows me to understand the “how”
and “why”– a crucial strength of case study research (Yin, 2011).
3.2 Research Methods
3.2.1 Overview of Research Methods
From the concepts and research gaps I developed a set of research questions that,
cumulatively, informed my choice of research instruments. The research was primarily deductive

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although space was provided for more inductive elements mainly through the semi-structured
interviews with migrants and households in Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (TAP). This
research approach was used to explore the impact of environmental change driven by
environmental variability in migration village in Golok TAP. The study aims to contribute
situated empirical and analytical knowledge about the interplay of mobility with resilience under
conditions of climatically driven environmental change. Table 2 shows the interview questions,
data needs and methods. The questions were not fixed and changed slightly during the research
process as I enhanced my knowledge and understanding of the local context from which the
empirical data are drawn.
Table 2 Interview questions guide

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3.2.2 Spatial and temporal research issues
Research timing
The research was split into two phases. During phase one (July to August 2014), I
identified suitable rural locations for my field research through expert interviews and visits to a
few potential sites in Golok TAP. Once located, I conducted a series of semi-structured
interviews with village cadres to gain an insight into the presence and severity of environmental
change and an overview of the socio-economic conditions. Once potential sites were identified
and approval to carry out the research granted, I undertook a number of rural appraisal exercises.
These appraisal exercises served three main purposes: (i) to increase my understanding the
context within which I was working; (ii) to help build rapport between the community, myself
and research team; and (iii) to provide confirmation that the sites were suitable for more in-depth
research.
Additionally, during phase one, I also performed a number of informal semi-structured
interviews to try out interview techniques and questions. The information from this phase was
used to inform the subsequent research in phase two.
The focus of phase two in August 2017 was on the development and implementation of
the questionnaire survey. Using insights generated from phase one, a questionnaire survey was
developed and piloted before being implemented in the case study site. Through the rural
appraisal activities and the questionnaire survey, contacts were made with household members
who had been relocated in newly built migration villages in Golmud. Interviews were carried out
with twenty-six migrants’ households who originated from Samou in TAP for generations.

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Dynamic change
Change is not isolated in space or time and a specific event will be the result of a
combination of factors operating at different scales (Gunderson and Holling, 2002).
Understanding the present requires an understanding of what preceded it and (to some extent) an
appreciation of what the future may hold (Allison, 1984). Change is a dynamic process and this
needs to be represented in the research design (Kniveton et al., 2008). Yet many approaches are
unable to capture time varying variables as all the information is collected at the same time (in a
questionnaire survey for example). Bryman (2008) asserts that this snapshot approach to data
collection creates ambiguity in the direction of the causal influence, as there is no time ordering
to the variables.
To obviate the issue of causality in sequencing, migration scholars often use longitudinal
data (such as panel or cohort studies) to assess change over time; the advantage being that
variables are time ordered so statements about causality are more robust as the researcher knows
which of the variables occurred first (Gray and Mueller, 2012). Longitudinal approaches are
often reliant on large data sets, tend to be expensive and time-consuming to implement, and were
not practicable for this research project. However, other options are available, and the research
employed three main techniques to generate time varying data. The first technique utilized rural
appraisal exercises that were sensitive to dynamic processes (such as community-based trend
analysis). The second technique generated time-sensitive data by utilizing survey respondents’
ability to recall past migration behavior within the household. The third technique was embedded
in the semi-structured interviews and derived time sensitive information through the recounting
of specific periods of interviewees’ lives.

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Bounding the research and site selection
Conceptualizing human environment relations in terms of a system places a great deal of
emphasis on the boundaries of the system in question. In resilience research despite the
theoretically equal focus on social and ecological properties most of the literature uses ecological
characteristics to define the boundaries of the system under consideration (for example, focusing
on a river catchment or lake) (Ernstson et al., 2010). The selection of a particular unit of analysis
has the potential to significantly influence the research outcomes by determining the
phenomenon under observation, how it is measured, perceived and understood and the
conclusions that can be drawn (Polsky and Easterling, 2001). Furthermore, even if the
boundaries of a system were self-evidently identifiable, then arbitrarily defining the unit of
analysis would still be cause for significant concern (Sayre, 2005). Indeed, most analyses that
apply resilience theory tend to focus on the system rather than specific units of exposure (Eakin
and Wehbe, 2009).
Clearly, the choice of scale, level, extent and resolution critically influence the patterns
that are observable (Gibson et al., 2000) both for the research and the participants. Such issues
are concisely summarized by Leach et al. (2003) who describe the process by which actors frame
a system in a particular way depending on their choice of elements and subjective judgments.
They define a system as consisting of “social, institutional, ecological and technological
elements interacting in dynamic ways” (Leach et al., 2010, p. 43) and argue that a system’s
structure and functions can be understood in different ways depending on the specific choice of
elements (such as scale, boundaries, relationships and, outputs) and subjective judgments
(perspectives, interests and values).

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Exploring the role of mobility in contributing to resilience provides some interesting
conceptual challenges regarding the system under study; for example, identifying the boundaries
of the system (Marshall and Marshall, 2007). I have focused the study administratively and
utilized the boundaries of the village in determining its limits. These boundaries are fuzzy and
porous, owing to the central role of mobility within the research. For example, some individuals
within the case study sites opt to leave the village, in so doing one sub-system is exchanged for
another in terms of locality, lifestyle and livelihood and a large proportion of contacts and
networks.
However, ties with the sending area/system remain fairly weakened. Similarly, for those
who remain in the village but opt to stretch their livelihoods to include other locations the
conception of the village as a bounded object again proves unhelpful. In light of these two
general cases, I have opted to use the space occupied by those individuals and households with
the center of gravity defined by the de facto place of residence as the system of interest.
Despite the issues highlighted above there are a number of advantages in using a clearly
defined administrative boundary to identify the focal point of the study. Bilsborrow (2009, p.
118) defines migration as a process that involves a change of residence across an administrative
boundary. Using the natural village as a boundary not only provided a means to limit the spatial
extent of the study area but also a boundary to assist in defining what constitutes migration. In
addition, the rural appraisal activities revealed that the residents identified with and felt a sense
of belonging to the natural village. Lastly, there were also a number of institutions (for example,
production teams) and administrative functions that were directed towards this level of the
administrative hierarchy. In sum, these more practical issues aligned with my desire to generate

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fine-grained data and analysis make the natural village the most appropriate means of bounding
the research in origin areas despite the concerns outlined above.
An additional constraint to selecting research locations in China was the means through
which approval and access was granted. The personal connections and networks of the Chinese
academics supporting the research were vital to get permission to do the research and to enable
the data collection to go ahead (Hvistendahl, 2013). Operating through more formal channels
with a partner institution did ensure that, once a suitable site was located, permission to carry out
research was almost guaranteed. However, there were risks and drawbacks associated with this
approach. Firstly, the reliance on the personal networks of Chinese collaborators had the effect of
practically limiting the areas where the research could be conducted. Secondly, operating
through official channels carried certain risks in terms of how the participants perceived the
research, an increased potential of participation by coercion and an unwillingness to discuss
issues that could be considered sensitive (Hansen, 2006). Despite these discussed potential
issues, there was no other feasible way of working and I felt that measures could be put in place
to minimize or manage some of the more practical risks associated with conducting research in
China under an official banner.
3.2.3 Research Data Collection Methods
Qualitative and quantitative data have been collected both by desk work and in the field.
During this study, I spent 10 weeks in total in China, primarily in the study area, but also in
Beijing and Lhasa visiting libraries and meeting experts from NGOs and academia. The
fieldwork was conducted in two periods between 2014 and 2017 (July-August 2014; August
2017). While fieldwork was conducted within limited times, desk work on data collection has
continued throughout the entire process of study. Thanks to the trend of information

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digitalization and the Chinese government’s policy of promoting government information
discourse, most news, government documents, reports, statistics and research publications have
been collected through desk research.
Secondary Data Collection
Secondary data, or pre-constructed data (Cloke et al. 2004, p.36), in this study include
both official information and non-official information. They are used for two purposes:
providing geographical, historical and social economic information to contextualize primary data
(Clark 2005) and doing analysis. I will present the sources and types of my secondary data,
reflect on the limits and explain how I use the collected data for analysis.
The collected data include varied forms of official documents such as news, reports,
plans, surveys, statistics, maps, and presentations. They include all the three types of official
information according to the classification of Cloke et al. (2004): information as part of the
bureaucratic process includes politicians’ speeches, meeting decisions, reports, master plan,
regional plans, guidelines and fiscal budgets; information as part of the monitoring and
controlling process includes population records and socioeconomic statistics of its population;
and information as part of the communication process for reaching and educating the people. The
types overlap each other on many occasions. The data collection focused on the key word
environmental migration and more broadly on environmental governance in intersection with
three themes: grassland and development of pastoral areas. The primary sources are the websites
of different authorities. The policy of “making government information open to public” and “e-
governance” in China enables many documents to become accessible through the websites of
authorities. My search for information followed both the territorial structure and the functional
units of the state administration. Due to the difficulty of interviewing local politicians, I explored

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the official views through analyzing local government documents. News, announcements,
reports and statistics regarding the specific ecological resettlement projects were continuously
collected by following information on local government’s websites.
Secondary data have also been collected through other sources including media and
research publications. Materials from media sources included interviews with officials,
commentaries on environmental events, environmental policy and practices. It should be noted
that media sources in this study included both government-related ones such as the People’s
Daily (including the People’s Net), Xinhua News Agency (including Xinhua Net) and China
Central TV (CCTV, including CCTV Net), Guangming Daily, China Weather Net and Inner
Mongolia Daily News, and non-government- related ones such as China Financial News, China’s
Green Times, Jinghua Times, Market Newspaper, Oriental Outlook Weekly and Southern
Weekly. Research publications provided insights into knowledge construction, unknown policy-
making processes and unpublished statistics. This was due to the fact that China has not
practiced or even promoted an ideal of separation between scholars and bureaucrats; think tank
scholars’ studies have even had a clear purpose of advising policy-making, and they also have
great advantages in accessing non-published official data (Hansen, 2006, p. 88; Morrison, 2002).
As Morrison (2002) explains, the Chinese think tanks conduct strategic thought and policy
planning for individual state ministries or communist party organs. Researchers often work for
high-level Chinese research institutions with close ties to policy-makers such as the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences or they work on research projects entrusted to them by
governmental institutions. However, the impact of a think tank on policy-makers is contingent on
the access to policy-makers and on drawing attention to the right issues and concepts.

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The collected data had several limitations. First of all, some data lack of continuity which
may be related to the change of policy orientation upon the change of leaders. Secondly,
quotations of figures, for example scale of investment or number of resettled populations, could
have different versions if coming from different sources. My strategy has been to quote the one
from the lowest level of authority since it was often the lowest level of authority which collected
the data and reported to the higher levels. Thirdly, the data were neither taken for granted as
reliable facts nor taken at face value. I am fully aware of the constructed nature of both official
data and non-official data. In particular, my use of some data was intended to show how the data
help to shape the policy landscape of ecological resettlement in particular ways. Fourthly, to use
statistics from the surveys conducted by local governments was a second-best choice given that
the amount of resources and the workload demanded for conducting such surveys was beyond
the capacity of my PhD dissertation project. Nevertheless, the accountability of information from
government surveys should always be questioned since citizens always tend to provide
information to such means that the authority uses to monitor its society according to their
interests instead of the real facts. But I think some statistics I used, including the size of
grassland, the population numbers, the numbers of laborers and of students, have a lower risk of
being unreliable compared to figures such as numbers related to livestock, income and
expenditure. This is because the former group of statistics has for long been controlled and cross-
checked by the local governments through several institutional means, especially through the
Hukou system and land rights privatization.
Secondary data are used in the following ways. In Chapters 1 and 2, they set up the
geographical, historical and social economic contexts of environmental migration. In Chapters 4
and 5, secondary data, policy documents in particular, are used for analyzing the state’s

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environmental rationalities and technologies. They are taken to illustrate the particular ways of
thinking and doing of an environmental state.
Primary data collection
In this section, I explain my research design, strategies and methods for collecting
primary data.
First of all, I collected primary data through fieldwork.
This research draws upon qualitative methods, specifically household surveys and in-
depth interviews, paying close attention to age, gender, and other status characteristics as well as
types of resettlement (i.e., state-mandated versus circumstantial). I communicated with locals
throughout my research and conducted face-to-face interviews with 26 households in Migration
Village (altitude 3900 m), Golok TAP with the aim to analyze socio-economic changes
accompanying the transformation from nomadic to settled life with the implementation of the
environment migration project. Interviews with Tibetan herders addressed issues such as
household economic strategies, cultural identity, experiences with education and attitudes
towards settled living conditions. When available, government data on household income,
livestock holdings, employment trends and volume of marketed livestock products were
compared with survey and interview data to understand the strategies used by pastoral
households to realize economic opportunities consequent to resettlement, and to understand
barriers to employment.
Golok Prefecture in Qinghai Province, China, is home to approximately 300,000 Tibetan
pastoralists, farmers, and town dwellers. In the Golok County site, more than nine thousand
households had been moved into a newly built settlement – dubbed “Happiness Village” by the
government – in 2011.Tibetan herders are giving up their pastures and are being paid as

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“environmental migrants” to settle into new houses being built for them in the rapidly expanding
administrative headquarters of the county.
I intentionally avoided taking the typical way of approaching the field in China both for
Chinese researchers (Hu, 2007) and for foreign researchers (Hansen, 2006; O’Brien, 2006),
which is to go through the introduction of a top-down political network. The problem with such
an “official” approach is that a fieldworker’s association with the state institutions often limits
his/her interactions with the researched and is very likely to undermine the research quality.
Therefore, my strategy was to enter the field as a powerless student without any official
introduction. The aim was to make the people feel free to talk.
Specifically, this research asks: what does resettlement mean for pastoral households in
terms of their income earning and investment strategies? How are patterns of consumption and
expenditure changing? How are nomads handling debt burdens from building new homes or
investing in new kinds of assets, and what are their sources of savings in the context of declining
herd sizes? Does pastoral resettlement lead to higher or lower earnings, better or worse access to
markets, and greater or fewer opportunities for pastoral households to improve their economic
situation?
Survey questions were divided into thematic sections including: (i) Pastoral Production:
impacts of resettlement on pastoral movements, herd structures, and livestock productivity; (ii)
Household economics: indicators of income, employment, and assets; interactions with markets;
(iii) Development indicators: changes in infrastructure and built environments; access to
government services; and (iv) Environmental resources: observations on environmental
conditions, including solid waste and water quality.

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Secondly, ethnographic methods including participant observation and semi-structured
interviews were my main methods in the field.
Ethnographic approaches serve well the concerns of political ecology to highlight the
different and often conflicting perspectives of various actors on the environment and its
problems (Moore, 1992, 1996; Neumann, 2005, p. 6); and they provide means of exploring
power relations through “thick descriptions” (Zhu, 2008). Participant observation was conducted
in the Migration Village to understand the worldviews and ways of life of actual people from the
inside, from their everyday and lived experiences (Cook, 2005; Watson and Till, 2010). By
immersion in particular settings, participant observation allows multiple viewpoints to be heard
and acknowledged (Kearns, 2010).
The research took place in 2014 and 2017 which altogether lasted two months, during
when I lived with the community in the study site. I participated in the migrated Tibetan herders’
daily life and collected data using participant observation, interviews and other informal
methods. This research employed qualitative methods, which allowed for the collection of
Tibetan nomads’ opinions and elicited their understandings of the ways that the project has
affected their lives. Most of the settlers did not feel comfortable with a formal interview: out of
113 households, only 26 agreed to be interviewed. All these persons were men who either
volunteered for an interview or were delegated by their family members to speak on behalf of
them. In addition to individual interviews, I conducted group interviews. Ten people took part in
them: five women and five men. These interviews were not an ideal research method either. The
researcher expected that people gathered for these group discussions would be able to talk more
freely.

However, many of them did not want to share their problems in a formal discussion and
felt uncomfortable publicly talking about their difficulties. Because of these problems, much

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information had to be gathered informally, during meals, visits with neighbors or spontaneous
gatherings where relatives or friends exchanged experiences about their new situation. An
estimated one hundred persons contributed to the research, either formally or informally.
Thirdly, semi-structured interviews were a key method through which I generated social
data on individuals and households.
The semi-structured interview was the most ideal interview type for this research as I
needed to ensure some degree of consistency within the different groups of interviews to ensure
comparability between cases (Bryman, 2008; Talwar, 2012). In total, I undertook 26 semi-
structured interviews with migrants in Golok TAP and another 8 semi-structured interviews in
the exploratory phase of the research. Interviews are the best way to explore the agency of the
people, to learn about their experiences and voices. In the Chinese context, O’Brien claims that
an interview “enables outsiders to locate research problems for genuine importance (and to
prioritize among possible explanations) by discovering what is agitating people in the thick of
the system” (2006, p. 33). But at the same time, interviews are preconditioned by the fact that
people feel relaxed and are thus more likely to “opt into” (Skelton, 2001) participation in the
research.
Semi-structured interviews provide a flexible means through which the interviewer and
interviewee are able to discuss topics or issues, as they emerge set within a predefined structure.
For all of the interviews I undertook, I had a prepared list of topics that I wished to discuss but
retained a high degree of flexibility within the interview itself. During the interviews I found that
I frequently deviated from the interview guide as interesting lines of topics emerged. Overall, I
found this approach to interviewing to be very useful as I was able to tailor each interview to the

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interviewee rather than adhering to a rigid structure that did not allow room for novel
conversations.
The semi-structured interviews with the Tibetan migrants in Golok TAP afforded me the
opportunity to really probe in detail on issues concerning migration, migration decision-making
and the role of environmental change in migration decisions. These interviews provided me the
best opportunity to explore in depth the perceptions and experiences of and the decisions made
by individuals.
I adopted a phased approach to analyzing the interviews. The initial coding was
descriptive and literal and designed to help me to (re)familiarize myself with the data. This stage
also helped me to begin creating the analytical and interpretative categories that I used in the
second reading of the data. The second reading of the data enabled me to build up a more
interpretive understanding of the data and identify themes, commonalities, unusual or anomalous
issues that warranted further investigation.
It is important to clarify that the household instead of individuals is the main unit of
research in this study because the household is the primary unit as regards participation in
ecological resettlement projects. This is because it is both the basic unit in policy interventions
and also in household migration and livelihood decisions. While many of the interviews were
conducted in the presence of more than one family member, there was a key interviewee who
answered most of the questions during the interviews and the other members often supplemented
this with their ideas or made corrections. 22 key interviewees were men and 9 were women. To
protect the interviewees, all the names of places and interviewees have been anonymized. The
key interviewees were between 25 to 60 years old, and the majority had an educational level
between primary school and secondary school. Most of the interviews were conducted in

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Mandarin and Tibetan languages. Nearly all the interviewees understood Mandarin but not all
could or wanted to speak Mandarin. If interviewees cannot and do not want to speak Mandarin,
then I asked questions in Mandarin, the assistant translated them into Tibetan, and then the
interviewees replied in Tibetan and my research assistant translated it back to me.
I used a questionnaire and two sets of open-ended questions, one for participant
households and one for non-participant households in the second resettlement project. The open-
ended questions were intended to find out the following: household migration motivations,
strategies and experiences in ecological resettlement; perceptions of environmental changes and
the role of the environment in migration decision-making on environmental migration; and
practices of pastoralism before and after the implementation of environmental migration. A
livelihood perspective was taken in all the questions. However, in conducting the interviews, I
did not stick to a standard order of the questions. Migration decisions and actions were not asked
about via direct questions at the beginning of interviews. Instead, I had extensive discussions
with the interviewees about their families, their past and present livelihoods, their perceptions of
local environmental changes and their plans for the future. Incentives, decision-making, conflicts
and compromises associated with the resettlement processes gradually emerged out of our
conversations, and their narratives were usually constructed around daily and specific events and
life stories.
The greatest problem in the interviews was that many answers depended on the
interviewees’ ability to recall what happened. Besides ambiguity, there could also be a risk that
interviewees who were experiencing problems in life during the time I interviewed them would
tend to exaggerate the positive side of their life before resettlement. In the field I try to avoid the
tendency to romanticize ordinary villagers and to take everything they say at face value,

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especially the complaints. My way to control is to double-check or cross-check the data, for
example, by asking the same question again in the next interview, or by asking another
interviewee who is socially related to the previous interviewee, for example a neighbor, who
might know about the first interviewee’s situation.
Four interviews were conducted with village (ex)leaders. Village leaders play an
intermediary role between the state and the people. Village leaders have an interest both in
serving the state and in living as part of the people. The four interviewees were not only asked
questions on their families but also questions that helped me to learn about how policies have
been translated into practice at the village level to shape the social economic history of the
village regarding land use and production organization, and also to shape the processes of
ecological resettlement.
Fourthly, I also adopted a series of mixed methods during the research.
The above accounts have suggested that this study combined qualitative and quantitative
data collection and analytical techniques. The mixed group of methods includes fieldwork,
participant observation, interviews, analysis of government document, and statistical analysis.
Use of mixed methods and an interdisciplinary approach is a typical way of proceeding for
political ecologists (Dalberg, 2000; Fairhead and Leach, 1995, 1996 and 1997; Jiang, 1999,
2003). As Rocheleau says, many political ecologists “work in a boundary zone between
positivist and critical paradigms, consciously combing critical theory, empirical fieldwork, and
quantitative and qualitative analysis” (1995, p. 458). It is also considered as one of the strengths
of political ecology studies. Nevertheless, this approach is still contested. Feminist political
ecologists especially draw attention to the associated methodological dilemmas (Nightingale,
2003; Rocheleau, 1995). In the broader discipline, geographers are still debating and reflecting

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on how different epidemiological and methodological approaches might be integrated (Elwood,
2010). Being aware of the challenges of using mixed methods, I would like to present a brief
reflection on methodological decisions regarding how to use mixed methods in this study.
Fieldwork and a qualitative approach were taken as being primary. The research
approach was bottom-up. Qualitative data collected through participant observation and semi-
structured interviews were the base for the formulation of research questions. Quantitative data
and an analytical technique were used to complement and deepen the qualitative analysis. For
example, in analyzing household migration decision-making, I have used qualitative analysis to
reveal the household strategies, opportunities and constraints, and have used quantitative analysis
to test the relevance of a group of household-level factors conditioned by social, demographic
and political structures to the decisions. It is crucial to notice that the identification of the factors
was a result of interpreting the contents from interviews. In other words, the qualitative methods
condition the quantitative ones. Given that knowledge is always partial, knowledge from the two
types of methods are complementary to each other. In turn, the results of the statistical analysis
also help to triangulate the results from qualitative analysis and enable further reflect on
interpretations of the data from interviews.
One major practical challenge associated with adopting mixed methods was the order of
collecting different types of data. For example, since the pastoral household survey was collected
after conducting all the household interviews, it was impossible to know if the interview sample
was a random selection out of the register data sample. Therefore, I had to test the relationship
between household-level factors and participation decisions both with the interview sample and
the register data sample. Different results from the analysis of the two samples further draw
attention to the limitations of the data collection.

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3.3 Research Sites
My research site is located in the Three River Headwaters Region that has been
designated the “National Sanjianyuan Nature Reserve Project” since 2003. The central
government allocated 7.5 billion yuan (approximately 1.1 billion dollars) for the project, of
which 10% is allocated for implementing the Environmental Migration Program in the Three
River Headwaters Region (Du, 2009). It considers pastoralists’ perspectives in deciding to
participate in the migration process. Under the slogan of “Harmonious Social Development”. the
environmental migration program was designed to reduce grazing pressure in the Three River
Headwaters Region in response to the government’s heightened concerns about environmental
damage there (Zhouta and Jia, 2009, pp. 51-52). According to the Central State Council (2005),
overgrazing by pastoralists in the headwater’s region was a key factor driving environmental
degradation in this western frontier region. The Council delineated a “natural preservation zone”,
where desertification and degradation of vegetation were intense, and took measures to ban
livestock from grazing inside the zone (Central State Council, 2005; Zhouta and Jia, 2009).
Representatives of the central government and the provincial governments of Qinghai
and Gansu provinces invested 631 million yuan and built 86 environmental migrant villages near
the peripheries of the capital cities of six Tibetan autonomous prefectures (Sancairang, 2011). In
response, the people resettled were compelled to adapt to a rapidly changing social context and
to find new means of livelihood. Since the launch of this policy, the Qinghai government has
relocated 55,773 people (10,140 households) into newly constructed migrant villages (yimin
xincun), which has turned the headwaters region into a no-man’s-land (Wei, 2013b).
In the first phase, the number of migrants was determined by scientists from the Chinese
Academy of Sciences in Beijing, a calculation derived from a remote sensing assessment of the

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grasslands that comprised the headwaters of the three large rivers (Liu et al., 2009). In addition,
they deduced an anthropogenic impact on the grassland ecosystem (i.e. “grazing pressure”). In
areas where grazing pressure exceeded the natural ecological limit, local herders would be
required to leave in order to maintain the balance between livestock and pastureland.

In practice,
the number of households to be transferred to migrant villages was actually determined
according to the degree of importance placed on the preservation of water resources in each area.
In January 2005, the “National Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve Project” received approval
from the Central State Council, resulting in the demarcation of 152,300 square kilometers in the
Three River Headwaters region – nearly half of the entire area – as a “national natural
preservation zone”. In turn, the project prohibited grazing on 6.44 million hectares of grasslands.
In addition, large areas of land were set aside for a variety of conservation purposes: 50,000
hectares to prevent soil erosion, 800,000 hectares for the “Converting Pastures to Grasslands”
(tuimu huancao) program, and 6,500 hectares for reforestation to prevent desertification; a total
of 7.5 billion yuan were spent on this project (Central State Council, 2005).
The provincial government’s development strategy focused on creating a “regional
economy centering on ecological prevention”. In turn, the large budget allocated for
environmental protection from the central government supported and validated these
development strategies. The Three River Headwaters region – the “Chinese Water Tower” –
provides vast quantities of water for the eastern industrialized region of China. The need for
natural preservation in the region has thus become an issue of strategic importance to the
Chinese Communist Party, which has emphasized the ecosystem services provided by this
region.
Since the central government expects local administration to implement its environmental

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protection measures, local governments adopted these positions and aimed to make the region an
“eco-friendly frontier”. In addition to the Qinghai Province Department of Environmental
Protection, which was responsible for deciding numeric targets, several other departments were
mobilized for policy implementation.

That is, the Provincial People’s Congress of Government
Environmental Resources Committee, Provincial Political Consultative Conference of
Environment and Resources Committee, Provincial Office of Sanjiangyuan, and the Departments
of Environmental Protection, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Forestry, Water Conservancy
and Meteorology. Moreover, two more agencies – the Provincial Sanjiangyuan Nature Preserve
Administration Bureau and the Sanjiangyuan Ecological Supervisory Work Team – were
recently set up for the Three River Headwaters region. These agencies have promoted the
Environmental Migration Policy, focusing especially on the relocation program and the
depopulation of the headwaters. Five Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures and one city in Qinghai
Province – Guoluo (mgo log), Yushu (yul shul), Hainan (mtsho lho), Haixi (mtsho nub),
Huangnan (rma lho) and part of Golmud (na go mo) municipality – are the targets of this policy.
After entrusting this project to each autonomous prefectural government, implementation was
assigned, in turn, to the county, township and village committee governments.

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Figure 3 The Sanjiangyuan and Golok TAP in Qinghai
In order to assess the implementation process from Prefecture to village-level, I examine
the case of the Golok TAP.

A mountainous region characterized by deep valleys and steep slopes
in the highlands (on average 3,305m above sea level), Golok is geographically situated on the
edge between the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau and the Sichuan Basin. This transition zone is
characterized by complexity and diversity of geomorphologic and geological structures, culture,
ethnicity, religion, modes of agricultural production and levels of socio-economic development.
Golok is also located in one of China’s key vulnerable ecological areas (Ministry of
Environmental Protection, 2008). Difficulties by farmers and herders in accessing transportation,
potable water, electricity, tele-communications, health services and schools have been persistent
issues in this region. Golok is the second largest region (encompassing 152,629 square
kilometers -- a land area larger than Bangladesh) of the broad Tibetan region in which Tibetan

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ethnic groups are dominant. This region includes Tibet, the south-eastern part of Qinghai
province, the southern part of Gansu Province, the northwestern part of Yunnan province, and
the western area of Sichuan Province. At the end of 2009, more than three-quarters (78.9
percent) of its total resident population (1.02 million) had Tibetan ethnicity. The Han Chinese
and other minority ethnic groups made up 17.7% and 3.4% of the total population, respectively
(National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2010a). The population in Golok is overwhelmingly
rural. By the end of 2014, 81% of Golok’s total population is rural compared to the averages of
61.3% in Sichuan and 53.4% in China (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2015a, 2015b).
The population of Golok TAP is about 154,000 (91% is Tibetan), with 28,466 pastoral
households (Li, 2010, p. 35). The western portion of Golok, in particular, is considered a core
part of the “National Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve Project”, for it encompasses the source of the
Yellow River. The provincial government designated 1.65 million square kilometers of grassland
in this area as an enclosure and mandated the culling of 831,600 sheep equivalent units (SEU) in
order to mitigate grazing pressure on the grasslands (Li, 2010).
As part of the Qinghai–Tibet plateau, Golok is a hotspot of global climate change. The
average temperature in the region has increased over the last few decades (Frauenfeld et al.,
2005; Kang et al., 2010) and is projected to continue rising in the twenty-first century at a faster
rate than the global mean (Editorial Commission of China’s National Assessment Report on
Climate Change, 2007; Meehl et al., 2007). Observed annual precipitation has persistently
declined. Drought, deforestation and overgrazing in the past few years have exacerbated severe
land desertification in the prefecture, resulting in approximately 90% of the grassland
experiencing degradation and becoming less productive (Luo, 2008).

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Golok is also one of the hotspot regions in China most prone to a range of natural
calamities that include climatic hazards (e.g., floods, droughts, snowstorm, sand hail), geological
or mountain hazards (e.g., earthquakes, landslides, mud-rock flows and soil erosion), and bio-
disasters (e.g., destruction of grassland by rats and pest infestation). It was estimated that
approximately 150,000 people were residing in areas where landslides, rock-mud flows and
earthquakes occur (Zhao and Yan, 2008). By 2007, there were more than 220,000 people living
in extremely cold highlands with an elevation greater than 3,500m above sea level. Low
temperatures on the highlands or hot and dry weather in the deep valleys restrict farming and
herding activities. Gradually, people are moving down from the frigid highlands or up from the
hot, dry valleys to moderate and hospitable lands (with elevations of 2,500–2,800m above sea
level). This movement is deemed by the central, provincial and local governments as an effective
adaptive response to climate variation and a measure to protect them from the increasingly high
risk of disastrous climatic and geological hazards. In addition, Golok is one of the poorest areas
in China. The prevalence rate of poverty – the ratio of poor people against the total rural
population – remained as high as 35.9% in Ganzi in 2014, compared to 3.6% in China. Of those
slipping back into poverty, more than 40% indicated that their descent to poverty was caused by
natural hazards (China International Engineering Consulting Corporation, 2015).

Since 2003, a total of 12,042 people from 2,702 households in Golok TAP have been
relocated to 20 migrant villages under the environmental migration program. A total of 2,703
buildings have been constructed and 122.7 million yuan spent on the construction of houses. The
number of people who have relocated to urban areas and abandoned their grasslands represents
ten per cent of the prefecture’s entire population (Li, 2010, p. 35). Li contends that the
urbanization of pastoralists has improved their standards of living and the quality of their

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residences. Current issues for the resettled nomads, like access to health care and education, can
be resolved by improving the facilities in the migrant villages, she asserts, optimistic that the
migrants were adapting quickly to urban life (Li, 2010, p. 37).
3.4 Reflexivity and Ethics
Reflexivity is a strategy used by critical geographers, especially feminist geographers, for
situating knowledge, or as a means of avoiding the false neutrality and universality of knowledge
(Rose, 1997). From a feminist perspective, subjectivities are inscribed in any research work.
Thus, no research is objective- or value-free. Instead, the interpretation and representation of
knowledge is always influenced by the positionality of researchers and the power relations
between researchers and informants. In this section, I reflect on two themes that are relevant to
my positionality in doing this research. I argue that a researcher’s positionality in doing
fieldwork in China has similarities with doing it elsewhere as a number of Western scholars have
discussed the influence of gender, race, class and other identities, but there are also some
peculiar national contexts that shape a researcher’s positionality in doing fieldwork in the
pastoral areas of China.
3.4.1 Doing research as a familiar stranger
This research was conducted both “at home” and “outside the home”. The practical
advantages of doing research at home that Unwin (2006) addressed are not all applicable to my
case. My experiences especially challenge the insider/outsider binary. I stand with Mullings
(1999) and Mohamad (2001) to argue that the boundary between insider and outsider in reality is
highly unstable, which reflects the dynamism of positionalities in time and space. The “at home”
part, my familiarity with the Chinese social and cultural contexts and the identity of being a
native Chinese give me an advantage of being able to quickly become familiar with the field.

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However, I am at the same time a Western-based Chinese scholar. Being trained in Western
theories and research methods, I was a “familiar stranger” as Yang (2014) says, which meant I
was sometimes perceived as a “foreign expert” but at other times as a distant stranger who could
only imagine the life of the locals. This familiar stranger subjectivity was further complicated by
the cross-cultural setting in the field when a Han person conducted research in the pastoral areas
with Tibetans.
As a Han, I was perceived as an outsider to the Tibetan communities and the pastoral
area. However, despite having the majority identity of ethnic Han at the national level I was in
the minority in the case study area. Interactions of the locals with Han were mostly with business
people and officials. Therefore, the locals naturally related my visit to one of them. With
business people, they were always afraid of being cheated; while with officials, they had a
different level of willingness to talk to them. During the first encounter with every interviewee, I
introduced myself, and described the purpose of visit and my research and my affiliation. Despite
that, I was still considered as having different roles; as an official investigator, an official from
the central state, a journalist, a student and a researcher.
In particular, although I intentionally disassociated myself from the government, I was
still constantly put into the category of official investigator at the first encounter with my
interviewees. This was due to the fact that the Chinese state has a long tradition of sending
investigators to interview individuals and households about their social and economic lives,
especially in the rural areas. The methods and questions I used, which were similar to those of
the official investigators in the eyes of the researched, made it natural for them to place me in
that category. As Hansen argues, researchers in China “are walking down a track already beaten
by investigators or researchers whose goals were more clearly of a political nature” (2006, p. 94).

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In Hansen’s view, this association has two implications for fieldwork practice. On the one hand,
it may limit the free talk of the researched because they are afraid of commenting on government
policy. On the other hand, the researched feel obligated to receive visitors from the outside
whom they consider representing official powerful institutions.
My fieldwork experiences are both similar and different to Hansen’s view. It is true that,
with the assumption of me being an official investigator, some interviewees were very polite but
quiet while I sat in their living rooms for an hour. However, to my surprise, there were also
interviewees who were very open with their criticism and they even clearly expressed their wish
for me to take their opinions back to the political system to bring about policy changes. In this
last case, I was considered not only to be an official investigator, but also one sent from a higher
level of government, since I was a non-local stranger, studying abroad, whose background was
associated with the centers of power in Beijing. The obligation they felt to receive official
visitors indeed enabled my initial interactions with some families. However, the above dynamics
of the power relationship between my interviewees and me were only limited to the initial
encounters. By spending a relatively long period of time with and making repeated visits to the
interviewees, I intentionally worked on equalizing the relationship between us.
Since some locals were quite conservative when talking about sensitive issues to a person
affiliated to a foreign institution, I often indicated my previous working experiences at the
People’s Daily in Beijing. To my surprise, the relation to Beijing in several cases made
pastoralists think I was from the center and could somehow be close to the central government,
so they became very willing to talk about problems in the local implementation of environmental
migration. They believed that officials from the center were capable of helping them to solve
problems, and especially they had power over local cadres.

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3.4.2 Power relations and ethical considerations
As Skelton (2001) argues, there are several possible ways of empowering the researched.
Besides allowing the space and time for people to talk about things they wanted to tell me, I
repeatedly let people know how useful what they say had been. I had learned from my previous
fieldwork experiences, that reducing the differences between urban and rural, and reducing the
educational difference between a scholar and a herder was an effective approach for creating the
sense of equality between me and the researched so that the researched was more willing to
interact with me. The difference between rural and urban can be shown by dressing more simply
in outdoor clothes which can be worn in the house, on the grassland or going across the mud.
“By asking the residents to teach me local skills” (Scheyvens et al., 2006, p. 151) was another
important means of showing my genuine interest and appreciation of their knowledge. To use a
translator to conduct interviews was also a way of empowering the interviewees and avoiding
misunderstandings. Although most of the locals were bilingual, they felt more comfortable
speaking Tibetan despite the fact that young people were more fluent in Mandarin.
However, much less has been discussed about the situations in which the researcher is not
in a more powerful position (Mullings 1999). Acceptance of the first interviews was very often
based on the sympathy of the researched for me. The sympathy stemmed from observing my
efforts to carry out the research. Car trample in sand and mud, distant travel, sitting on the curb
to eat a sandwich for lunch, all made me appear powerless in the eyes of the researched. My
identity of being an unmarried woman over 30 who was living and working abroad alone also
made the researched feel sympathetic. Being both well over the ordinary marriage age of the
early 20s, and living far from my parents in China, these facts surprisingly were favorable to my
work progress. This was especially true with old people.

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This work would have been impossible without the generous sharing of experiences by
the interviewed people. Although they could not understand why the aim of research was not to
help them directly to solve their daily acute problems which I was serious to note down in the
interviews, they “forgave” me because of the friendship between us. The limitations of a
researcher and the debt to the research people and area were from time to time felt during the
fieldwork. For example, while I was taken as a respectful “expert”, I could not give any advice
on an important local question, how to improve the drinking water quality, which the researched
expected an answer from an expert.
3.5 Summary
This chapter has described my methods and how they were used for collecting materials
and data in this field study. I emphasize that the research design has evolved in the process of
carrying out the project. Driven by the interest in knowing what occurs at the ground level, this
case study is strongly founded on the analysis of the primary data. However, the aim is also to go
beyond making a study of a particular locality, and I seek to take a bottom-up approach to
expand the view to consider what takes place in the broader processes that fundamentally
structure the processes of a particular locality. In this way, the case study also becomes more
meaningful by being situated as a part of an analysis of a wider transformation of environmental
governance. During the research process, my view has been shifted between different scales in
collecting materials and data and further in relating the materials and data to each other for
analysis. While my initial idea was to use the materials and data from the broad scales for setting
up the contexts for the analysis of the study area, I gradually realized that these materials and
data themselves inform important stories which are lack of analysis. These materials and data
thus constitute the base for analysis in the next chapter.

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Chapter 4: The Case Study in Tibet
The nexus between environmental change and human migration is already one of the
defining global issues of the 21st century. In many parts of China, environmental change has
presented major challenges to people’s livelihoods and their living environment (Li, 2013; MEA,
2005; NDRC, 2007, 2013). As a response, over 7.7 million rural migrants, mostly in western
China, absolutely poor and mostly displaced, were relocated and resettled largely in other rural
communities by 2010 (SCC, 2011b). This figure is projected to be around 10 million by 2050
(Shi et al., 2007). “Environmental migration” became an official policy of the Chinese
government in 2001 to direct environment-related human resettlement (SCC, 2001). Yet, there is
limited understanding of how environmental stress relates to human mobility, how policy-driven
environmental migration is being implemented in the Chinese context and what environmental,
economic and social consequences ecological migration has brought about to people and
communities affected. These issues present a significant gap in knowledge which this
dissertation seeks to address. In this chapter, I review the Chinese perspectives and practices to
enrich the global discussion of human mobility (including displacement and resettlement) as a
proactive and anticipatory adaptive response to, rather than being only a problematic outcome of,
environmental change. I also identify critical research gaps that help to inform future research
investments on environmental change and migration studies in China.
4.1 Environmental Stressors and Ecological Vulnerability in China
Environmental change is rarely considered to be the only, or main, cause of human
mobility. Human mobility is well recognized as a complex and multivariate process that involves
a number of influences that are not only environmental, but economic, demographic, social and
political (Black et al., 2011). However, environmental change can shape and influence human

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migration and displacement – decisions and patterns, both directly and indirectly, the latter
through its impact and influence on the other drivers.
China is considered as environmentally and ecologically vulnerable because of its
extensive exposure to environmental change impact. Substantial parts of the country are
classified as “ecologically vulnerable zones” (EVZs) (MEP, 2008). The environments in EVZs
have an intrinsically low environmental carrying capacity to support human settlement (Meng et
al., 2010; Xu et al., 2006). Estimated climatic and other environmental changes in the coming
decades will continue influencing the drivers of change in ecosystem services, with the most
significant and extensive being environmental change (Wang et al., 2012). In the eastern coastal
region, sea level rise, storm surges and coastal flooding will contribute to land degradation, and
the degradation of coastal, river-lake and marine ecosystems (Yang et al., 2011). In the western
and northern regions, increasing occurrence and severity of drought will continue to accelerate
land degradation (Tao et al., 2011). Water shortage, mostly triggered by climate variability
(particularly drought), could be the biggest risk factor threatening rural livelihoods and food
security in China (Li et al., 2013; Peng, 2011).
Western China, in particular, has experienced severe environmental deterioration
associated with environmental change: desertification, water scarcity, soil erosion, deforestation,
over-reclamation, overgrazing and the impact of resource and infrastructure development (Li et
al., 2012; Liu et al., 2005; MAC, 2011; Wang et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2007). Desertification
and soil erosion have been two major environmental challenges in rural areas of west China
(Kolas, 2014; Wang et al., 2006; Wang et al.; 2008, Xu et al.; 2003). Rock desertification,
salinization, glacier retreat and thawing permafrost, together with geological or mountain
hazards (e.g. earthquakes and landslides) also remain fundamental problems in some areas.

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environmental change has particularly intensified the environmental risks of drought,
desertification, land degradation and water shortage, worsening agricultural conditions in the
region (Piao et al., 2010). Environmental change is also linked to China’s land tenure policies,
such as those implemented in Inner Mongolia, whereby the existing nomadic land tenure system
(where land was common property) was transformed, first to a fixed communal rights system,
and then to a pasture contracting system (in which use rights became fixed to households and to
specific plots of grazing land) (Da and Zheng, 2010; Song, 2006). The contracting system
resulted in the introduction of enclosures by those who could afford fences, undermining some
effective traditional coping mechanisms, and increasing land degradation and reduced
productivity on the remaining unfenced, and over-grazed grasslands (Webber, 2012). The
expansion of coal mining in Tibet has added to these problems by impacting the scale and quality
of pastoral land and using up available water (Da and Zheng, 2010). The impact of market forces
has further intensified the environmental problems because huge areas of agricultural land in the
western and central regions of China have been taken over to meet the growing demand for
minerals and energy created by the strong economic growth in the east.
Environmental degradation (e.g. grassland degradation and land desertification) leads to
poverty, and in turn, poverty deepens environmental degradation in extensive rural areas of
China (Song et al., 2015). The poorest areas are mostly located in mountainous and
environmentally deteriorated areas. A study by Ouyang et al. (2009) estimated that 2.24 million
square km (accounting for 23.3% of the land area of China) lie within the EVZs in western
China. All twelve provinces in western China, including five ethnic autonomous regions (Inner
Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Tibet, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou,
Yunnan, Guangxi) contain EVZs. Strikingly, the poor rural population in China’s ethnic

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autonomous areas in 2011 accounted for a third of the nation’s total poverty-stricken population
(i.e. 39.17 millions of 122 million) (SEACC, 2012).

Figure 4 Distribution of ecologically vulnerable zones and national poverty-stricken counties in western China.
4.2 Environmental Change and Its Impact on Poverty
Environmental change and associated severe environmental deterioration are found to be
an important causal factor of a high rate of poverty in the EVZs (Li et al., 2013; Tu and Yuki,
2012; Xu and Ju, 2009). Dramatic population growth in western China, increasing from 175
million in 1950 to 367.3 million at the Chinese census of 2010, has intensified the pressure on
land, water, energy and food supplies, by increasing population densities in areas that have
experienced a decline in habitability and natural resources and adversely affected ecosystem
functions, processes and services (MEA, 2005).

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One inevitable result has been prevalent poverty for those living in these vulnerable
areas. Zhou et al. (2008) note that 92% of the counties, and 83% of the residents, in the typical
EVZs are impoverished. Moreover, most of the poor counties in western China are situated in
areas where ethnic minority groups are concentrated (210 counties). These minorities account for
47.4% of the local population and three-quarters of the total (113.8 million) ethnic minority
population in China. Poverty reduction in the ethnic areas has thus been exceptionally
challenging. Ethnicity thereby adds an extra dimension to the challenge of human resettlement
and migration in the context of environmental change (Li et al., 2013).
Clearly, the need for an adaptive response to environmental change is especially relevant
to those living in rural areas in the western region, where millions of rural households are already
impoverished and find their plight further exacerbated by this change. To rehabilitate the
deteriorated ecosystems and eradicate prevalent rural poverty, a range of environmental and
poverty-relief programs have been implemented by the Chinese central government since the
mid-1980s, including the: (i) “Poverty Alleviation” that is aimed to reduce the number of rural
residents living under the national poverty line through capital investment by the government, to
foster local economic development and to move some people out of environmentally unlivable
areas); (ii) “Grain for Green”, a program aiming to return cropping land with a gradient of 25
degrees or greater to forest or grassland; (iii) “Water and Soil Conservation”, a program aiming
to protect water and land resources, to prevent water and soil erosion, to reduce the occurrences
and severity of floods, droughts and sandstorms, and to rehabilitate degraded ecosystems; (iv)
“National Forest Protection” and “Protection of National-level Nature Reserves”, two programs
aiming to prevent deforestation, especially in the upper reaches of major rivers such as the
Yangzi, Yellow and Songhua; to reduce commercial timber extraction through commercial

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logging bans; and to establish nature reserves and parks to protect natural forests; and (v)
“Building a New Socialist Countryside”, a program aiming to narrow disparities between
China’s rural and urban areas in the new millennium through enhancing agriculture, improving
farmers’ living standards and providing clean housing (NDRC, 2012a). Importantly, since 1994,
the national “Poverty Alleviation” scheme has focused on 592 poor counties in which 58.6
million were living below the absolute poverty line at that time. Of these counties, 375 are in
western China and all are located within the EVZs.
A few quantitative studies have examined how environmental factors combine with
demographic, social, economic and political factors to influence people’s migration behavior. At
the household level, Feng and Nie (2013) analyzed key factors influencing the willingness to
undertake ecological migration and the actual migration behavior of herders in Tibet. They find
that a small household size, poor quality of grassland, lack of irrigation water, poor
environmental conditions, and poor accessibility to a well-established mosque in the original
villages are significant push factors stimulating both the willingness and the actual out-migration
of people. Additional variables – experience of previous out-migration and annual household
income – are, significantly and positively, associated with both the willingness of farmers to
pursue migration and action of migrating. A case study in the Sangong River watershed of
Xinjiang shows that household size, net income per capita, main source of income, the
proportion of non-agricultural income, and farmers’ participation in the “Grain for Green”
project significantly affect the willingness to undertake ecological migration (Tang et al., 2011).
A study by Dong et al. (2012) in Inner Mongolia examined the factors that affected the
willingness for those displaced households to stay in their new resettlement villages. They find
that significant factors include the age of the household head, years of post-resettlement, the ratio

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of the governmental subsidies against the household’s total income, and the level of fixed,
durable and current assets. “Social inequality” has been identified as an important contributor to
increasing the vulnerability of communities and people in the context of global environmental
change (e.g. Adger and Kelly, 1999; Paavola and Adger, 2006). Understanding the role of social
inequality is crucial if we are to unravel the environmental impact, human adaption and
migration nexus, but there is limited empirical evidence addressing it, especially in urban
settings in China. Built on the theories of socio-spatial inequality (Sheppard, 2002) and social
inequality (Goldthorpe, 2010), a study of Tan et al. (2015) considered social inequality from
three major dimensions: material inequality (the economic), social status inequality (the social)
and power inequality (the political). Taking the Yangzi River Delta as a case study area, their
study provides new evidence that suggests urban households with low socio-economic status
(characterized as renting housing, working on low-skill jobs, holding low-level educational
attainment and having little social connection with their family and other people) exhibit a higher
probability of experiencing more adverse climate impacts. All factors measuring social
inequality exacerbate the adverse climate effects on already disadvantaged groups and impede
their capacity and decision to move or integrate into urban centers.
4.3 China’s Approaches to Environmental Migration
Moving people out of extremely vulnerable environments is perceived by the Chinese
governments from county to national levels (SCC, 2001) and researchers (e.g. Chen et al., 2013;
Qin, 2004; Xu et al., 1996; Yan and He, 2014) as a vital tool for reducing population pressure on
the environment, alleviating rural poverty, rehabilitating ecosystems and combating natural
disasters (especially mountain hazards). Therefore, “environmental migrants” is often
conceptualized by Chinese scholars (e.g. Bao, 2006; Zheng, 2013) as ecological migrants or

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poverty-relieving migrants in the Chinese context. Environmental migration has come into a
national policy since 2001 (SCC, 2001). As a consequence, during China’s 11th Five-Year Plan
period (2006–2010), there was a relocation of 1.63 million rural residents from locales where
environmental conditions were not conducive to human habitation (such as arid and desertified
regions with no, or limited, access to basic infrastructure and social services, as well as areas
prone to earthquakes or landslides). Out of the estimated total number of 10 million poverty-
stricken population in China in 2010, 2.4 million people were planned to be relocated to
relatively better-off places over the nation’s 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) (NDRC,
2012b). Local residents have also undertaken various spontaneous adaptations including out-
migration, but there is no statistic showing the magnitude of out-migrants who relocated
voluntarily in response to environmental change (Chen et al., 2014).
4.3.1 Stages and scope
Environmental migration has experienced three stages since the mid-1980s: (i) “poverty-
alleviating migration” in some of the least viable and poorest mountainous areas of western
China (especially in the provinces of Ningxia and Gansu) in 1983-1993 (Li et al., 2013,Wu et al.,
2010); (ii) “development-oriented migration” which targeted extremely poor households and the
poorest villages under the national “Poverty Alleviation” program (started in 1986).The major
scheme involved the “80/7 Plan to Combat Poverty (1994-2000)” that successfully helped some
80 million rural people living under the national poverty line to escape poverty over the seven-
year period to 2000; and (iii) “environmental conservancy and poverty-alleviating resettlement”
since 2000 (SCC, 2001, 2011a).
At the current stage, environment-related relocation programs are being undertaken in
three situations: (i) where people are attempting to live in conditions normally not conducive to

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human habitation or essential livelihoods (e.g. severely arid areas); (ii) in pastoral areas that have
suffered serious desertification, areas vulnerable to geological or mountain hazards and areas that
suffer from severe soil erosion; and (iii) in protected areas where the biodiversity and landscape
are fundamental to the national or regional environmental sustainability, and thus need to be
better conserved, or naturally regenerated, to adapt to environmental change and reverse some
processes of environmental degradation (e.g. desertification and soil erosion) (SCC, 2011a).
Environmental migration in China is mostly permanent and involuntary, involving the
displacement and resettlement of poor rural residents (Bao, 2006; Zheng, 2013). Governments at
all levels (central, provincial, county and township) have played a key role in the planning,
organization and financial support for this process. Environmental migration is supposed to be
carried out in light of the following five principles: (i) direction by the government; (ii) respect
for the voluntary nature of relocation; (iii) actions must fit the capability of the people affected;
(iv) subsidies are to be provided to those to be displaced; and (v) suitable resettlement
approaches must be adopted (NDRC, 2012b). However, these official principles have
encountered numerous challenges in real practice of environmental migration.
Financial support from Chinese government covers approximately 80% of the total cost
of displacement and resettlement, while another 20% of the total cost is borne by the displaced
(Li et al., 2005). Government funding is invested mainly in the resettlement communities for
building basic infrastructure, subsidizing migrants to build new or purchase existing houses,
equipping water conservancy infrastructure, improving the fertility of farmland and pastoral
lands, and providing social services. This support, however, has not been enough for the
displaced to reconstruct their livelihoods post-displacement in many cases. The cost becomes
much greater when it comes to resettling people into communities located beyond their original

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county (Zeng and Zhu, 2006). Financial constraints not only delay the process of resettlement,
but also affect people’s capacity to re-establish their economic livelihood in their resettlement
communities (Tan et al., 2013).
4.3.2 Near resettlement vs. distant resettlement
The destination of the relocated depends on the carrying capacity of the environment
(especially the quantity of water and land available) where people are supposed to be resettled.
Studies indicate that the eastern coastal provinces of China have a greater carrying capacity and
thus settling migrants there would create greater opportunities for migrants to seek multiple
livelihood sources and facilitate environmental rehabilitation in the areas from which they came
(Fan and Zhao, 2003; Fang and Peng, 2002). However, only limited environmental resettlement
has occurred to these provinces due to reasons including, but not limited to, the lack of national
operational guidelines and policy on inter-provincial resettlement (Wuli, 2007). Indeed, most
resettlement so far has been within western China and within their home county boundary, which
is termed as near resettlement. Near resettlement is seen to foster local industrialization and
urbanization, especially if people are resettled in peri-urban areas and township or country seats
(Liu, 2011). Where enormous environmental stressors and constraints in natural resources are
experienced, it is now becoming more common to resettle the displaced outside their counties via
Government-Organized Distant Resettlement (GODR) schemes, but this is still within the
boundary of their original province. For example, of 350,000 rural residents to be displaced from
the mountainous region of southern Tibet over 2011-2015, almost two-thirds (65%) were
planned to be resettled in other counties with better access to irrigation water, transportation and
urban centers, in central and northern parts of Tibet (Wu, 2011).
How to select host communities suited to resettle migrants is a major concern of

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researchers, policymakers and practitioners (Shi and Gai, 2006). Quantitative analysis,
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) techniques are used to
analyze and model the environmental carrying capacity of the resettlement areas and to identify
suitable resettlement sites. Taking Golok county as a case study, Li (2010) applied GIS
techniques to identify sites suited to resettlement. Zhou et al. (2009) advanced methodologies for
how to optimize the selection of resettlement areas. They constructed a 19-indicator system
involving not only quantitative factors (which measure production conditions, basic
infrastructure, accessibility of public services and environmental conditions), but also some
qualitative factors (production modes, language, religion and culture), and employed an Analytic
Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to determine the weighting of each indicator. Based on a
Pressure-State-Response (PSR) model, Shi (2010) built an indicator system, which captures the
characteristics of population, water resource, quality of farmland, environmental pollution,
economic development and education, to measure the sustainability of development in the
resettlement areas.
4.3.3 Rural resettlement vs. urban resettlement
Rural resettlement has been the fundamental approach to settling relocated residents over
the last three decades. However, it is now very difficult to secure viable arable or pastoral land
which also has an adequate amount of irrigation water available. Rapid urbanization and
environmental change impact further restrict the potential supply of agricultural land and water.
Urbanization affects land use and downgrades the quality of agricultural land. Over the past three
decades, China has experienced massive rural-to-urban migration, rising from 6.57 million in
1982 to 221 million in 2010 (Duan et al., 2013). China’s urbanization has reached a critical
point, with the government expecting the number of migrant workers to increase from 253

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million in 2014 to 291 million by 2020, of which over three-quarters are rural-to-urban migrants
(NHFPC, 2015). The urbanization rate has climbed from 17.9% in 1978 to 50% by 2010, a share
expected to rise to 70% by 2030 (World Bank, 2014). Land-use patterns have changed
accordingly with an estimated 83,000 km² of cultivated land converted from agricultural to urban
use from 1996-2007 (NDRC, 2008).
This is particularly the case in the most rapidly urbanizing regions, such as the Yangzi
River Delta, where urbanization has encroached upon a massive amount of cropland, forest and
river-lake bodies over 2000-2010 (Xu et al., 2013). Waste disposal from extensive human and
industrial activities in urban areas has significantly polluted soil and river-lake ecosystems,
decreasing both the quantity and quality of agricultural land and thus of agricultural products
(Chen, 2007). Competition for water resources between the industrial and agricultural sectors has
also added exceptional pressure on water supply in mega cities, including Shanghai, jeopardizing
agricultural productivity levels (Finlayson et al., 2013; Khan et al., 2009). Notably, average per
capita cultivatable land and renewable freshwater resources in China is around half and one-
quarter of the world’s average, respectively (Liu and Diamond, 2005). Thus, any reduction to the
already limited land and water resource availability will directly add enormous challenges to
land-based resettlement in China for people to be displaced (or relocated).
Urban resettlement (i.e. resettling displaced people into non-agricultural sectors in urban
areas) has been successfully tested in some provinces including Jiangxi (Huang, 2008),
Chongqing (Song and He, 2014) and Guizhou (Wang et al., 2014). Resettling people in township
or county seats facilitates them to find jobs in secondary and tertiary industry sectors, revitalizes
rural towns and fosters in-situ urbanization processes in economically lagging, ethnic and rural
areas. Resettlement which emphasizes a combination of small industry creation, off-farm

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employment, self-employment, land consolidation and commercialized family or collective
farms that yield value-added agricultural and livestock products could diversify the livelihood
and income sources of the displaced people. It is likely that more environmentally displaced
people will settle in urban and peri-urban areas in the future because accelerating urbanization in
established towns and small cities is gaining momentum, according to China’s “New-Style
Urbanization Plan (2014-20)” (SCC, 2014). However, empirical research also questions urban
resettlement. Wu (2015) elaborates the urban resettlement process of ecological migration in
Guizhou, one of China’s most multi-ethnic, poorest and environmentally harsh provinces. To
combat rocky desertification and alleviate poverty, from 2012-2020 the provincial government
has endeavored to relocate 2.04 million villagers, many of which are ethnic minorities that are
native to the region. Consequently, 0.67 million people were displaced in 2001-2014, over half
of which were ethnic minority groups. The majority of the uprooted were resettled in newly
designated industrial parks nearby townships, county seats or prefectural cities. These resettlers
were expected to be transformed from farmers to factory workers and public employees. Yet
such a rural-to-urban conversion has imposed enormous challenges for the resettlers, including
high unemployment, a struggle to meet non-agricultural job requirements due to their low
schooling, diverse cultural backgrounds and languages, difficulty in adapting to urban lifestyle
and potential loss of their ethnic identity, traditional values and belief systems.
4.4 Background and Rationale for Environmental Migration in Tibet
Grassland degradation is a worldwide concern in arid and semiarid regions, but the
causes and extent of degradation are highly controversial in the fields of grassland ecology and
environmental policy (Milchunas and Lauenroth, 1993; Ren et al., 2002; Harris, 2010; Dong et
al., 2012). Even practices aimed at restoring grasslands are not without controversy. The

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grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau are interspersed with many small and large lakes and thousands
of rivers run through it. Moreover, the diversity of the flora and fauna of this region is unique
(Miehe et al., 2009; Dan, 2002; Deng, 2002). In the Three Rivers Headwaters Region (TRHR) on
the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in China, grassland degradation has attracted much attention from
ecologists and environmental policy-makers. This is, not only due to the region’s unique
climatic, topographic, and cultural features, but also due to the critical ecosystem services it
provides to China and the rest of the world (Dong et al., 2010). In the following section, I
address basic questions about the socioeconomic and ecological causes of grassland degradation
in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau region in China and identify potential practices to mitigate the
degradation process and restore the degraded grassland ecosystems.
There are three major questions currently being debated within the realm of grassland
degradation. The first is whether degradation is really occurring; or stated in a less extreme way,
to what extent is it occurring in Tibet? The essence of this question rests in the basic definition of
grassland degradation. Clearly, different definitions and dissimilar standards used to gauge the
extent, or even the existence, of grassland degradation could lead to very different conclusions.
There is a widely cited statistic that 90% of China’s grassland is degraded (Harris, 2010). But
after examining the definition used to make this estimate, it appears that any grassland that has
human disturbance, or is undergoing natural adaptive responses to environmental changes, might
be classified as degraded. Thus, this estimate could be very misleading (Harris, 2010).
Undoubtedly, adopting appropriate definitions and standardizing the measurements of grassland
degradation are critical to assessing the status and extent of grassland degradation, as well as
spatial and temporal patterns and trends.

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Where grassland degradation is occurring, the second question is what are the major
causes? Researchers are divided roughly into two camps around this question (Dong et al.,
2012). Some believe that overgrazing and inappropriate grassland management combined with
other anthropogenic impacts (e.g. cultivation, mining, infrastructure construction, medicinal
plant collection and change in ownership regime) are the primary causes of grassland
degradation, whereas natural causes, such as climate change, are considered secondary. Others
contend that climate change is the dominant driver in grassland degradation, and other
anthropogenic factors accelerate the process. To design effective strategies to restore grassland
ecosystems, identifying the specific causes of degradation in a particular region is crucial. Thus,
a discussion of causes forms one of the core components of this section.
The third question involves the effectiveness of different restoration methods, the most
controversial involving the imposition of a grazing ban and/or a reduction in herd density.
Elements of this question are closely related to the second question, namely whether overgrazing
is assumed to be the primary cause of degradation. If so, then eliminating grazing or limiting
livestock numbers might help the grassland system recover. However, if the major cause of
degradation is climate change, such restrictions and limitations may not be effective. Other less
controversial restoration methods include better grassland management practices, grassland
cultivation, rodent control and ownership reform. Given the wide range of alternatives for
potential grassland restoration, identifying the effective methods under specific conditions
becomes one of the most essential questions for grassland restoration.
In this section, I analyze these three questions by synthesizing information from an
extensive literature review. I first discuss conditions, trends and the extent of grassland
degradation in the TRHR, followed by a review of the possible socioeconomic and natural

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causes of grassland degradation. Then I provide suggestions for methods and recommendations
of practices that can help restore degraded grasslands in this region. Conclusions are given in the
last section.
4.4.1 Evidence for grassland degradation in the TRHR
Despite some researchers’ assertions that grassland in the TRHR is mostly healthy and
the extent of degradation is overstated (Harris, 2010), there is contradictory evidence that
grassland degradation is occurring in many parts of the TRHR. Although the nature and degree
of degradation varies over space and time, local residents, researchers and natural resource
managers have observed substantial changes in different indicators of grassland health in most of
the counties in the TRHR. The following is a brief review of observed changes in some of the
most widely used indicators for grassland health. This discussion is intended to provide an
intuitive sketch of grassland degradation in this region.
Decrease in net primary production
Decreases in plant height and vegetation cover over time are among the most obvious
phenomena in the early stage of grassland degradation (Ma and Lang, 1998; Yan et al., 2003; Li
and Zhang, 2005). Indeed, local herders and government officials in many parts of the TRHR
report such changes. Undoubtedly, variation in annual precipitation could have large impact on
net primary production in the short-term, but the overall trend during the past several decades has
been downwards (Shang and Long, 2005).
Changes in species composition
The alpine grassland community is composed of dozens of plant species, divided into
three general categories from the perspective of livestock grazing: forage plants, non-edible
plants, and poisonous plants (Zhou et al., 2002). In healthy grasslands, the percentage of plants in

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these categories remains stable as a result of long-term adaption to soil, climate, and grazing
activities. On slightly degraded grasslands (early stage), net primary production decreases, but
the composition of the plant community remains unchanged. In the intermediate stage of
degradation, the percentage of forage plants begins to significantly decrease, and non-edible and
poisonous plants become dominant (Milchunas et al., 1988; Milton et al., 1994). This change in
species composition is likely to initiate a vicious cycle because livestock would eat a larger
proportion of the remaining stock of forage plants, thus increasing pressure and decreasing
reproduction of forage species (Yan et al., 2003; Li and Zhang, 2005).
Smaller size of livestock and lower carrying capacity
Decreasing net primary production and declines in the percentage of forage plants appear
to have direct effect on the system’s capacity to support healthy herds of livestock. Statistical
data from scientific studies and reports from local herders both suggest that the average sizes of
yaks and sheep on degraded grasslands are much smaller than in past decades, partly because
they cannot get enough forage during winter and spring, and rapidly lose weight during periods
of low temperatures (Zhou et al., 2002). Accordingly, studies show that the carrying capacities of
degraded grasslands under the same climate and soil conditions are significantly lower than those
on healthy grasslands (Ma and Lang, 1998). Livestock size and carrying capacity have direct
influences on the livelihoods of local herders and are given extensive attention by researchers
and government agencies. For these reasons, carrying capacity of a grassland is a very important
index used by government agencies to prescribe management practices (Zhou et al., 2002).
Populations of small mammals
Rodents in high densities have been widely cited as an indicator of severely degraded
grasslands. However, the species that has been reported to cause the most damage, the plateau

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pika is not a rodent but a member of the rabbit family. Within the most severely degraded
grassland, there can be >4000 plateau pika holes per hectare (Ma and Lang, 1998). This type of
damage is associated with very low productivity of forage plants, ultimately falling below levels
that could sustain the livelihoods of local herders (Zhou et al., 2005).
Black soil
“Black soil” is a common name of a type of extremely degraded grassland which is
actually denuded grassland with exposed black soil or sand on the surface. This degraded
grassland system has very limited grazing value and is very prone to subsequent desertification
(Ma and Lang, 1998; Zhou et al., 2003). The total area of black soil has greatly expanded during
the past decades in the source region of the Yellow River and has increased most intensely in
Dari and Maduo counties. Residents in these locations, which had the richest households in the
whole country in the 1970s, have since fallen into deep poverty (Ma and Lang, 1998). It was the
expansion of this extreme form of degradation and its devastating impacts on local livelihoods
that first attracted the attention of the central government and scientific community in the 1990s.
In the following decades, extensive research on grassland degradation and large-scale restoration
projects has been undertaken in this region.
4.4.2 Spatial and temporal patterns of grassland degradation in the TRHR
At this point, it is evident that grassland degradation is a real problem in the TRHR. The
characteristics and magnitude of degradation, however, vary over space and time. Despite the
widely accepted statement that 90% of grassland in China is degraded, many researchers show
that most of degradation belongs to the “slightly degraded” category. While slightly degraded
grasslands tend to change with time and shift in space due to variations in annual precipitation

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and temperature as well as other random factors, the occurrence of medium and severe
degradation shows clear patterns.
Spatial patterns of degradation
Regional studies based on remote sensing show that grassland degradation in the TRHR
is strongly correlated with topographic features at a broad geographical scale (Feng et al., 2005;
Liu et al., 2006; Song et al., 2009). At elevations between 3500 and 4500 m, grasslands tend to
be more degraded than at other elevations, as are grasslands on south-facing slopes (Feng et al.,
2005; Liu et al., 2006, 2008). At finer scales, degradation shows positive relationships with
intensity of human activities. Grasslands close to settled villages, water sources, and major roads
are inclined to be more degraded (Li and Zhang, 2005). Additionally, grasslands with different
ownership patterns also show differences in degradation. For example, many unregulated public
pastures are severely degraded since herders prefer to take as much advantage as possible from
the public pastures and save the forage plants on their private pastures (Ma and Lang, 1998).
Temporal patterns of degradation
From many accounts, it appears that grassland ecosystems were stable and remained in
harmony with the grazing practices of nomadic pastoral societies until recently (Miller, 2006a).
However, beginning in the 1960s or 1970s, serious degradation processes seemed to have started,
which continues into today (Bai et al., 2002; Chen, 2007). Although conditions may fluctuate,
depending on the specific area and year, the overall trend has been one of increasing degradation
over the past decades. Within the longer-term pattern, there also is a seasonal pattern of
degradation. The pastures in the TRHR are divided into two general categories: (i) Winter and
spring pastures are close to winter villages, with good transportation conditions and where
herders usually live in permanent buildings; and (ii) Summer and autumn pastures are usually in

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remote mountainous areas where the herders need to erect temporary tents every year. Herders
graze livestock on winter and spring pastures from early October to mid-June, and on summer
and autumn pastures from mid-June to the end of September. This means that they stay on winter
and spring pastures for more than two-thirds of the year, despite the fact that winter and spring
pastures are of a smaller area than summer and autumn pastures. The higher intensity grazing on
these specific grasslands has more to do with seasonal climate and accessibility than forage
quality. The result of these seasonal patterns of grazing is that winter and spring pastures tend to
be more degraded than summer and autumn pastures (Wang and Cheng, 2000; Yan et al., 2003).
These patterns reveal high correlations between degradation and grazing practices employed by
the herders, and imply causal relationships, which will be examined closely in next section.
4.4.3 Socioeconomic and natural causes of grassland degradation in the TRHR
Most researchers agree that the causes of grassland degradation in the TRHR are a
combination of climate change, inappropriate grazing practices, and macro socio-political
transformations (Harris, 2010; Dong et al., 2012). Much of the focus of debate, however, is about
which factors are primary causes and which are secondary. Primary causes can be described as
those factors that have direct impacts on grassland health and initiate a degradation process,
whereas secondary causes are those that accelerate or exacerbate ongoing degradation. This
section extensively reviews arguments being made both by those who believe degradation is
anthropogenic in origin and by those who believe it occurs primarily through natural causes.
Socioeconomic causes: overgrazing, social changes and cultural effects
The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau has fostered one of the most distinctive civilizations in the
world, with its unique religious, cultural, and social characteristics that are still attracting
researchers and tourists from around the world (Miller, 2006a). The population in this region

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mostly consists of Tibetan nomadic pastoralist societies. The traditional pastoralist lifestyle is the
result of a long period of adaptation to the harsh climatic and geographical characteristics of the
Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (Banks et al., 2003; Yan et al., 2005; Miller, 2006a, 2006b; Dong et al.,
2007). The local herders graze yaks, Tibetan sheep, and horses, and obtain almost all their living
necessities from their livestock: harvesting meat and dairy products for food, using hairs and furs
to make cloths and tents, and collecting dung for fuel. Historically, the herders migrated in large
geographical scales in different seasons of a year to find the most suitable pastures and to avoid
loss from frequent natural disasters, such as droughts and snow storms. After thousands of years
of adaptation, local herders, their livestock, and the alpine grassland ecosystem developed
delicate balance and became an integral part of socio-environmental system (Banks et al., 2003;
Yan et al., 2005; Miller, 2006a; Dong et al., 2007). The health of the ecosystem, therefore,
becomes crucial for the livelihoods and culture of pastoralist societies. During the past 50 years,
however, this region has experienced radical socio-political and economic changes, along with
changing climatic conditions. Many researchers believe that recent grassland degradation is not
attributable to the traditional pastoral system, which had been sustainable for millennia, but
instead should mostly be attributed to modern unreasonable grazing practices that are the result
of rapid, abrupt, and recent changes in social structure and lifestyles (Banks, 2003; Yan et al.,
2005; Miller, 2006c). In this view, the underlying changes that led to overgrazing and other
unreasonable practices include rapid population growth, cultural changes, increases in livestock
density, and changes in seasonal grazing and land ownership patterns. In addition to grazing
activities, soil cultivation, caterpillar fungus collection, infrastructure construction, and mining
are considered to be important direct human causes of degradation.

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Overgrazing and human population growth
The quantitative effects and the relationships between grazing and grassland ecosystem
functions have been studied extensively. Milchunas and Lauenroth (1993) used multiple
regression analyses on a database compiled from studies worldwide at 236 sites comparing
species composition, Aboveground Net Primary Production (ANPP), root biomass, and soil
nutrients of grazed vs. protected and ungrazed sites. They concluded that grazing could cause
decreases in ANPP in general, but also that the direction and magnitudes of its impacts on other
indicators depend on site-specific natural and historical contexts. At the ecosystem level, high-
intensity grazing can contribute to overall degradation, as has been observed through
experimentation and experiences in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (Zhou et al., 2005), USA
(Biondini et al., 1998), South Africa (Archer, 2004), and Mongolia (Ykhanbai et al., 2004), as
well as many other grasslands worldwide. In an opposing viewpoint, Chen (2007) calculated the
net primary production of the entire TRHR based on remote-sensing images and concluded that
forage production is more than adequate for the current overall density of livestock and thus
there was no overgrazing problem in this region. But grazing pressure can be highly uneven
geographically, and there are varying intensities and spatial patterns of degradation on sub-
regional levels. A more constructive approach might be to identify and examine the possible
causes of overgrazing in specific areas and establish correlations and causal connections between
grazing practices and grassland degradation.
Rapid human population growth, along with an increase in livestock density in the TRHR
after 1960, are regarded as the most obvious causes for overgrazing (Bai et al., 2002; Zhou et al.,
2005). In most counties in the TRHR, livestock numbers doubled, and even quadrupled in some
counties, in less than 50 years (Zhou et al., 2005). Although the system of pastoralism has been

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sustainable for thousands of years, such a rapid increase in grazing pressure could easily disrupt
such a long-established relationship.
Changes in social structure
Social structure and changes in land ownership also are cited as one of the important
primary contributors to grassland degradation. Before the 1960s, herders grazed livestock in a
nomadic style, and were responsible for their own livestock, even though their properties, and
sometimes even they, themselves, belonged to the head of a tribe or a large monastery (Miller,
2006c). In this earlier system, individuals were free to choose pastures each year according to
their perception of climate and grassland conditions. This grazing pattern based on non-
equilibrium doctrines (Vetter, 2005) was best adapted to the high variation of climatic and
topographic conditions prevalent on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, because it allowed herders to
shift seasonal patterns and move readily across a broad spatial scale. If one place suffered from
drought and low forage productivity at a given time, they could move to a distant pasture where
the conditions were more favorable (Harris, 2010).
In the 1960s, the government conducted socialistic reforms in this region, demarcating
grassland borders among “pastoral production teams”, which were groups usually transformed
from previous tribes. In this scheme, properties of the previous tribe leaders were confiscated and
became collectively owned by the production teams. In addition, the activities of the production
teams were confined to their own designated grassland, limiting their freedom to move and
choose across a larger landscape (Yan et al., 2003). This transition was accompanied with “great
production movements”, a state-sponsored effort in which production teams substantially
increased the number of their livestock. This trend continued until herd sizes reached record
highs in the 1980s. Besides increasing livestock numbers, large areas of grassland were

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converted to cultivated land in order to increase crop production, which further disrupted
grassland ecosystems, eventually leading to desertification (Li and Zhang, 2005). Thus, the
radical and abrupt social changes between 1960s and 1980s are considered by many to have had
profound influence on grassland transformation and degradation.
Subsequently, to correct problems that resulted from the collective ownership regimes of
the previous period, China initiated the “reform and opening-up policy” in the 1980s. Under this
policy, the rights to use farmland became privatized to incentivize individuals to manage
farmlands to their best abilities (Banks et al., 2003; Yan et al., 2005). Because these reforms
resulted in marked increases in crop production, the new policy was adopted in grassland areas.
However, this scheme was not considered as successful as in the farming areas, partially because
the new ownership pattern further restricted the migrating range of the herders and led to more
intense grazing on their own designated pastures. To judge whether grasslands were overgrazed,
the government and many researchers calculated carrying capacities for specific areas and used
these as a standard. This approach was based on equilibrium theory (Vetter, 2005), which may
have been more effective in agricultural regions, but could not help herders adapt to climate and
geographic variations in the TRHR (Zhou et al., 2002). In addition, much historical damage to
grasslands by this time, such as desertification and general decline in grassland health, was
largely irreversible after the collectivism period. Thus, even with reductions in livestock
populations after 1980, overgrazing pressures still are evident, and the degradation processes are
still continuing in many areas.
Cultural factors
Differences in culture also can contribute to observed variability in herding and grazing
patterns. For example, Tibetan herders regard the size of their herds as a symbol of wealth status.

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Indeed, in their language “yak” also means “wealth” (Miller, 2006b). This cultural inclination
can lead to a maximizing of the number of livestock, regardless of the carrying capacity of the
grassland. Another example is that Tibetan Buddhists widely believe that they should not take
the life of any animal. This belief makes them reluctant to kill small mammals inhabiting their
grasslands, which can exacerbate grassland degradation (Bai et al., 2002). In a comparison
among grasslands managed by Tibetans, Muslims, and the Han ethnic group, the Muslim and
Han people were reported to be very active in grassland management, even hiring people to catch
small mammal pests, paying 3 RMB (about US$0.3) for each animal killed. The subsequent
differences in grassland ecosystem condition were, therefore, attributed to culturally-influenced
behaviors (Bai et al., 2002).
Fungus collection
Caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis), generally called “winter worm, summer
grass” in Chinese, is a type of fungus that infects and kills larvae of ghost moths, and then
extends its body out of the corpse of the larva, leaving only the exoskeleton. This specialized
fungus can only grow on grasslands within an elevation range of 3000-4000m and is mostly
found in the region of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Because the caterpillar fungus is believed to
have remarkable effects in curing many human diseases, it has become a very expensive
medicine on the Chinese traditional medicine market. The final price for 1kg of top-quality
caterpillar fungus in 2013 was 340000 RMB (about US$55700), higher than the price of gold. In
recent years, the collection and trade of caterpillar fungi has become a big industry in the region.
Collection is usually conducted from May to June, when many people go to the production areas,
search the grass carefully, and use special tools to dig them up. These harvesting activities
mostly take place in the summer and autumn pastures in the mountains and are considered to

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have negative impacts on the grassland, due to human trampling, damage to the soil layers, and
littering. A further side effect of fungus collection is that it postpones the date of migration to
summer and autumn pastures by about a month, extending the grazing period on winter and
spring pastures, and exacerbating the degradation there. Detailed studies on the causality
between fungus collection and grassland degradation are scarce, if any at all, so it is difficult to
assess its overall impact.
Infrastructure construction and mining
Large-scale infrastructure projects can lead to severe destruction of grasslands. In recent
years, accelerated construction of highways and railways in the TRHR has led to the destruction
of large areas of grassland. Mining also can have devastating effects because of its intensity and
often careless extraction methods used in this region (Yan et al., 2003). Although intense, these
two types of grassland destruction are usually restricted to specific project sites and are not
necessarily a region-wide problem. But it is important to note that the large number of
infrastructure construction projects in this region not only have direct impacts on grassland
health, but also have indirect impacts in terms of transforming societal structure and cultural
features. The connection between infrastructure construction and socio-cultural transformations
has yet been carefully studied but is an important topic for future exploration.
Urbanization
The State Council of China unveiled the National New Type Urbanization Plan (NUP) in
2014 to increase the percentage of urban residents in the total population of China from 52.6
percent in 2012 to 60 percent by 2020. The ratio of citizens with urban Hukou (resident permit)
will increase 35.3 percent to 45%. This policy has a unique impact on Tibet, where urbanization
has become a major burden. Ethnically Chinese migrants coming from China’s densely

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populated coastal provinces have started moving to Tibet and the reformed Hukou system has
made it easier to transfer their household registration in Tibet.
The policy is already taking effect, as seen in the growth of Tibetan cities. As of 2016,
Lhasa, Shigatse, Lhoka, Nyingtri, Tsoshar, Siling, and Chamdo were recognized as prefecture-
level cities in Tibet. China’s urbanization has consumed significant land resources as urban
boundaries are continuously expanding outward and the territorial jurisdictions of cities are
increasing, primarily through the expropriation of surrounding rural land and its integration into
urban areas.
Climate change
Tibet is especially vulnerable to climate change due to the rapid rise of temperature over
past decades. The effects on mortality and morbidity of extreme heat in Tibet have been
examined in previous studies; no heat adaptation initiatives have yet been implemented. The
TRHR’s average elevation is over 4000m above sea level, and the annual average temperature is
between –3.8 and 6.28°C. Two-thirds of the precipitation is in the form of snow (Yan et al.,
2003). The soils and ecosystems in the TRHR are the result of long-term responses to these harsh
topographic and climatic features and are considered to be fragile and very sensitive to climate
change (Yan et al., 2003; Klein et al., 2004). Three of the most prominent features of climate
change that have direct impacts on grassland degradation are temperature, precipitation, and
changes in glacier and permafrost layers. Because of the region’s global importance, climatic
changes there have been recorded and studied by many researchers since the 1960s.
Temperature
Studies of both climate records (Yang et al., 2004; Shang and Long, 2005) and tree-rings
(Harris, 2010) agree that temperatures in the TRHR have been increasing substantially during the

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past 50 years, particularly after the 1980s (Bai et al., 2002). The most substantial temperature
rise was observed across the entire Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, with an annual average temperature
increase of 0.448°C (Shang and Long, 2005). Higher temperatures have been shown to have
significant impacts on grassland biodiversity. For example, in controlled experiments, the species
richness of grassland ecosystems was reduced from 26 to 36% when temperature increased by
1.2–1.78°C (Zhao and Zhou, 2005), and the reduction could occur in a short timeframe (Klein et
al., 2004).
Precipitation
While most researchers agree that the overall temperature of the TRHR is rising, there is
not as much agreement about changes in precipitation. Some argue that this region is becoming
drier (Zhou et al., 2003), and that the combination of a warmer and drier climate could cause
decline in both plant species diversity and net primary production, with grazing playing a
secondary role (Biondini et al., 1998). Others, however, hold an opposing view that precipitation
in this region is actually increasing over the past decades, which is beneficial for grassland
species (Yang et al., 2004). They further argue that regional climate change generally favors
grassland ecosystems, and that the only plausible causes of grassland degradation are
anthropogenic factors (Bai et al., 2002). It has been further reported that, although annual
precipitation may have increased, it was mostly in the form of snow during winter and spring,
which provided little to support forage growth (Shang and Long, 2005). A more recent longer-
term analysis of tree rings provided no secondary evidence that precipitation has decreased in the
past centuries (Harris, 2010). These contradictory arguments and a lack of consensus are the
result of the paucity of weather stations coupled with the very high spatial variation in
precipitation patterns across the TRHR.

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Glacier and permafrost layer
One unique feature of the TRHR grasslands is that changes in glacier and permafrost
layers have notable influence on the grassland ecosystem (Yan et al., 2003; Yang et al., 2004).
Notably, both global and local studies of climate change suggest that glaciers on the Qinghai-
Tibetan Plateau are in general decline (Harris, 2010). In the TRHR specifically, snow lines of the
Jianggendiru Glacier in the Yangtze River source region and the Maji Glacier in the Yellow
River source region have receded upward by 5-6m during the past decades. The observed
recession of the glaciers has direct impacts on the hydrological conditions of the TRHR,
reducing the input of water to many rivers and lakes and causing a drop in the water table,
subsequently leading to the drying up of some regional rivers and lakes (Chen, 2007).
Changes in permafrost layers also have an important influence on soil hydrology, as the
freeze-thaw process in the active layer of permafrost is very sensitive to climate change and can
cause erosion and hydrological effects (Yang et al., 2004). Overall, the response of grassland
ecosystems to the observed shrinking of the glaciers and the changes in permafrost is a general
decline in species diversity and primary production. These changes tend to be more pronounced
in the highest and coldest regions, helping to explain the observed degradation in these regions,
although grazing activities are less intensive (Harris, 2010).
4.4.4 Brief summary of causes of grassland degradation
The climate change/overgrazing debate over the primary causes of grassland degradation
has been ongoing for years, and it seems that researchers are not likely to reach a consensus
soon. After reviewing the various arguments and supportive scientific studies, I conclude that
there is no single primary factor acting alone to cause degradation of grasslands across the entire
TRHR. This region is highly diverse with respect to climate, geography, historical factors,

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culture and land-use patterns; therefore, grassland degradation at different spatial and temporal
scales likely has different major causes and different combinations of factors influencing
grassland structure and function. In this context, it becomes critical to analyze the various
natural, socioeconomic and historical factors in each specific region when choosing amelioration
or restoration schemes for an area. It is also important to conduct careful analysis and targeting
processes before applying a single restoration method to a large area.
Climate change and grazing practices are, in many cases, interwoven and mutually
reinforcing each other in the grassland degradation process. In Golok TAP where the field
research was conducted, it is highly likely that freeze-thaw cycles in the active layer between
ground and permafrost make the soil more prone to erosion and the grassland more susceptible to
degradation. In concert with overgrazing during the collectivism period, much grassland was
destroyed, and large areas of grassland were turned into “black soil”. In winter and spring
pastures that face intensive grazing pressure, it is probable that overgrazing and other
inappropriate grazing practices initiated the degradation process, and the process is accelerated
by a changing climate. An important point I want to highlight is that grazing practices, grassland
management schemes, and land-use patterns, either separately or in concert, all play important
roles in grassland health. This means that it is possible to improve grassland health or restore
degraded grassland ecosystems through better management practices, despite the background
influence of climate change or less controllable factors. This is the fundamental rationale for the
restoration approaches that are discussed in the following section.
4.5 Environmental Migration as Grassland Restoration Strategies
As discussed above, “environmental migration” is a development strategy commonly
employed in recent years in China. Its primary stated purpose is the protection of natural

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resources considered to be ecologically fragile, combined with a development goal to help rural
and poor residents in remote, impoverished or fragile environments (Du, 2006). This strategy has
been applied in pastoral areas of China, particularly in the Mongolian and Tibetan grassland
regions (Dickinson and Webber, 2007; Foggin, 2005; Ptackova, 2011). Similar nationally
supported development plans, that is, with significant resettlement components, also are (or have
been) seen in other pastoralist-inhabited areas in Asia and Africa (e.g. in Kazakhstan, Ethiopia,
Uganda; see Attwood et al., 1988; Bennett, 1998; Biressu, 2009; Kinsey and Binswanger, 1993;
Loomis, 1988; Pulkol, 1994). Such social displacements and restructuring have often been
undertaken in conjunction with the establishment of national parks or other forms of “protected
areas” (Cernea and Schmidt-Soltau, 2006; Dowie, 2009; West et al., 2006).
Within China, the Tibetan Plateau encompasses one-quarter of the national territory, and
provides many benefits nationally and internationally, especially as ecosystems goods and
services from the headwaters of Asia’s major rivers. This vast, high altitude mountain landscape
is recognized for such values, and much attention and financial resources have been given for
environmental protection. However, conserving the natural environment is not contingent only
on increased knowledge about nature or ecology or earth systems. It is equally dependent on
appropriate understanding of the human or social dimensions of people’s livelihoods and the
utilization of natural resources, including who decides how resources are used (governance), as
well as how they are used (management). The past two decades have seen particularly significant
developments in how natural resources are utilized and conserved in the Tibetan Plateau region,
including the emergence of community conservation initiatives and the development of a
network of protected areas. Building on these experiences, China is now in process of
establishing its first national parks to be launched formally in 2020.

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Encompassing around one-quarter of China’s land area (2.5 million km²) and with an
average elevation over 4000m above sea level, the Tibetan Plateau is the largest and highest
mountain area in the world. While China itself is recognized as one of the most mega-diverse
countries in the world, the diversity of biogeographic realms and ecosystems that meet or are
found in the Tibetan Plateau region make it particularly noteworthy for conservation of global
biodiversity. Mountain ranges both bind and transect the Tibetan Plateau, including the
Himalayas, Hengduan, Tanggula, Qilian, Kunlun, and Karakoram ranges, which also connect, in
turn, with the Pamirs, Hindu Kush, and Tian Shan ranges (Figure 4.1). Considered together,
these contiguous mountainous areas—characterized for millennia by nomadic pastoralism, most
prominently yak husbandry--are more broadly known as High Asia or Greater Central Asia
(Swanström, 2011; Squires and Liu, 2017, p. 301; Kreutzmann 2015).

Figure 5 The mountains of western China and Central Asia (Mountain Societies Research Institute, University of Central Asia).

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For its part, the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as the Third Pole of the world,
because of its vast extent and high altitude (Yao et al., 2012), also as the Water Tower of Asia,
because of the six major Asian rivers that originate on the Plateau (Foggin, 2008). Around three
billion people live on or downstream of the Plateau (Klein et al., 2011), and its physical presence
and annual snowpack conditions influence the global climate system and Asian monsoon
characteristics, respectively. Four major ecosystem types are identified: alpine meadow, alpine
steppe, alpine desert, and alpine shrub (Long et al., 2008). Taken together, these vegetative
communities form one of the most extensive grazing social–ecological systems in the world
(Miller, 1990), home to a unique, diverse assemblage of wildlife (Schaller, 1998, p. 392) and
Tibetan livestock that, until recently, provided at least basic sustenance for the majority of
herders in this vast highland region (Gruschke, 2008). Altogether, around 1.3 million km² of the
Tibetan plateau is classified as steppes (the entire plateau covers around 2.5 million km², or
approximately one-quarter of China’s land area), including alpine meadow (45%), alpine steppe
(28%), alpine desert (5%), and other types (Sheehy et al., 2006).
4.5.1 Sustainable development discourse in Sanjiangyuan
The recent history of conservation efforts in China is focused on the Tibetan plateau
region, specifically, the vast Sanjiangyuan region. The Sanjiangyuan region is situated in the
heart of the Tibetan Plateau, encompassing the headwaters of the Yangtze, Yellow, and Mekong
Rivers (Shao et al., 2011; Yan et al., 2017). Administratively, the Sanjiangyuan is situated in
southern Qinghai Province, one of China’s largest provincial level units. It comprises 363,000
km² or around half the land area of Qinghai Province (Du, 2012). As with most of western
China, climatic conditions are arid, human population density is very low (on average < 10
people/km²) (Figure 4.2), and most strategic decisions are made in light of a perceived need to

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strengthen social stability, and security perspectives related to proximity to borderlands. A major
transition in development priorities took place in China around 2000, with the country shifting its
focus from developing its eastern coastal cities to developing the expansive western hinterlands
under the auspices of the Great Western Development Program. Since then, urbanization has
continued on massive scale. Over half of the world’s population now resides in urban centers,
with similar national figures and even faster rates of urbanization occurring in China. The
peoples and communities who manage the mountains, grasslands and desert resources in western
China, however, remain primarily rural, and often are mainly Tibetan minorities within China.

Figure 6 Precipitation and human population in China.
The above figure --precipitation and human population in China shows precipitation
isopleths (shading) and highly concentrated areas of human population. Areas north and west of

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the solid line cannot support agriculture in the absence of irrigation, and hence qualify as
“western China”. The majority of China’s people resides in the eastern half of the country.
In May 2000, the State Forestry Administration and Qinghai Provincial Government set
up the Three Rivers’ Sources Nature Reserve (Foggin, 2005). The establishment of the nature
reserve is the result of a series of nested laws and economic projects aimed at environmental
protection and economic development, as well as territorial control.
The nature reserve, instituted at national level in 2003, covers 152,300 km²

of Chinese
territory (Foggin, 2005). The majority of the region’s inhabitants, making up a population of
200,000 people, are Tibetan herders. Most of them were, until recently, practicing nomadic
husbandry and trade. The Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures of Yushu, Guoluo and Hainan, and
the Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture of Haixi are all affected by the establishment of the
nature reserve and implementation of subsequent environmental protection measures.
This nature reserve is composed of 18 protected zones located in the “Three Rivers
Sources” region, which cover a total area of about 320,000 km². This is roughly half of Qinghai’s
land area. Each zone is divided into three categories: water protection, fauna protection and flora
protection (Foggin, 2005).
In order to preserve this territory from potentially damaging human actions, the nature
reserve administration employs different environmental protection strategies according to the
assessed needs of each ecological zone (e.g. protection of water, wetland, grassland, forest and
wildlife). These include restricting human access to and use of the land to varying degrees. Three
types of sectors have been thus created within the zones. In the first type, which in total covers
31,200 km²of the reserve, all inhabitants have to be relocated, husbandry is forbidden, and the
flora and fauna are protected. This sector is called “no man’s land” and all human activity is

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banned. In the second sector (39,200 km²), husbandry is limited, or grazing is only permitted on
a seasonal rotational basis. Inhabitants are only required to relocate in seriously degraded areas.
The third sector (81,900 km²) is defined as “experimental”. This means that the grasslands have
not been completely closed to human activity and the government encourages the development
of ecotourism and ecological factories. However, if areas in the third sector show serious
environmental problems, inhabitants can also be relocated, and husbandry forbidden.
Despite these official classifications, people living in every sector of the nature reserve
can actually be resettled at any moment on economic, as well as ecological, pretexts. Chinese
authorities, for example, can decide to relocate people from places where husbandry has not been
forbidden for ecological reasons, instead leaning on a rationale that links settlement to the
improvement of living conditions (Foggin, 2005).
Since the reform and opening up period of the 1980s, Chinese society has experienced
profound socio-economic changes. During the 1980s, new laws restructured the PRC politico-
economic apparatus. The introduction of the Household Responsibility System (HRS) in 1981
led to the disbanding of the people’s communes (Samarani, 2004, pp. 307-313). In Qinghai
province, that meant the redistribution of livestock to the household, followed by the division
and distribution of land (Goldstein, 1996; Pirie, 2005; Yeh, 2003). This brought important social
changes, especially at the level of the production system. Moreover, the allocation of land to the
households also led to a new territorial reconfiguration and a new relationship between herders
and territory (Pirie, 2005; Yeh, 2003).
During the 1980s, the Chinese government took steps to strengthen the management and
protection of the environment through the Rangeland Law (Zhonghua renmin gongheguo
caoyuan fa in Chinese) (1985) and the Forestry Law (Zhonghua renmin gongheguo senlin fa in

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Chinese) (1984). Two other projects followed these laws: the “Open up the West” Campaign
(Goodman, 2004; Cooke, 2003) in 2000 and the Property Law (Zhonghua renmin gongheguo
wuquan fa in Chinese) (2007). The reorganizations of social space caused by the introduction of
the market economy and the HRS, and the new laws which were aimed at the managing of
natural spaces contributed to the conception of the Three Rivers’ Sources Nature Reserve
project.
4.5.2 The implementation process of environmental migration in Sanjiangyuan
The Chinese government has taken several measures to address the pervasive problem of
grassland degradation, including incentives, restrictions and better management practices, all
aimed at improving grassland conditions. As an area of great ecological significance to China as
a whole, through its biodiversity and its critical water regulatory functions, a large portion of
Sanjiangyuan region was designated as a National Nature Reserve in 2000, encompassing
153,200 km², or the area of England and Wales combined. Since 2003, the central government
has allocated 7.5 billion yuan (approximately 1.1 billion dollars) for the project, of which 10% is
allocated for implementing the Environmental Migration Program in the Three River Headwaters
Region (Du, 2009). The Sanjiangyuan Nature reserve was divided into a core zone, a buffer
zone, and an experimental zone, and then further sub-divided into eighteen conservation areas
irrespective of winter and summer pastures. Under the slogan of “Harmonious Social
Development”, the environmental migration program was designed to reduce grazing pressure in
the Three River Headwaters Region in response to the government’s heightened concerns about
environmental damage there (Zhouta and Jia, 2009, pp. 51-52). According to the Central State
Council (2005), overgrazing by Tibetan herders in the headwater region was a key factor driving
environmental degradation in this western frontier region. The Council delineated a “natural

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preservation zone”, where desertification and degradation of vegetation were intense, and took
measures to ban livestock from grazing inside the zone (Central State Council, 2005; Zhouta and
Jia, 2009).
As an example, many government programs in the TRHR urge herders to become
sedentary, with the logic being that it is easier to help sedentary herders invest in winter sheds,
cultivate grasslands and apply techniques to control small mammals in order to restore their
grassland (Banks et al., 2003). Some government programs pay the costs for herders to build
permanent winter houses and, after they settle, help them build winter sheds for livestock. It is
also easier to deliver other services to sedentary herders, such as education, healthcare, electricity
and television reception. The intent of these government programs is to transform the herders’
traditional mobile lifestyles to a more modern one, so they may be more willing to adopt active
grassland management practices.
Other government programs build houses in towns where they resettle the herders. In
recent years resettlement has been the main method used in Tibet to achieve the state’s
development goals, under the umbrella of the development program “Building Socialism through
Revitalizing Villages”. Over 700,000 Tibetan herders had been resettled by 2005, with
government plans to expand resettlement to include more than one million Tibetans (Saunders
2003; Sino Daily, 2007). The government anticipates that resettled people will be able to
improve their living conditions in such new villages (Xin Cun in Chinese), and that their
relocation away from ecologically fragile areas will help to reduce pressures on the land and thus
improve the environment in the source areas, or headwaters, of some of China’s major river
systems (Foggin, 2008). Government funds for environmental migration support the construction
of new houses, roads, electricity, and water supply in new villages.

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In central Tibet, migration projects are also embedded within the context of a longer-
term, nationally sponsored agricultural development program called “One River, Two Streams”
(Yijiang Lianghe in Chinese) Project, which was originally launched in 1994. This project was
introduced to the Namsaling area in 1998. The goal of this project is to bring agricultural and
other development transformations to the whole region, including eradication of poverty, by
creating a “bread basket” in central Tibet. To this end, over RMB 4 billion (around USD 600
million) has already been invested, mostly by the central government (Yeung and Shen, 2004).
The first and largest resettlement initiative undertaken under the Yijiang Lianghe Project
is the Namsaling Dekhi New Village project. Over the past decade, the provincial government
has invested around RMB 32 million (approximately USD 4.9 million) in the project, in several
phases. This initiative was initially managed and supervised under a newly created project office
but was later reassigned to the Poverty Alleviation Bureau and Agricultural Development
Bureau. The provincial government has made enormous efforts to establish this project as a
model for poverty reduction across the whole region (ZPAO, 2007). The majority of project
funds have been used to develop an irrigation system, but to date water issues remain a concern
for many villagers. Poor soil conditions and limited farmland, as well as housing issues and
limited job opportunities, present other challenges for sustainable development.
The logic in these programs is that herders, exposed to urban lifestyles, are more likely to
adopt non-grazing livelihoods, such as becoming construction workers, taxi drivers and small
businessmen; a lower pastoralist population would translate into fewer livestock on the grassland
(Dong et al., 2007). Among these types of resettlement programs are some of the more
controversial programs in which the government relocates all the herders from the most seriously
degraded grasslands to towns and cities, compensates them with houses and annual monetary

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compensations, and establishes bans on grazing in their previous grasslands (Dong et al., 2007;
Harris, 2010).
Among other rationale, migration is of symbolic value to the state, as authorities see it as
a measure of Tibetans’ integration into Chinese society and of “modern” development.
Underlying these policies is the assumption that herders are “backward” and practice
“inefficient” methods of land and livestock management that are associated with poverty and
environmental degradation ( ; Williams, 1997). Representatives of the central government and
the provincial governments of Qinghai and Gansu provinces invested 631 million yuan and built
86 environmental migrant villages near the peripheries of the capital cities of six Tibetan
autonomous prefectures (Sancairang, 2011). In response, the people resettled were compelled to
adapt to a rapidly changing social context and to find new means of livelihood. Since the launch
of this policy, the Qinghai government has relocated 55,773 people (10,140 households) into
newly constructed migrant villages, which has turned the headwaters region into a no-man’s-land
(Wei, 2013b).
Migration for ecological reasons can be divided into two kinds: (i) “entire village
migration”, which requires one hundred per cent depopulation, and (ii) “partial migration”,
which decreases grazing pressure through the migration of only a portion of the village. The
“entire village migration policy” was implemented in Maduo County, located at the source of the
Yellow River, and in Chumalai County, the source of the Yangtze River. In both of these cases,
every household was relocated to a migrant village such as the city of Golmud, which is several
hundred kilometers away from their homeland. Before resettling in the migrant village, every
household was obligated to sell all their livestock.

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On the other hand, for areas that are not near an important water source, the guidelines
for the number of households required to undergo partial migration were provided by the
prefectural government. In the end, the selection of migration candidates was determined by the
village committee. At this level, the degree of individual agency with respect to partial migration
was higher, relative to the “entire village migration”. In short, a household that wished to migrate
could choose to relocate either to the ecological migrant villages built by the county government
or to the capital city of the prefectural government, which was more urbanized than the county-
level one.
In sum, The Chinese central government has operated with a “Marxist” developmentalist
perspective that depicts pastoralism as a primitive form of human development and views
settling herders as a form of progress. The current environmental migration pattern is different
from the settlements for relocated Tibetan herders established in the course of earlier schemes
that had been carried out in conjunction with the privatization of pastoral land since the late
1980s. According to my findings in Golok TAP, these previous resettlement schemes did not
require Tibetan herders to give up pastoral practice altogether; they could move into modern
houses and have a strictly regulated number of livestock grazing on the summer pastures. This is
still the main policy practice in Golok. In contrast, according to the new policies, herders are
supposed to give up pastoral practice altogether and relocate to towns. hundreds of resettlement
communities for collective migration have been constructed in the nearby towns across
Sanjiangyuan, but herders are also allowed to move individually to the place of their choice as
long as they vacate the grasslands. Environmental migration has been divided into three types:
self-determined, which refers to free resettlement and individual relocation into towns without

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being part of a collective resettlement program; organized migration, which refers to collective
relocations such as the one to Golmud; and scattered migration.
The rationale behind “sustainable development” interventions is based on the ecological
goal of restoring the once “pristine nature”, but also on “developing” the traditional, remote, and
backward community of herders, a goal that is linked to social harmony and stability. the
planned intervention is therefore described as a “win-win” strategy (Wang, 2009a). Official
discourse describing the socio-economic and political objectives of state-planned development in
Sanjiangyuan mirrors the discourse on the overall development of Tibet after its incorporation
into China, in which modernity had to be imposed on an isolated and backward Tibet, as the
following excerpt illustrates:
“In the past people from inland China did not have access to Sanjiangyuan due to its
remoteness, while people from Sanjiangyuan rarely went out of their homeland. this self-imposed
isolation was thus the root cause of its underdevelopment, thereby affecting ethnic unity and
social stability. Development is to break open such isolation, raise pastoralist income, and speed
up socio-economic improvement. given its strategic location at the crossroads of the Tibetan
regions of the Tibet Autonomous region, Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai, Sanjiangyuan plays an
important role in achieving ethnic harmony, social stability, and national security” (Cao, 2007,
p. 33).
The Tibetan regions are the least urbanized in China, with an urbanization rate of
between 18-20%, compared to China’s overall national average of 35% (Gele et al., 2006). The
central government wanted to speed up urbanization and marketization, which it considers the
combined key to “restoring” the grasslands and exercising effective control. “Urbanization”
means constructing compact settlements with modern houses in and around market towns, but it

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also entails an “administrative urbanization” (Yeh and Henderson, 2008) aimed at strengthening
local government institutions. Whether one agrees with the development discourse or not,
development itself is defined by a single intervening actor and the pastoral resettlement policy
has been enforced with far-reaching consequences for pastoral subsistence capacity, as will be
shown below. On the one hand, herders have been perceived as passive recipients of state
development schemes in a dichotomized relationship of developer versus underdeveloped. on the
other hand, the state mission of sustainable development has been portrayed as both scientific
and rational. It is articulated primarily within a discourse of regulating the behavior of the
herders, who are presumed to have “destroyed” the grassland ecology through overgrazing and
overpopulation. At the same time, being situated at a strategic location in terms of both natural
resources and political control, Sanjiangyuan has thus been an important target for state
sustainable development discourse regardless of what that means in actual practice.
4.6 Controversial Environmental Migration Strategy
Of all the enforcement schemes aimed at restoration of degraded grassland, grazing bans
appear to be the most radical and controversial. This method brings with it dramatic changes in
the lifestyles of local people. Furthermore, as a sole management action, the direction and
magnitude of the effects of grazing bans on grasslands are unclear. Indeed, some experiments
suggest that a grazing ban could help vegetation recover (Anderson and Holte, 1981; Ma et al.,
2002). However, many researchers argue that grazing activities are an integral component of the
plateau’s grassland ecosystems, and complete bans could cause negative effects, such as
dominant plant species monopolizing resources and causing an overall reduction in biodiversity
(Milchunas et al., 1988). Such arguments may be plausible for slightly and moderately degraded
grasslands with a relatively high level of forage productivity. In these cases, a certain level of

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grazing along with other restoration practices could help the grassland ecosystem recover and be
maintained in a healthier state. Nevertheless, for severely and extremely degraded grasslands,
which have lost most of their forage productivity, grazing bans become a necessary first step to
allowing the grassland to accumulate biomass. Many researchers, however, suggest that a
grazing ban cannot solely lead to the recovery of productive pastureland, and it must be applied
along with other active interventions, such as eradicating small mammals and poisonous plants,
scarifying the soil, adding fertilizers, and planting forage species (Ma and Lang, 1998; Zhou et
al., 2003). After a recovery in productivity and ecosystem functions, grazing activities may be
reinstituted but at a prescribed moderate and monitored level.
According to the policy plan in Sanjiangyuan, approximately two-thirds of the herders
came under the “restriction of livestock based on pasture” (yicao dingchu in Chinese) program,
while environmental migration had only affected one-fourth of all herders and one-third of the
total livestock as of 2007. At the same time, one-sixth of the pasturage was slated to be returned
to grasslands (Chen 2008, p. 110). While some scholars (Deng and Liang, 2003; Zhang et al.,
2004) supported the policy, critics (Wang, 2006) have accused the Qinghai government of
misinterpreting the central government’s policy for pastoral resettlement. One provincial official
with whom I talked dismissed the criticism, saying, “If we misinterpreted the program, we did so
under the careful instruction of the central government.” Even so, a number of Western scholars
have criticized the official rationale – that overgrazing has led to degradation – as based on faulty
assumptions and illogical conclusions (Goldstein, 1996; Harris, 2010; Miller, 2000).
More studies have sought to understand the advantages and disadvantages of this policy,
particularly in relation to the psycho-physical and livelihood impacts it has had on Tibetan
herders’ lives (Wang, 2000; Liu and Chen, 2002; Sibaocairen and Han, 2007; Zhang, 2007).

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These studies found that local people faced increasing hardships as a result of separation from
their livestock, the ineffective functioning of the social aid system, insufficient institutional
arrangements for migration and so on. In their focus upon the “social adaptation” of migrants
who have left pastoral life, Chinese researchers have tended to portray them as a socially
vulnerable group which is inhibited by its “traditional” culture. Thus, in the early stage of this
policy, Chinese scholars identified “backwardness” as a major factor undermining the social
adaptation of the Tibetan herders. Some recommended that erstwhile Tibetan herders could adapt
to urban areas if they were employed in local slaughterhouses and leather factories; others
suggested that, if trained, Tibetan herders could become dancers or musicians and thereby
promote their ethnic culture through performances for tourists.
Sibaocairen and Han (2007) assert that the Tibetan herders’ way of life, which depends
heavily on material resources, must be changed in order to protect the ecosystem. They argue
that “cultural adaptation” entails the assimilation of minority cultures to the majority culture
through extended contact. They contend that cultural adaptation is not unilateral but is rather a
mutual process: it does not simply mean abandoning some old cultural traits, but rather manifests
as the process of integrating and creating an entirely new culture. According to them, the success
or failure of the “cultural adaptation” of migrant people depends on the development of their
“vulnerable” (i.e. primitive, backward, traditional) culture in order to meet the demands of the
market. This, in turn, requires a “cultural education” and “vocational capability”, which depends
upon interaction with the majority’s urbanized, modern culture (Sibaocairen and Han, 2007, p.
140).
On the other hand, some scholars have criticized this simplistic social-adaptation model
as faulty in terms of its actual implementation and contend that more comprehensive institutional

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arrangements which consider the cultural and social contexts of Tibetan herders are needed (Shi,
2008; Luo, 2009; Wei, 2013b). These authors express concern about the unfavorable social
conditions increasingly seen inside the migrant villages. According to them, these negative social
conditions are the consequence of the psychological stress migrants face due to their inability to
find new means of livelihood. These social conditions, in turn, have disrupted the process of
migration. Writing during the peak period of the implementation (2008-present), these
researchers detail various violations of rules including the “resale of the houses allotted for
migrants”, “transfer of houses to other persons” and “return to grassland”.
For instance, Tian et al. (2012) report on the phenomenon of the “unapproved return to
home”, observed among Tibetan herders who had migrated from Maduo County to Golmud and
then returned to their homeland; they regard this to be a violation of the environmental migration
policy’s rules, which include the banning of grassland use during the migration period and
prohibitions on migrants returning to their homeland. In order to prevent further occurrences of
such situations and to maintain adherence to the general rules of the ecological migration policy,
these authors argue for more effective measures to alleviate poverty and ensure social security.
To improve the migrants’ impoverished social conditions, they suggest that local governments
should support compulsory education for migrants’ children and guarantee a minimum wage for
unskilled migrant laborers. In order to resolve these violations and achieve ecological
preservation through the migration policy, they promote the development of alternative
occupations – the “successive industry” (houxu chanye in Chinese) – for meeting the specific
needs of the local industries. They offer several ideas regarding potential occupations for the
migrants, such as “livestock barn management”, labor in carpet and milk processing factories,
and traditional handicrafts companies where the Tibetan herders’ cultural background and

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religions can be supported (Luo, 2009; Zhao and Chen, 2009; Sangcairang, 2011; Wei, 2013a,
2013b). Regardless of their policy prescriptions, these arguments persistently portray the
migrants as passive subjects, and emphasize the need to strengthen social inclusion and migrants’
participation in the market as means to remedy violations of the policy’s rules.
In conclusion, grassland degradation in the TRHR has a very complex set of contexts and
various causes in different sub-regions. Accordingly, there is no single solution for this problem.
The complicated interactions between geographic features, climate change, and socioeconomic
transformations result in highly varying amounts of degradation in specific regions, and
restoration methods are destined to fail if they do not take this heterogeneity into account.
Across broad geographic scales, climate change is likely to be the primary cause for
grassland decline, particularly when temperature and precipitation changes are combined with
shrinking glaciers and expanding active permafrost layers. Human disturbance, however, acts as
an accelerating factor in the degradation process. At local scales, medium and severe degradation
show clear correlations with the intensity of grazing, indicating that overgrazing is a primary
cause for the extreme degradation in these areas. Yet, overgrazing is not simply determined by
the density of livestock; it is also the result of unwise spatial and temporal grazing patterns, as
well as poor grassland management practices. In most cases, grazing activities play important
roles in grassland degradation; therefore, improving grazing practices becomes one of the most
important strategies for addressing grassland degradation.
In various restoration programs, grazing bans and reductions in livestock density are the
major methods that are currently used, the logic being that, if overgrazing were the cause of
degradation, reducing grazing pressure would restore grassland health. A dangerous tendency in
these programs, however, is the often oversimplification of overgrazing problems as being too

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many livestock on a limited area of grassland. Therefore, the sole solution is to simply reduce
livestock numbers. But overgrazing itself has inherent complexity in both space and time and
must be analyzed carefully before taking actions. Optimizing seasonal grazing patterns,
constructing winter sheds, establishing cultivated grasslands, and other better management
practices are examples of more effective and efficient approaches to solving overgrazing
problems compared with only reducing livestock numbers.
One important aspect of the grassland degradation issues in the TRHR that is often given
inadequate attention is the influence of social and cultural factors. Local Tibetan herders in this
region are mostly ethnic minorities and have very strong religious, cultural and ethnic identities,
all embedded in the foundation of their livelihood: nomadic pastoralism. Radical and abrupt
changes in their social structures and grazing practices in the past have led to serious damage to
grasslands, as they disrupt the complex interplay between nomadic societies and grassland
ecosystems. As herders become sedentary and grasslands are privatized, it is unlikely that there
can be a return to their previous nomadic lifestyles. Those remaining will need to adapt their
grazing practices to the new environment and different ownership patterns, and to take more
active approaches to managing their grasslands. The new management style will become one
based more on individualized private ownership of properties, rather than unlimited free access
to common resources as in the past. Undoubtedly, these transitions will cause social and cultural
impacts that will, in turn, impact on grassland quality. These social and cultural impacts, along
with ongoing environmental and anthropogenic pressures, must be carefully studied and
considered in the design and implementation of effective restoration of the grasslands in the
Three Rivers Headwaters Region of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

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4.7 Fieldwork and Findings
In order to assess the implementation process from Prefecture to village-level, I examine
the case of the Golok TAP.

The population of Golok TAP is about 154,000 (91% is Tibetan),
with 28,466 pastoral households (Li, 2010, p. 35). The western portion of Golok, in particular, is
considered a core part of the “National Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve Project”. The provincial
government designated 1.65 million square kilometers of grassland in this area as an enclosure
and mandated the culling of 831,600 sheep equivalent units (SEU) in order to mitigate grazing
pressure on the grasslands (Li, 2010, p. 35).
Since 2003, a total of 12,042 people from 2,702 households in Golok TAP have been
relocated to 20 migrant villages under the environmental migration program. A total of 2,703
buildings have been constructed and 122.7 million yuan spent on the construction of houses. The
number of people who have relocated to urban areas and abandoned their pasturelands represents
ten per cent of the prefecture’s entire population (Li, 2010, p. 35). Li contends that the
urbanization of Tibetan herders has improved their standards of living and the quality of their
residences. Current issues for the resettled herders, like access to health care and education, can
be resolved by improving the facilities in the migrant villages, she asserts, optimistic that the
migrants were adapting quickly to urban life (Li, 2010, p. 37).
4.7.1 The implementation of policy at the county, township and village levels
Of the six Golok counties (i.e. Maqin County, Banma County, Gande County, Darlag
County, Jigzhi County, and Madoi County), Gande County was to implement the migration
policy for nearly 3,000 people from 600 households. This was equal to about 11% of the
prefecture’s total population.

In turn, the county government selected the number of households
that were to migrate based on the population of each township. Among these, 110 households in

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Jiangqian Township were scheduled for migration. The township consisted of four pastoral
villages (ruchen in Tibetan), and the township government selected migrants according to the
distribution of population across these four villages. The focus of this case study, Xilong Village,
comprised 245 households, of which 25 were selected for migration.
Xilong village is divided into six units, and each unit owns summer- and winter-season
pastures in the river valley. At this level, the selection of migrant families was delegated to the
village committee, and there were no conditions from the township government except that:
first, 25 households must migrate, and second, the migration must be completed within a specific
time frame.
In the spring of 2006, the leaders of Xilong village, including the Party secretary, the
deputy party secretary, and the chief called a meeting to select these 25 households. A meeting
explaining the migration policy had previously been held in 2004, so the households that had
shown interest in migrating were gathered. During the meeting, the village committee explained
the three criteria for prioritizing the households that would be selected: (i) families which had
lost livestock due to natural disaster; (ii) families with sick or handicapped members; and (iii)
families without fathers but with many children. No one opposed the selection criteria. Those
poor families that met either one or all of the criteria were eventually selected. The families that
had agreed to migrate, however, soon withdrew their decisions, after a rumor spread among the
villagers that the migrants would never be allowed to return to their homeland, or access their
pastures, once the migration process was completed. Because of this rumor, the villagers were
extremely worried about their ability to collect caterpillar fungus.

Han Chinese believe that this Tibetan medicinal herb is useful for the treatment of cancer
and respiratory infections. Information about the efficacy of this herb spread across China and

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Taiwan, especially after the SARS outbreak in 2003. During this period, the market price of the
caterpillar fungus rose phenomenally each year (Winkler, 2005). Caterpillar fungus can be found
in many parts of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas, but those harvested from the Three
River Headwaters region command the highest market price. In the summer of 2012, one
kilogram of caterpillar fungus could be sold for US$18,000 to Muslim retailers in the capital city
of Golok. If the collector is experienced, he or she will be able to harvest 400-600 grams in a
season. In the past, the local herders earned little cash income beyond selling livestock products.
Today, the caterpillar fungus is the largest source of cash income, and the rural domestic
economy depends in large part on this product. The merits of environmental migration, then,
were considered in terms of earning opportunities in the city compared to those in the homeland.
If they migrated, they might lose the income generated by caterpillar fungus; all of the candidates
for migration therefore withdrew their decisions.
A meeting to select migrants was held again in March 2007, and candidates from each
household, including those who had canceled their previous selection, met in Xilong Village. At
this meeting, the leader announced the latest information about the environmental migration
program: he informed them that the provincial government had promised not to regulate their
earnings from caterpillar fungus collection after migration. Even though the policy in principle
forbade migrants from returning home once they moved to the migrant village, given the short
period of residence required for caterpillar fungus collection, government officials did not
explicitly prohibit this opportunity to earn income. Thus, the locals judged that moving to the
migrant village would be compatible with retaining connections to their grasslands.
Since the right to profit from caterpillar fungus had been assured to them even after
migration, the candidates’ concerns dissolved. The number of households willing to migrate

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reached more than 60 this time, exceeding the targeted number of households. The Village
Committee once again chose 25 households based on their economic conditions. Once the
selection was complete, these households relocated to Maduo Migration Village, adjacent to the
prefectural capital (280km away from Xilong Village), between July 2007 and June 2009. The
houses in the migrant village had three rooms (living room, bedroom, storage room) and a small
garden. The migrant families were also provided with a subsidy of 8,000 yuan, 3,200 yuan for
education expenses, two bags of wheat our, and a quantity of coal; these subsidies would be
provided for a period of five years.
In order to understand how local government bodies then determined which areas to
exclude grazing from, it is necessary to briefly describe how pastures had originally been
allocated.

The shift from socialist collectivization to the “Individual Contract System” which
allowed trade in privately owned livestock, followed the dissolution of the People’s Communes
in 1982. In Qinghai, fifty-year leases for both winter and summer pasturelands were granted
through the Individual Contract System. The right-to-graze required registration for a “grassland
use certification” (caoyuan shiyongzheng in Chinese), which the Secretary of the Xilong Village
Committee managed. This certification documented the extent and type of a household’s
pastures and length of lease, along with the head of household’s name. For the purposes of
administration, this certification served as evidence of a family’s right to land.
The target for reducing grazing pressure was calculated by Liu and others in the Chinese
Academy of Sciences on the basis of “defining livestock by grass”: these scientists arrived at a
figure of thirteen mu (1 mu = 0.16 acres) per person, based on the total size of the pastureland in
Xilong Village.

Liu was responsible for the bureaucratic aspects of the “ecological preservation
policy” and the migrants’ relocation. He received instructions from the township government

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that, for each migrant, the village needed to deduct thirteen mu from the total area of Xilong
Village’s summer and winter pastures. For example, when a family of five members gave up
grazing, 65 mu of pastures would be subtracted from the villagers’ grasslands. Based on this
calculation, Liu deducted the area of summer and winter pastures for each of the 25 households
and recorded it in a statistical table. In this way, the central government’s policy was
implemented in local pastoral villages, the peripheral end of the Communist Party’s
administrative organ.
It is important to note that local-level administrators were hardly conscious of the
linkages between this national-level environmental policy and the objective of realizing a
“Harmonious Society” (hexie shehui in Chinese). Liu, who was in charge of implementing this
target, simply reported his calculations to his superiors while local Tibetan herders remained
ignorant of the fact that each migrant would be giving up the equivalent of thirteen mu of
pasturelands as their contribution to the state’s environmental and social goals. In this light, it
seems clear that such considerations had no bearing on whether households chose to become an
environmental migrant or not.
In sum, the authorities’ rationale for resettlement – “migration for environment” – held
little meaning for local Tibetan herders, who instead made decisions based on whether migration
would lead to opportunities for realizing a better life within the context of their existing
livelihood strategies. Below, I examine in detail the micro-context of household decision-making
processes, by observing their actions and choices just before and after migration to Maduo
Migration Village.

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4.7.2 The decision-making process to become a migrant
In 2002, Tibetan herders from Xilong village started hearing about a plan to decrease
their livestock numbers. Later on, rumors of the relocation of whole pastoral communities started
to spread. At the beginning, people were terrified since mobile animal husbandry was the only
livelihood to which they were accustomed. However, when the township officials organized a
series of meetings in pastoral areas informing the Tibetan herders that they would receive
financial subsidies from the state government, many people accepted and even became
enthusiastic about the project, thinking that they would receive free houses and salaries or
compensation which would free them from the heavy work that consumed their time on the
grassland.
It later became clear that Tibetan herders were not given either transparent or detailed
information on the resettlement project during these meetings. The ruchen leaders had not
received any documents with specific information about the reasons, goals and implementation
of the project from state government before making promised to herders. Their knowledge came
from similar meetings held for them in the township, during which they were told that other
countries had experienced environmental problems similar to China’s and did not take steps to
fight them, leading to starvation and mass deaths. To avoid such a consequence, they were told,
China had launched the Environmental Migration program. The migration, as it was announced,
would last ten years, and after that the Tibetan herders would be allowed to return to their
previous grasslands.
The migration was not to cover the whole population of Xilong, a pastoral township, with
a 99% Tibetan population, but was extended to Tibetan herders from all four ruchen: Sogri,
Cham, Dzara and Drangda. It covered 113 households: thirty from the first three ruchens, and 23

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from the last one. Selecting these households was not based on evaluation of their economic
situation or quality of the land they inhabited. This could indicate that the link between the
implementation of the migration and its ecological reason was loose. Instead, a quota number
was set for each ruchen proportionally to its size. It was in the hands of the Xilong Township and
ruchen’s public officials to persuade Tibetan herders to take part in the project.

Some of the
households volunteered. Others – if the number of volunteers was insufficient – were selected in
a lottery and had to leave the grassland regardless of their wishes or plans. In the ruchen whose
leader was interviewed, thirty households were covered by the project: around half of them
volunteered while the rest was selected randomly by lottery.
Implementation of the project commenced in 2004. Han construction workers arrived to
clear the area. The houses were built next to Jiangqian Township seat, where local administration
offices, a hospital, post office, police station, shops and restaurants are located. The houses were
to be completed by the end of 2004. However, the work did not proceed according to the plan
and transfer of the first families to the resettlement site was delayed; the Tibetan herders were
informed that they would not move until 2006.
Officials from the State Council all the way down to the local government carried out the
policy intervention in Sanjiangyuan (Luo 2003). Government officials primarily from the
tuimuban, a working group on the policy implementation headed by the county leader, visited
Jiangqian township in 2003. The group outlined the plan, detailing the array of advantages of
moving herders to the town. The pastoral resettlements were frequently covered in the media and
were interpreted as the beginning of a long-awaited and overdue development (Chen 2009), a
radical “modernization” campaign. The Golok County government report of 2005, referring to
the relocation of “herders to town” (mumin jincheng in Chinese), also portrayed Jiangqian

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Township as an instance of successfully coordinated rural-to-urban development. Nonetheless,
when the visiting delegation asked the herders in Xilong village in Jiangqian Township how
many would choose to resettle, the response was negative. There were only ten households
willing to resettle, and those were declared “model” households. One male informant, whose
family was among them, regretted this choice in retrospect:
“In the beginning, we were illiterate both in Tibetan and Chinese, we barely knew what
was about to happen except that we had to resettle to find a better life in the town. We thought it
was good for us.”
In a similar vein, another herder described the government officials’ visit to Xilong,
noting that it was they who first introduced him to the idea of turning herders into town
residents:
“The idea of being left without livestock and moved from our ancestral home was not
even dreamt of until the officials came to implement their policy. We were ‘ordered’ to leave our
home for a brighter future than we had enjoyed previously. What could we do and say? We did
not dare go against the will of the government. Neither did we understand much about the real
intentions of the policy, since we could not read or write. We were told about the many positive
sides of the new life, such as new housing, good money, good jobs, better access to schools, to
the town market, to medical services, and so on.”
The first meeting the abrupt policy implementation had initially generated strong
skepticism and uncertainty across the pastoral community. The approval rate was low. The
majority of the pastoral households rejected the plan in defense of their traditional way of life.
Thus, local officials intensified their campaign and tactically “persuaded” the herders with a

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mixture of promises and threats. Rumors were also spread within the community to the effect
that it was the model households that were portrayed to have benefited immensely.
At the same time, the government policy was metaphorically likened to a “king’s
command” – it was perceived as too powerful to resist or reverse. Lack of trust characterized the
relationship between officials and herders, particularly the older generation. Many of these elders
had, back in the 1950s and 1960s, joined the resistance movement against the Chinese
annexation of Tibet. Moreover, they were much more place-bound than their younger
counterparts, who were receptive to new ideas and experiences, including moving to a “modern”
town.
In the face of the reluctance to accept the government plan, the officials adopted a “stick
and carrot” strategy in order to get the herders’ fingerprint signatures in support of the plan. The
herders were told that the “benevolent” treatment in the form of the aforementioned promises
might not be removed by force. The strategy was effective and created a sense of urgency in the
minds of those who had yet to decide what to do. In the end, 219 households agreed to resettle,
and the government subsequently contracted the remaining households to “look after” the
restricted pastures. Although they had no concrete ideas as to how the government could fulfil its
promises, there was a strong belief among the officials I interviewed that the herders would
gradually adapt to the market conditions and learn to make ends meet in the town. In interviews,
local officials also described the implementation as “dialogue-based”, insisting that they took the
herders’ interests into account. However, when asked why he first opposed the project but later
accepted it, a herder in his early forties retorted:
“The government promised us this and that if we would live in the new community. I
thought that the education for our kids, job opportunities, and financial compensation we were

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supposed to receive sounded very nice. I agreed to move because of these things, but also
because I had few options left, given the fact that I had only a few animals and little land.
Nevertheless, I still knew very little about how those promises would be fulfilled.”
In accepting the overall resettlement plan, herders like him had hoped that something
good might come of change. At the same time, there were resettled herders who, in order to
influence the outcome of the environmental migration, adopted diverse strategies that were
shaped by factors such as quantity of livestock, wealth, age, and kinship.
4.7.3 Environmental migration commences
The research took place in 2014 and 2017 which altogether lasted one months, during the
time I lived with the community in the Maduo New Migration Village in Xilong village,
Jiangqian Township, Gande County, Golok TAP. I participated in the Tibetan herders’ daily life
and collected data using participant observation, interviews and other informal methods. This
research employed qualitative methods, which allowed for the collection of Tibetan herders’
opinions and elicited their understandings of the ways that the project has affected their lives.
Most of the settlers did not feel comfortable with a formal interview: out of 113 households, only
26 agreed to be interviewed. All these persons were men who either volunteered for an interview
or were delegated by their family members to speak on behalf of them. In addition to individual
interviews, I conducted group interviews. Ten people took part in them: five women and five
men. These interviews were not an ideal. The researcher expected that people gathered for these
group discussions would be able to talk more freely.

However, many of them did not want to
share their problems in a formal discussion and felt uncomfortable publicly talking about their
difficulties. Because of these problems, much information had to be gathered informally, during
meals, visits with neighbors or spontaneous gatherings where relatives or friends exchanged

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experiences about their new situation. An estimated one hundred persons contributed to the
research, either formally or informally.
A distinct group of informants was local community leaders. The researcher hoped that
they would serve as key informants, since they were knowledgeable about the resettlement
project and responsible for its implementation. But, convincing them to participate in the
research was more difficult than expected. Since the Tibetan herders came from four ruchen of
Jiangqian, the township government appointed four men, one from each ruchen, to be leaders of
the newly created community. Ruchen is an administrative unit under the township. It is
noteworthy that in the new settlement there were no separate quarters for people from different
ruchens. The leaders of the newly formed community were responsible for disseminating
announcements from higher government units, implementing policies, collecting money for
health and social insurance and so on. With respect to the resettlement project, their main role
was to distribute the state allowances that households received. As the interviewed leader said,
they had limited influence on how the project was implemented. Even if they acted, for example
by requesting an increase in the state allowance, their requests fell on deaf ears. This community
formed a new administrative unit within the township, with an administrative structure mirroring
that of the ruchen. Three of these men did not take part in the research as they were worried they
could be accused of disseminating information that should not be circulated beyond government
circles. Only the fourth leader was interviewed, on the condition of anonymity.
Before the Tibetan herders moved into their new houses, they were instructed to sell their
livestock. They were reassured that they would not need their animals in the resettlement site and
were reminded that the project was designed to protect grassland from overgrazing and
degradation. Each household sold its own livestock without township assistance or interference.

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The officials reassured the Tibetan herders that if they sold their herds and deposited the money
in a bank, they could use it to buy animals again when the ten-year period of migration had been
completed. When they left their settlements in the mountains, their land was fenced off and no
one was allowed to herd animals there. Furthermore, the Tibetan herders tore down their winter
houses and sold the timber, doors, windows, and other reusable materials.

In spite of moving to
town, the Tibetan herders retained their previous rural household registration (Hukou) and did
not receive any documents to formalize their transfer to town or state their ownership of a house.
Hukou is a household registration system which controls the citizens’ mobility and determines
their rights to medical care, education and employment. Changing rural to urban Hukou remains
difficult. The problems this creates for the rural population and workers migrating to the cities
are hotly debated in both Chinese society and among scholars (see Chan, 1994; Solinger, 1995;
Wang, 2005).
With cash in their pocket from selling livestock and house parts, the Tibetan herders
finally moved to Maduo Migration Village.

In the new location, each family received a sixty-
square-meter house, a storage shed for fuel, television, bed, stove, couch, bowl stand and solar
panel.

The houses consisted of two rooms, which one entered directly from the yard. They had
neither running water nor electricity. The rooms were not divided in terms of function: they were
used as kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room (Sulek, 2012). In every yard there was a
water pump. When the Tibetan herders moved into the resettlement site, there was hardly
anything there apart from houses, public toilets and a greenhouse. Even though the resettlement
site was located within the boundaries of the township, in local people’s understanding it
remained separate from the town. In official jargon, it was called a “New Migration village”
(Yimin Xincun in Chinese).

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4.7.4 Income and expenses of resettled households
As noted above, the Xilong Village Committee had selected candidates for migration.
However, the prospective migrants themselves carefully considered the pros and cons of
migration, especially the living conditions they would face afterwards. All of the candidate
households had withdrawn their previous consent to migrate in response to their concerns about
the government curtailing their profits from the collection of caterpillar fungus. In their eyes, the
most advantageous livelihood strategy depended not only on earnings from caterpillar fungus,
but also on the migrant village’s location and the degree of discretion permitted in the sale of
livestock.
In order to clarify this point, I analyze socio-economic changes of the migrated
households accompanying the transformation from nomadic to settled life with the
implementation of the environmental migration project in Maduo New Migration Village in
Jiangqian Township, Gande County, Golok TAP. Apart from examining changes in the
household economics, I also report on how this project was perceived to have impacted on the
Tibetan herders’ situation with respect to health and education.
After living in the relocated villages for more than five years, many Tibetan herders
admitted that their view of the resettlement project had become much more pessimistic and they
complained about the effects it had had upon their life. They spoke about the hardships they
faced and admitted that they had not anticipated these. They complained about the high costs of
life in town, about furniture and other equipment they had to buy and the poor quality of houses,
which they already had to repair. Some Tibetan herders noted that they did not have enough
money to meet their basic needs and were embarrassed to invite people home because of the poor
conditions in which they lived. The Tibetan herders were realizing how big a difference there

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was between their life before and after resettlement. While they were well established in their old
living place and had enjoyed some standard of life, in their new residence they had had to start
from scratch, which for many of them was a costly and frustrating process.
The biggest change in the lives of the interviewed households was the shift from a
nomadic subsistence lifestyle with self-generated income to a consumer-oriented life in town that
depended on government largesse. Before moving to town, the Tibetan herders lived in yak-hair
tents during the summer and autumn seasons and had simple adobe houses for winter and spring.
They engaged in mobile animal husbandry, with yaks and sheep providing them means of
subsistence and cash income. As the informants perceived it, at least after moving to town, their
life on the grassland was more sustainable and secure.
When they moved to town, security changed to anxiety. Some households had a large
number of livestock to sell upon leaving the grassland; but most families did not have many
animals to sell. It was mostly less affluent Tibetan herders who were interested in joining the
project, since they already faced difficulties and were prone to accept the narrative about “better
life” awaiting them in town. As a Tibetan informant said:
“We were told about the many positive sides of the new life, such as new housing, good
money, good jobs, better access to schools, to the town market, to medical services, and so on.”
Some affluent Tibetan herders were interested too, as they aspired to leave the pastoral
lifestyle or to diversify their incomes and wanted to purchase a house in town. While the rich
households owned 200 yaks and more, the poorest ones had twenty and less. Consequently,
selling their livestock did not bring them large income which would provide financial security
and top off the household budget after moving into the town. The Tibetan herders’ main income
in town was the yearly government allowance of 6,000 RMB (800 USD).

Because the

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resettlement was stipulated to last ten years, the allowance was also to last ten years. It was paid
per household, independent of its size.

Thus, if a household contained seven persons, each of
them would receive 857 RMB (114 USD) annually or 2.38 RMB (0.32 USD) daily. Even if the
whole sum was spent on food, each household member could afford only one meal per day.
Needless to say, this money had to also cover other needs such as clothing, education, health care
and social and religious activities.
In the following figure, the population was divided into quartiles and income is reported
for three types of households (“poorest”, “middle”, “richest”).

Figure 7 Decomposition of household income in 2014 by income sources.
A significant portion of household income is based on harvesting caterpillar fungus, the
most important source of income for pastoral Tibetan communities.

The price of caterpillar
fungus has risen dramatically – 900% between 2004 and 2014 – an annual average of over
twenty per cent after inflation (Winkler, 2015). Figure 1 also shows that a significant portion of
household income is still derived from the sale of livestock products. This pattern is common
among recently resettled households. Keeping ties to land is critical not only for earning income

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from pastoral production but also because it allows continued access to the all-important
caterpillar fungus harvest. Resettled Tibetan herders in the Qinghai study site are typically
dividing their families: older members and school-age children live in resettlement areas, while
adults maintain (to the best of their ability, given labor constraints) livestock herds. Certainly,
this strategy of dividing households is not a long-term solution. Children who are educated and
reared in urban areas typically will not return to rural areas and rejoin their lives as herders.
Whether they find gainful employment in urban areas after they have abandoned their
subsistence base remains to be seen: current employment patterns do not offer grounds for
optimism. As shown in Figure 1, very few herders earn income from wage labor; in fact, only
three out of 211 informants (age 16+) or 1.4% of adults in the sample had found jobs. Note the
proportion of household income that is derived from loans and from government subsidies
Remains high. This continuing situation signals: (i) a reliance on outside sources with no long-
term guarantees; and (ii) potential for spiraling debts that cannot be repaid. Private loan rates are
typically between twenty and thirty per cent, with few options available for lower interest rates
from state or commercial banks.
After moving to Maduo town, the Tibetan herders became more dependent on the market
for their household supplies. Most people said they had to buy everything, even products which
they had previously made themselves. Since the migrated herders had no livestock, they had to
buy dry yak dung or coal to cook and to heat their houses. They complained that, due to high
demand for yak dung and other pastoral products, prices had risen enormously, becoming a
serious drain on household budgets. Many informants stressed that in their former residence they
had produced enough for their daily needs. But when they moved to town, they experienced
shortages of even basic products. Some said they still had money saved from selling their

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livestock, but feared that, once these savings were spent, they would have to roam the streets
begging for food.

This was a common concern among town dwellers too, who remarked that the
settlers would end as beggars and thieves (Foggin, 2008; Pirie, 2013; Yeh, 2010). Surveys of
resettled Tibetan herders in Golok TAP illustrate important patterns with respect to household
expenditures, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8 Decomposition of household expenditures in 2014 by income and types of expenditure.
Total expenditures in 2014 for each household were calculated based on self-reported
spending in the following areas: productive agriculture-based assets, transportation, food,
clothing, health care, and religious rituals.

Productive agriculture-based assets comprise livestock
purchases and associated maintenance costs (i.e. animal medicine, ropes, fence, salt, and fodder).
Household costs for transportation include expenses associated with any of the following modes
of transportation: motorbikes, cars, tractors, and buses. Consumables considered within the
category of “food expenses” are barley, cooking oil, butter, wheat our, rice noodles, meat, tea,
salt, vegetables and instant noodles. Health costs were calculated as the sum of treatment costs,
costs associated with transportation to and from doctors’ visits and annual health insurance costs

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minus any reimbursements from government-supplied health insurance. Income dedicated to
sponsoring religious rituals included costs for ceremonies done in the home as well as ones
sponsored at local monasteries. Notably, despite intense and long-term suppression of Tibetan
Buddhism in China, resettlement has not significantly altered household spending patterns in
relation to religion. Significant and uniformly distributed portions of household income are still
dedicated to sponsoring religious rituals. Though one should be careful about imputing too much
to any given finding, this indicates that, in their adjustment to rapidly changing material and
social conditions, Tibetan herders continue to respect and adhere to religious traditions that help
them define and perpetuate their ethnic identity.
Finally, data collected in Golok gives a sense of how spending patterns are changing
among resettled Tibetans. Herders have recently (and increasingly) invested in consumption
items as opposed to productive assets, as shown in Figure 4.6. Taken together, these results
should prompt concern for the long-term economic viability of nomad households in that they
indicate the emergence of a virtuous cycle (positive feedback) of declining subsistence capital,
dependence on government handouts and loans that undermine self-sufficiency and increasing
investment in consumption goods rather than productive assets that could enable a successful
transition from nomadic production to wage labor and engagement with the market economy.

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Figure 9 Productive and consumption spending from 1970 to 2010.
An issue of broad concern for the environmental migration program is the growing
disparity in economic conditions between resettled households. Prior to the resettlement project,
the Tibetan herders of Xilong had relied mainly on pastoral production. They owned yaks and
sheep, which provided them with both subsistence means and cash income. Additionally, they
collected caterpillar fungus, an expensive medicinal resource which Tibetan herders sell on the
Chinese market. With these two sources of income, they did not have visible problems making
ends meet prior to resettlement.
This situation has changed after resettlement. Having neither livestock nor opportunities
to find employment in town, the settlers from Xilong based their livelihood on two sources of
income: the government allowance and caterpillar fungus. The first of these sources of income
was new. The second was one of the only connections that Tibetan herders had with their former
lives in the grasslands. Livestock and grazing animals on their pastureland were forbidden.

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Herders could return to their land and collect caterpillar fungus during spring (May-June).
According to what the Tibetan herders declared, they earned 26,000 RMB (3,467 USD) from
both sources. However, some households did not have enough labor to collect the fungus, either
because they had elderly or disabled family members to look after or were single parents who
were unable return to their pastureland.

If this was the case, they had to rely on the government
allowance, use their savings or seek loans or other work opportunities. However, during the time
of this research, none of the households had wage employment in town or access to other sources
of income. The Tibetan herders found themselves in economic limbo. Du observed that the
settlers’ identity could be characterized by “four-nos”: neither herdsmen nor farmers, nor city
dwellers, nor workers or members of a cadre (2011, p. 29). Here, too, the settlers turned out to
be in a “neither-nor” situation: they neither had their old income, nor access to a new one.

This
was typical of many resettled communities. The Tibet Autonomous Region representing farmers
was studied by Gongbo Tashi and Foggin who observed that, after the resettlement, “previous
[economic] options have been constrained, and other new options not yet fully realized” (2012,
p. 144).
Food and spiritual necessities were shortened, too. While living on the grasslands, the
Tibetan herders produced most of their food themselves. Meat, butter, and cheese are some of the
most expensive food products consumed by Tibetan herders, but they produced them at home,
while less expensive items such as vegetables, rice, barley, and wheat flour were purchased.
Apart from buying food products, most of their money was invested in clothing, health care,
education, rituals and pilgrimages. After moving to town, these expenses not only increased but
also proliferated. Moreover, not only did the number of expenses raise, the costs of purchases
also increased. The value of expenses either remained the same or rose, according to our

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informants. There was only one area in which expenses declined and this was to the discontent of
informants: before, they invested their savings in pilgrimages to important Buddhist sites within
and outside the region; after moving to town they did not have enough money to spend on
pilgrimage, according to the interviewees.
Documentation was problematic, too. When they left the village, migrants had no formal
documents or written contracts, and had only the list of households eligible to receive a house. In
principle, the migrant had to sell or abandon all the livestock he or she owned, as per
Environmental Migration program. Proof of having sold all livestock, however, was
unnecessary, since only their names were listed, regardless of whether they had actually sold
their animals or not. In Xilong Village, local leaders did not demand proof of having sold
livestock. Rather, they left it to each household to choose how to manage their livestock after
migration. For this reason, many households did not sell their livestock; rather, they left them
with relatives to support their domestic economy subsequent to migration.
The past appeared more attractive than the present. A self-sustaining migratory lifeworld
was preferred to the state dependency and speculative transitions of the present. The herders I
interviewed in Golok waxed nostalgic whenever they were asked to recount the differences
between their former way of life in Xilong Village of Gande Township and their new lives in the
settlement. The separation from pasture and livestock had almost brought an end to their
traditional subsistence economy. In the 1990s, cheap wool imported from the United States and
Australia drove down prices for locally produced wool, diminishing the subsistence capacity of
herders throughout the rural areas (Fischer, 2008; Gruschke, 2008; Miller, 2000). In Xilong,
however, the falling prices did not affect herders’ livelihoods as severely as it did elsewhere, as
wool was not the main commodity in the township. In addition to the sale of caterpillar fungus,

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the dominant sources of income included meat, butter, cheese, and yogurt, and those
commodities had maintained a rising price trajectory for decades. By the time of my fieldwork,
not only had the traditional pastoral way of life come to an end for those herders who had been
turned into town residents, but their subsistence capacity and real income had diminished, and
most of the resettled herders were unemployed. One herder in his forties narrated his life prior to
and following resettlement as follows:
“When we were in our pastoral home, we had around 60 yaks, in addition to sheep and
other livestock. We had [enough] meat and butter to eat, and milk and yogurt to drink. In spite of
the hard labor, our life was happy and comfortable. Most of what we needed on a daily basis
was self-produced. We also sold meat, butter, cheese, yogurt, wool, and skins, and collected
caterpillar fungus in the summer. Our total annual income reached approximately 8,000 yuan,
including 3,000 yuan that was livestock related and around 5,000 yuan from the caterpillar
fungus. The resettlement has completely turned our lives upside down.”
The increased density of populations generated increased costs for living. According to a
survey conducted in 2004 on living costs for resettled herders in Maduo migration village, the
total expenses for food, fuel, and clothes per year per herder amounted to 4,959 yuan (Chen,
2008). This figure comprises 12% for fuel, 67 per cent for food, and 21% for clothing (ibid.).
The total cost per household was at least 8,000 yuan per year. the above data did not include
expenses for housing, medical services, education, or cultural and religious activities, all of
which normally constitute a significant part of household spending (Liu, 2010). Educational
expenses for one child were around 400 yuan annually, including the cost of books, supplies, and
extra-curricular activities. In Maduo village, subsistence items and products, which had
previously been taken for granted, now became a substantial living cost. Cow dung is a typical

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example: when they lived as herders on the grasslands, dung was available in abundance as a
free cooking fuel; however, after resettlement, herders have to buy it for 200-300 yuan per
month. Thus, the increased cost of living, coupled with the government’s failure to compensate
herders for the loss of pastoral subsistence, creates new pressures on households.
Table 3 Estimated average household cash income before and after resettlement (in yuan).
Income source Before resettlement After resettlement
Sale of animal products 4,000 0
Caterpillar fungus 3,500 3,500
State compensation 0 3,000 or 6,000
Total 7,500 6,500 or 9,500

The impact of higher costs was multiplied by limited prospects of employment. Jobs were
scarce; employment barriers plentiful. Like relocated farmers elsewhere in China (Zhao, 2005),
the majority of the herders in my survey were unemployed in the sense that they did not have
steady jobs at the time of the interview. They had to take low-paid, part-time, temporary jobs
often found in the private service sector in town. The main source of income, however, was the
collection and sale of caterpillar fungus during the summer. The access rights to collect
caterpillar fungus, a valuable Chinese medicinal plant, on their previous pastures had been
maintained even after the relocation. The herders I interviewed combined the gathering and sale
of caterpillar fungus in the summer with their search for work in the urban labor market during
the rest of the year. Seeking job opportunities became a core concern for many herders. In
competition with their urban counterparts, particularly Han Chinese, the resettled herders faced
structural disadvantages in terms of language skills, educational qualifications, work experience,

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and social networks. Moreover, with the illiteracy rate at 60%, many were unable to write in
Tibetan, let alone communicate in Chinese. Women faced “double” discrimination, both as
herders and as women, and their unemployment numbers were particularly high. In the first few
years of resettlement, between 2004 and 2006, the local government set up training courses in a
few car-repair, handicrafts, and construction workshops funded by foreign NGOs. Some
participants were temporarily recruited after completing the courses, but soon became
unemployed again. Local official reports as well as government informants often pointed to these
programs as indicators of government support. When asked why many of these skilled workers
were still not employed even two years after completing a training course, a county official said
that the failure was due to the herders’ “backward mentality” and added that “they are lazy and
uninterested in work. the government has been very keen to bring them to the urban labor
market, but even those who have been employed do not get along with their employers.”
NGO interventions helped. In addition to local government and public enterprise support
for employment training, a foreign NGO-funded short-term training programs, including a
Chinese language course. When I was there in 2014, no training was taking place, and I was told
that it was hopeless to find jobs through employment training regardless. The training was either
too short to learn anything or, the herders lamented, there was little chance of getting a good job
through those channels. Moreover, given the high subsistence capacity of the traditional pastoral
community, the majority of the herders I interviewed tended to be quite selective about the types
of jobs they were willing to accept, especially in the beginning. this tendency is confirmed by
Fischer (2008) and Yeh (2007), who observe that rural Tibetans avoided low-paid petty jobs
because of the high subsistence capacity associated with the pastoral lifestyle. In Golok,

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however, this capacity is rapidly diminishing as more and more herders resettle and become
dependent on state subsidies.
4.7.5 Lifeworld Impairments
A lifeworld refers to the daily living spaces and habits of a local population. Lifeworld
varies between rural and urban areas. Relocation produces stress on local ecologies, putting into
play technological apparatus and systems to sustain dense living arrangements. Changes of the
local placed new migrants in a position where necessary services were still in the process of
development. Water, health care, education and skills development were in development, even as
living arrangements continued under transition. Herders tried a range of jobs; many experienced
being unemployed. Outcomes were mixed.
Provision of Water Resources
Based on the interviews with residents as well as special discussions with village leaders,
the following scenario has emerged. In 2000, the government laid 8,450 meters of drinking water
pipes to bring clean water from higher up the valley to all 148 households in the Village.
However, subsequent expansion of the New Migration Village concept has resulted in four other
villages also connecting pumps to the Namsaling drinking water system. Due to this additional
consumption, as well as a significant drought in 2009, the drinking water supply became
inadequate. The water shortage in 2009 lasted for more than five months, causing great
difficulties and distress, even some chaos among the villagers. Some – particularly farmers who
had previously had good water resources in their former homes – have begun to long for their old
residences and livelihood situations.
Over the past decade the project has also built an irrigation station with transmission
lines, substations, a diversion canal, two pumping stations, and four 35 kw distribution systems.

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At an additional cost of RMB 17.9 million, these facilities now provide good irrigation control
over a total area of 1.92 million mu (1,280 km²). The water intake points, however, are all higher
than the natural water sources. As a result, the villagers can only pump water during the seven or
eight months of the summer wet season; but not when crops need irrigation during the dry season
or in drought conditions. The government has tried to resolve this problem through various
means, including a further investment of RMB 1.5 million in 2005 to build a small reservoir
together with a 70 meter well; but this system also experienced mechanical failure during early
trial operations, following which the contractor suddenly left Tibet, leaving the project
incomplete for the following four years. The installation of a small water pump partially resolved
the irrigation water issue that has now plagued the Maduo Village for the past eight years. At
present, local government pays the electricity bill for irrigation pumping. However, many
residents are concerned that they may need to pay these fees – unaffordable costs to them – in the
future. The local government is now working to reduce the operational costs of irrigation and to
create a low-cost, effective water diversion system. If these problems are not solved, then the
water irrigation scheme will continue to fail in meeting its socio-economic objectives.
Health care and medical insurance
Along with a legitimate concern for economic matters, health matters also rank high.
Most migrated Tibetan herders feel that they now enjoy better access and quality of health
services. However, about one-third (35%) of interviewees said they did not know the criteria for
reimbursement of medical costs, and 43% thought the cost of insurance was now higher than
when they lived in their previous home. This has led to some concern and even dispute, as the
economics of health care can affect many other aspects of life as well. This situation has arisen
from the fact that explanations about health care and insurance were given by the health

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department in Chinese only, even though 70% of the villagers speak only Tibetan (that is, less
than one-third can speak both Tibetan and Chinese).
Many Tibetan herders reported that, after they moved to town, their health deteriorated.
They said they contracted colds and other diseases that were once uncommon. In their view, this
was related to changes in their living conditions. Living on the grassland, they ate meat, butter,
and other nutritious food products. However, since they had moved to town, they could not
afford buy these on a regular basis. Instead, they ate vegetables, rice, and other products to which
their bodies – the informants stressed – were not accustomed. These difficulties with adjusting to
a new diet, they felt, made them weaker and prone to contracting diseases. Other informants said
that on the grasslands people were dispersed over large area, inhibiting the spread of many
diseases. Even though in town the Tibetan herders should ostensibly have had easier access to
health care services, the frequency of their seeking medical care did not increase. One informant
said,
“I'm a sick man and have to take medicine three times a day but now I do so only once
because I can’t afford to spend more money on it.”
Others said that they went to see a doctor only when seriously ill.
Education
Many interviewees stated that their main objective in resettling was to improve their
access to education (as well as medical care), especially for their children. Nearly two-thirds
(60%) of the households interviewed indicated that improved housing conditions and access to
schooling for their children were their main reasons for moving. In the past, the Tibetan herders
of Xilong rarely sent their children to school. In the 1990s the government adopted a new policy
to increase the number of children who received formal education. Every year, before the school

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year began, different ruchen of Xilong held meetings during which names of children between
seven and thirteen years of age were collected and the ruchen leaders drew lots to determine
which children would start school that year. Parents who did not obey the results of the lottery
had to pay a 5,000-10,000 RMB fine.

Those who were particularly resistant to the schooling
policy were even threatened with imprisonment.
It was assumed that resettlement would increase the rates of school attendance for
children from pastoral families. Truly, a new comprehensive primary school was recently built in
the new relocated village and so children can now attend easily. However, employment prospects
remain poor, and several school leavers from the village have failed to find suitable non-labor
jobs – they are presently working on their family’s farmland – a situation that has caused some
parents to question afresh the merits of education. However, many Tibetan herders said that
sending their children to school did not make sense since education did not guarantee finding a
job in the future. According to them, the investment necessary to educate children was not worth
it. Other informants argued that children do not get a real education at school. One father said,
“Five of my kids are in school and one of them is now in grade three but he doesn’t even
know ten Chinese words after all these years! The first thing the pupils do in the morning is run
out of their dormitory to check the weather. If the sky is blue and the weather is nice, they say
‘Yay! There won’t be classes today! The teachers will bring us to the river and we’ll play
there!’”
Other parents complained that children were made to work during class time, cleaning the
schoolyard, collecting fuel, fetching water for the teachers and even washing the teachers’
clothes. Moreover, many college graduates from Xilong had returned home without a job. If they
were fortunate enough to get one, the salary was below their expectations and needs. Because of

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all this, Tibetan herders lacked confidence in the schooling system. Yet, if their names were
selected in the lottery, they had to send children to school up to intermediate level.
Apart from informants who complained about the schooling policy, there were others
who admitted they agreed with it for several reasons. Some said that, since there is no work at
home now (in contrast to labor demands on the grasslands), children misbehaved and so it was
better if they were in school. Others noted that, since primary and middle schools have no tuition
fees and even provide free food, it made economic sense to send children to school rather than
keep them home.

However, even in this group, few believed that education (particularly in
Chinese schools) would give their children a better future. This was especially so, they related,
because high school and college were expensive, and children typically stopped their education
at the middle school level, limiting their future success on the job market.
Training skills
One of the reasons why Tibetan herders from Xilong were willing to move to the
resettlement site was the promise of easier access to town and its facilities as well as the benefits
associated with participating in market economy. To facilitate this process and encourage the
Tibetan herders to take up new activities that could improve their employment opportunities, the
township government organized two training programs. However, there are very few training
courses on farming skills in the village, and most are conducted in a classroom context in
Chinese. Soon after the Tibetan herders moved into the town, a training in growing vegetables
was held in the greenhouse built next to the resettlement village. Seeds were distributed among
the households, and families who participated could use vegetables for their own consumption
and sale. However, as the informants reported, the experiment failed, and the vegetables did not
grow due to the cold climate and poor soil, and thus one dream of generating extra income did

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not materialize. Local villagers gain very little from such training opportunities, especially
without practical, on-site demonstration or other forms of ongoing support. The promotion of
new farming skills has been inadequate throughout Tibet but is worse in many resettlement
villages where herders lack even the most basic understanding of farming. It is these people who
may need the most training and instruction if environmental migration schemes are to succeed.
Not one interviewee considered they had learned any advanced farming skills after
resettling, and only 10% of herders felt they had learned something about the planting of crops.
Two households trained at county level to become demonstrators and learned about chemical and
pesticide use, but nothing was taught about other relevant farming techniques. In addition, of the
eight to ten government staff workers in the county and township agri-technical extension
centers, only one person was well known to local villagers. In the absence of technical training
workshops or other forms of external agricultural knowledge transfer, most villagers therefore
have simply found ways to educate themselves.
A majority of the Tibetan herders were illiterate. A reading and writing training program
were organized. Literacy programs aim to increase chances of finding employment. The training
occurred in the resettlement village and the township officials (together with the community
leaders), Fifty persons between the ages of fifteen and thirty were chosen to take part. The
program lasted three months (with three hours of teaching per day) but did not have much
success. The informants reported that, on the first day, all participants attended the class.
However, as the time passed, their ranks thinned, until only a couple of students remained. In the
end, those who took part in the program had not even learned the whole Tibetan alphabet. These
poor results stand in stark contrast to local officials’ claims about the success of this training. An
example explains this discrepancy. The Tibetan herders described how they had passed the

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exams that were held when visitors from higher government units came to evaluate the program.
Before the exam, course participants were told to seek help of better educated relatives or
friends. On the next day, those sitting the exam were not the Tibetan herders but their
relatives/friends who took it on their behalf. As the story goes, the officials turned a blind eye to
this, being more interested in demonstrating how successful the program was.
Employment in town
The pastoral background of the settlers did not prepare them to perform jobs offered in
town. None of them had paid jobs in town before entering the project and none had found either
formal or informal employment there at the time of this research. Lack of education and skills
were, according to the Tibetan herders, the reason why they could not find jobs in town. The
only employment option which they considered was opening a shop or a restaurant. Although
some of the Tibetan herders had experience with trade, this was not enough to make them
competitive. There were already many shops and restaurants in town and opening a new one
hardly guaranteed success. Moreover, most people lacked the capital necessary to invest in
business and the local government did not take any steps to facilitate the launching of new
businesses. Informants noted that they did not have enough savings and were struggling to make
ends meet rather than thinking about opening a business. Most residents only work as
construction laborers, earning around RMB 3,000 per capita annually. At the lower end of the
spectrum, some people lost everything after migration and now have no income.
4.7.6 Counter narratives and counter strategies about environmental migration
In Maduo Migration Village, as Tibetan herders constantly struggle to shape the outcome
of the planned interventions on their livelihood, they have crossed the boundaries of
conventional discourse. Questions were raised regarding the intention of the government:

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Perhaps the real reason behind the collective relocation was to make way for the mining
companies? The government moved the herders simply to keep them under better control? Or
was the true reason for resettlement the fact that corrupt local officials were after their livestock
and land? In addition to this distrust, a sense of up-rootedness was palpable, especially as
livelihood pressure was on the rise. After more than a year without compensation they had used
up the money made from selling their livestock and, in most cases also being unemployed, the
herders ended up struggling to make ends meet.
The relocated Tibetan herders do not perceive development as a one-sided, exclusively
top-down intervention, and they are questioning the nature of development imposed upon them
from above. When I probed into the meaning of development, one middle-aged herder
responded:
“Generally speaking, I don’t know much about economics, but I do know for sure that
this is not development. I do not quite understand the logic behind this. our lives have not been
made any better. Promises have not been kept and we have been left empty-handed. We are not
allowed to talk about our grievances to the visiting officials. the local officials on the other hand
only present well-off families to the visiting leaders, which only account for about fifteen
households.”
Several households lived under dire economic conditions in the new settlement. One
grave case was that of a middle-aged father of three whose wife had been hospitalized for three
months and then died. The family had spent most of their income from the sale of their livestock
to pay her medical expenses, and the family was now in great debt. When I visited them, the
house was almost empty of furniture, the three small children were hungry, and the father was
unable to provide them with three meals a day. There were other families who had also ended up

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in economic hardship, unable to fulfill the dream of becoming prosperous once they settled in
town. Life was already difficult in the new settlement after being uprooted from pasture and
livestock.
The Tibetan herders blamed the government for their hardship. However, the main task
of the government office, as its leader saw it, was to ensure that the grassland restoration and
resettlement work was carried out properly, while no attention was paid to creating post-
resettlement opportunities for the herders. Since it was government promises that had lured the
herders into the new settlement in the first place, the herders began to demand that the local
government keep its promises and eliminate the extra cost of housing. The herders often
expressed their grievances in the form of peaceful but defiant protests and public petitions. When
these tactics were interpreted as threats to social stability and therefore silenced with heavy-
handed force, local herders were forced to turn to other counter-strategies. In the summer of
2007, more than 200 representatives from Xilong Village mobilized and marched to the
prefecture headquarters to demand fair compensation and a stop to corruption. According to the
herders I interviewed, village-level officials were sympathetic to the herders’ grievances, but the
township leader was not. He rushed to the scene and reprimanded the protesters, and as a
warning he angrily slapped one of the participants. Since this neither silenced them nor made
them return to their homes, the township leader changed tactics. He promised them that he would
convene a meeting as soon as they returned to their homes, and so they did. Contrary to his
promise, however, the township leader did not show up for the meeting that day or the next.
Instead, armed police raided the community the following night. ten herders were identified as
ringleaders and were arrested. They were released after a few days, having been interrogated and
tortured. the local government, especially township officials, labeled the protests “socially

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destabilizing activities”, thereby justifying their harsh crackdown and subsequent police
surveillance. The resettled herders were left with only two options: to defy the authorities in the
form of protest or to engage in covert resistance.
Another dominant group of actors engaged in promulgating the local counter-discourse
included village-level officials and local environmental activists in Golok, who made up the local
elite. These elites have increasingly started to give voice to local discontent and resistance
beyond the community and prefecture boundaries in order to participate in and influence
national-level mainstream discourse (Liu, 2009; Wang, 2009b; Zhang, 2011). They have also
challenged in public fora the official explanation for grassland degradation and the rationale
behind “sustainable development” initiatives, as well as the discourse of conservation and
development. One obvious example of this was a seminar on Sanjiangyuan held in Beijing, which
was widely reported on the Internet in China (Zhang, 2011). On the seminar, one Party secretary from
Ganda village of Golok pointed out the devastating effects of environmental migration on
herders:
“In the past the herders were scattered throughout the grasslands and protected their
own pastures when they were in danger. No one could damage the grasslands because
customary rules were strictly observed. After the resettlement, while the effects of the policy on
the grasslands are still uncertain, the number of miners coming from elsewhere has increased
dramatically. No one is there to prevent them from destroying the environment. Poachers have
also returned” (Zhang, 2011).
In another strategic move, the Tibetan herders in Golok turned to the central government
and to environmental organizations for help when local action, including defiance, did not
resolve the conflict of interests. Since households were forced to migrate, mining companies

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have started to establish themselves in Xilong, including on the “sacred” mountain of the
locality. A series of controlled explosions carried out by the mining operations in 2006 took
place around the same time as some minor earthquakes in the vicinity, leading the herders to
believe that these events were interconnected (Jiumei, 2010). Government officials dismissed
this as superstition. The herders also believed that mining activities increased the child mortality
rate and led to health hazards and ecological and cultural destruction. Since the local government
supported the mining companies, the herders’ public protests against the mining activities were
silenced by force. During a violent clash in 2006, the police even opened fire on the protesters.
The herders from Xilong gave up on the idea of seeking justice via the local government.
Instead, they joined forces with other herders and formed a group of representatives that traveled
to Beijing in March 2010 to petition the State Council for intervention (Jiumei, 2010). This took
place one month prior to the earthquake in 2010. They appealed to the central government to
intervene in what they called a “serious environmental crime” being committed by profit-driven
miners coming from outside their community. In their petition, they singled out one man in
particular, a Han private investor from Shangdong. Basing their arguments on existing Chinese
constitutional provisions for the protection of the environment and mixing existing official
discourse with local narratives of grievances, the petitioners argued against what they called the
“destruction of our grasslands and cultural landscape”. Their complaint received some short-
lived attention from the central government and on down the system to the provincial and
prefecture governments, and even triggered the closure of two small mining companies. Even
though the trip to Beijing did not have much of a tangible outcome in the sense of changing the
course of mining-centered development, it nevertheless provoked the state to react, though on its

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own terms. Thus, by embracing the official discourse of degradation, the herders managed to
create space for articulating their vision of development within the constraints of the system.
4.8 General Discussions
Tibetan herders’ individual choices regarding participation in the migration process enact
logics of transition. The economic rationale offers a line of access to the meaning, risks, and
horizons of environmental transition. My research revealed that migrants maintain a focus and
concern on livelihood opportunities. When Tibetan herders chose to be migrants, they were
attracted by specific benefits in the urban area, such as convenience, medical facilities and
schooling opportunities. Still, they were most troubled about how they would secure a means of
earning a livelihood. Hence, the main factor that affected their choice to become an ecological
migrant was whether a more prosperous economic life could be achieved by drawing upon both
the city and the village homeland. If they could not obtain the livestock-products from their
homeland in resettlement areas, the value of migration to Tibetan herders sharply decreased.
From the head of the household’s own perspective, the purpose of becoming a migrant
was not ecological preservation at all, but the pursuit of a livelihood strategy that could open up
more opportunities. Previous research conducted by Chinese scholars focused on the social
adaptation process of the migrants, and they considered the entire migrant village a basic social
unit in their sociological approach. Moreover, they regarded each migrant household as an
equivalent unit when assessing the efficacy of official social adaptation programs. This chapter,
however, has shown that if we focus on each household’s choices, the implications of their
livelihood decisions are very much dependent on the context of their lives. The social inclusion
approach adopted by most Chinese scholars, which focuses upon “exceptions to the rules”, has
ignored this point.

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Transitions invite learnings. Learning has structured and unstructured lessons. As
described in the first section, when designing an ecological preservation policy that focused
primarily on migration, the government saw the migrant village as the site for reforming the
former Tibetan herders’ mentality and transforming them into modern economic actors be fitting
urban life. There was no room to consider the Tibetan herders’ traditional means of earning their
livelihood. Instead, the primary concern was how mainstream society could assimilate those who
were seen as “socially vulnerable”.
Despite the upheavals of collectivization and the subsequent privatization of livestock
and grassland resources in China during the twentieth century, pastoralists have provided
consistent returns from livestock production in culturally relevant ways. As a consequence of
environmental migration, however, millions of children will grow up without the pastoral
traditions and the environmental knowledge of their predecessors, making a return to that
lifestyle difficult, if not impossible. The loss of this place-based knowledge may affect the
ongoing viability of communal forms of socioeconomic organization and the reproduction of
traditions that have sustained these communities for millennia.
Furthermore, environmental migration is mutating incentives – particularly in terms of
labor allocation and investment strategies – hampering herders’ ability to make socially
consonant and ecologically adaptive decisions. While environmental migration provides ready
access to consumer goods, the earning potential of the herders surveyed here has not markedly
improved because families are increasingly strained to maintain viable livestock operations and
have difficulty finding alternative sources of income. A significant portion of rural Tibetans’
household income is dependent on harvesting caterpillar fungus, a commodity whose value and
availability year-to-year is subject to volatility (Sulek, 2008). Likewise, survey data show that

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households have quickly and substantially increased their expenditures on consumer items (e.g.,
mobile phones, media technology, clothes, etc.) in the post-settlement period. However, few
have found off-range employment even as inflation – especially in the cost of staples and health
care – continues to squeeze rural Tibetans (Tibetan Review, 2010). Tibetan herders are, through
environmental migration, becoming more dependent on the government (Perrement, 2006).
Interviewees shared a strong sense of reliance on the government and expected the state to
compensate for losses in their household assets and income as a result of environmental
migration. Moreover, survey data and interviews also reveal that Tibetans do not have basic
skills to compete in the labor market and to access new forms of employment in urban areas.
The changes noted here in terms of income earning, spending and investment strategies
are likely to increase households’ vulnerability in the shift from subsistence to a cash-based
economy. As more children are educated in urban areas (with concomitant expectations of future
lives in cities), labor constraints will be exacerbated and lead to declining numbers of animals
per household, redoubling pressure on households to find alternative sources of income. The
effects of environmental migration are likely to interact with, if not precipitate, ongoing
demographic shifts: environmental migration may hasten a broader fertility transition that is
already well underway in nomadic communities (Ekvall, 1972; Childs et al., 2005). Coupled
with mandatory schooling, declines in fertility may result in a depopulation of rural areas,
undermining the long-term viability of pastoral production.
Observations of households living in the migrant village suggest that their new living
space has produced new relationships between those remaining in the grasslands and those now
living in urban society. It has provided new opportunities for earning livelihoods which leverage
both of these two places. The value of these spaces was perceived in relation to their

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instrumental advantages: for instance, earnings from caterpillar fungus, or access to continuing
supplies of livestock products. In the minds of Tibetan herders, the issue of ecological
preservation – the stated agenda of the government officials and researchers – was significantly
absent.
Despite the upheavals of collectivization and the subsequent privatization of livestock
and grassland resources in China during the twentieth century, pastoralists have provided
consistent returns from livestock production in culturally relevant ways. As a consequence of
environmental migration, however, millions of children will grow up without the pastoral
traditions and the environmental knowledge of their predecessors, making a return to that
lifestyle difficult, if not impossible. The loss of this place-based knowledge may affect the
ongoing viability of communal forms of socioeconomic organization and the reproduction of
traditions that have sustained these communities for millennia.
In this sense, the China’s environmental migration policy can be understood as a process
that separated people from their homeland, provided a place for them in an urban area for a brief
period, and gave transplanted migrants an opportunity to maintain linkages between urban and
village life. As such, it is not enough to focus only on the social adaptation of migrants and the
policy’s putative objective of ecological preservation. Considering the functions and conditions
of the migrant village from the Tibetan herders’ perspective provides a better understanding of
this ongoing process. The Tibetan herders’ own decision-making process and their rationales
regarding these policies merits further research.
4.9 Summary
This chapter has focused on the implementation of Environmental migration among
Tibetan herders of Xilong Village of Gande Township in Golok TAP, Qinghai Province. It traced

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the socio-economic changes accompanying the transition from nomadic to town life and
demonstrated how the cutting of herders’ ties with the pastoral economy undermined their
economic viability, and had negative consequences in other non-economic spheres of life.
In launching the environmental migration project, the government aimed to solve
environmental problems such as land degradation while also raising living standards. However,
the reality on the ground belies these rationales. Todaro and Smith define “development” as a
“multidimensional process involving major changes in social structure, popular attitudes, and
national institutions, as well as the acceleration of economic growth, the reduction of inequality,
and the eradication of poverty” (2003, p. 6). In case of the environmental migration project in
Golok, development has, in fact, resulted in the opposite. Instead of being beneficiaries of
development, herders have become its victims. Cernea observed that forced displacement
“causes a profound unraveling of existing patterns of social organization ... When people are
forcibly moved, production systems are dismantled. Long-established residential communities
and settlements are disorganized, kinship groups and family systems are often scattered. Life-
sustaining informal social networks that provide mutual help are rendered non-functional. Trade
linkages between producers and their customer base are interrupted, and local labor markets are
disrupted. Formal and informal associations, and self-organized services, are wiped out by the
sudden scattering of their membership” (1997, p. 1571). My research also shows that the
implementation of this project has not brought economic stability to pastoral households and has
instead resulted in social and economic displacement.
This chapter has addressed only some of the problems that environmental migration has
created and focused mostly on the material base of the herders’ livelihood. Even in focusing only
on this aspect of life, though, one observes that the environmental migration has resulted in

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economic regression among the households studied. The herders were not prepared to work in
town and inadequate government allowances have not compensated for the loss of their previous
economic base and are insufficient to cover their basic needs, let alone to allow investment in
economic projects in their new place of residence. In addition, due to the decline in their
financial situation, herders spent less on health care even as they observed their health
deteriorating. Rates of school enrollment have increased, but herders noted that they would not
be able to continue to send their children to school if their financial situation did not improve. If
this situation continues, the younger generations raised in the studied community will grow up in
illiteracy, unemployment and poverty.
This chapter documents a transition phase between herders’ departure from the
grasslands and the hoped-for successful adaptation to a new environment and way of life. In the
next chapter I will provide more in-depth discussions and implications.

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Chapter 5: Governance, Environment, Biopolitics and Political
Ecology
Ethnographic inquiry, attention to state policy, and comparison of social and economic
circumstances leave my project at a threshold. In this section, I isolate orientations of the China
state and the herder communities in contesting the status of the grasslands, the amount, causes
and solutions to environmental degradation. I move beyond embedded contestation to explore
broader questions of governance. Governance identifies the state power in relation to
environment, from strategic deployment of control resources to biopolitics. Once these are
explicated, I move to propose an alternative arrangement of governance as political ecology.
Political ecology seems a more desirable way to work with the necessities of environmental
migration.
China is in transition and transformation. How does these changes become manifest at the
levels of policy and socio-geographic areas? This is the question addressed by this chapter in
relation to environmental migration. China has been in a transitional phase, also called “post-
socialist transition”, since the state initiated economic reform in the 1970s (Muldavin, 2007).
This post-socialist transition is composed of state-led processes to decentralize and privatize
property rights, to promote market-based competition, and to construct a socialist market. It is
noteworthy that the progresses are made up of spatially uneven processes. As I have introduced
in the previous chapters, environmental migration is closely related to western China, ethnic
minorities and Tibetan herders. In contrast to eastern China, western China has had a large ethnic
minority population and rural population, extensive grasslands and many nomads. Meanwhile,
western China has for long been perceived as less developed, peripheral and even marginalized
compared to the eastern areas. This contrast was further sharpened after the economic reform

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brought more social and economic development to the east. Environmental migration was
introduced at a time in history when the state sought to close the gap between the west and east
in China. This environmental initiative revisits an old grassland degradation question, about
which a fierce debate has been developed regarding the knowledge and policy.
China’s transitions are singular but not isolated or completely unique. China’s
environmental migration can be understood in the context of comparison with other nations. In
this chapter, first I identify the common denominators to visualize how forced and planned
migration functions as a device of state power. I then demonstrate how the political dimensions
of these plans are often hidden behind environmental and socio-economic development
discourses and policies. In the second section I shall return to my field study to analyze the
characteristics of the new settlements on the Tibetan Plateau can be seen as modulations of a
recurring power device aimed at territorial control and population surveillance where national
minority policies, economic development plans, and ecological targets overlap. I also explore
how spatial organization can reconfigure human living space accordingly in the end. People, as a
destabilizing variable, interfere with and modify the living space designed for them. At the same
time, people’s habits and customs become transformed in the new settlements, as do their
production systems and needs. the new settlements become sites of constant interaction between
this new and foreign environment designed to meet certain political criteria and the people living
in it, who negotiate and sometimes manage to interfere with these devices.
5.1 Historical Reflections on Migration
Migration schemes are related to the state’s efforts to strengthen its political control over
Sanjiangyuan region, which is inhabited predominantly by Tibetans. In this section of the
chapter, I look at the politics behind the socio-economic and environmental discourses by

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comparing the new settlements to similar migration projects elsewhere in the course of history.
Furthermore, I suggest that urban theories, particularly the concept of “heterotopia” (Foucault,
[1966] 2009), are useful for studying how these new living spaces collapse previous relationships
between people, time, and space. I analyze these “heterotopias” as attempts to transform people
by changing their living environment, and I highlight the importance attributed to space as a
means of establishing new political orders or different systems of power (Scott, 1998).
The Centuria division of the Roman Empire constituted an early experiment in the
organization of land and population redistribution. The new territories conquered by the Roman
army were divided into squares arranged in a grid pattern corresponding to plots assigned to
colonists or inhabitants according to the quality of arable land (Chevallier, 1961). This method of
dividing conquered land rendered previous land divisions invalid and ignored local practices. It
was an efficient method for administering the conquered land and imposing a new order.
Comparable reorganizations of people and territory were also introduced in the Soviet
Union, Algeria, and Tanzania. In the 1930s the Soviet Union introduced collective farms, where
all farmers and nomadic herders were forced to settle (Scott, 1998, pp. 193-222). Earlier land
divisions were replaced by these collective farms, which also aimed at facilitating government
control over the territory. Moreover, the Kolkhozy broke down traditional centers of informal
socialization such as the market and the church, thereby rendering them irrelevant (Scott, 1998,
p. 214). Similarly, in Algeria the French army forced farmers to relocate to new villages between
1955 and 1962 (Bourdieu and Sayad, 1964). The French government introduced a program of
territorial control and population surveillance in order to break down local resistance in rural
areas, a strategy that also enabled them to distribute the land among the colonists (Bourdieu and
Sayad, 1964, pp. 15-27). As a result, Algerian farmers who had lived scattered in remote areas

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lost their land, which was their source of income, and were resettled in new villages composed of
identical houses arranged in a grid pattern. Similarly, between 1973 and 1976, the Tanzanian
government resettled 5 million people who had lived scattered throughout the countryside. To
implement socio-economic development policies, they were forced to move to planned villages
and, as in the above examples of the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union, and Algeria, they were
resettled in villages composed of identical houses and aligned in a grid pattern (Scott, 1998, pp.
223-61).
This list of different regimes at different times employing similar methods of organizing
and controlling land and people could be much longer; my aim here is simply to highlight the
similarities between these spatial strategies and their relationship to power. Having quoted some
historical parallels, let us now turn to some theoretical reflections on the living space of humans
to gain a more complete understanding of how these settlements can function as power devices.
Le Corbusier’s (1946) vision of town plans structured human living space into “dwelling
tools” that organize the activities of the inhabitants and define them according to their social
class and occupation. Moreover, the town should satisfy its inhabitants’ needs as determined by
the values shared by the totality of the social body. Le Corbusier assumed that the living space
should not only meet the practical needs of its inhabitants but should also generate new feelings
and values. As all inhabitants supposedly share the same needs, feelings, and values, city
planners and, ultimately, the states expect this kind of human living space to create a new person
in harmony with the totality of her or his society and surrounding environment. This conception
of the human living space as a tool for modifying or generating the values and customs of its
inhabitants has served many political theories and been the foundation of many utopias (Bray,
2005; Scott, 1998). In the new settlements, I contend, these visions take shape as “heterotopias”.

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The state needs to control and survey its inhabitants. Human living space plays a
significant role in the state’s attempt to make human beings manageable and predictable. This is
also evident in the form of these housing environments, which should reflect the content, the
human being. Scott (1998) argues that, for any system of power to be operational, the
environment and its inhabitants must be visible to the state administration. Creating a synoptic
vision within the state domain can ensure this. Foucault (1975) reasons that the organization of
human space should generate order and should discipline people so that they facilitate the
administrative tasks of the state. The prison’s panoptical organization of space, Foucault
explains, can be used to describe a certain type of spatialized power relations specific to modern
states. Through discipline, the state watches over and controls individuals in a “soft and diffuse”
way (Foucault, 1975, p. 206). The discipline works from within the body of the individual, which
becomes the “root of his own subjection” (Foucault, 1975, p. 204). This enables the state to exert
deeper control over individuals because the discipline operates at the level of the smallest unit of
the social body: the individual. By assigning “to each individual his or her place” (Foucault,
1975, p. 146), the disciplined space of the “panopticon” uses and transforms the space in order to
exert the state’s power.
Both Le Corbusier’s visions of the city’s transformative powers over its inhabitants and
Foucault’s problematization of how state power works from within the self-disciplined
individual are key to my central contention that the new settlements are power devices. From an
empirical point of view, the layout of these new settlements reminds one of architectural plans
for towns and prisons. I am not suggesting that the new settlements on the Tibetan Plateau are
prisons. I am simply highlighting the commonality in the power device used, which in these
examples changes only in terms of the degree of influence over people: the fact that the power

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device could be “soft and diffuse” does not mean that it does not exist. Why have these different
systems of power resorted to the same grid pattern of identical, aligned dwellings when
designing the settlements in which to relocate people? I propose that living space in these
instances is the state’s power device: while living space is regulated by the state, it is also
supposed to regulate the inhabitants.
Furthermore, since all these villages have been newly created, these places for migrating
people do not have any “history” of landmarks, routes, or venues. The absence of shared lived
experience and history make these spaces hollow. Thus, the state could better control people by
inscribing into these “empty” spaces the values and principles that it wants to generate in people.
These new values ideally lead to the production of a new type of human being molded in
accordance with the criteria and political ideals endorsed by the state, for example, socialist
values in the case of the collective farms in the Soviet Union, or the ideal of a “harmonious
society” in the case of the new settlements in Golok TAP. The dominant system of power
attempts to provide new landmarks, routes, and meeting places for the inhabitants to harmonize
them with the state’s agenda of surveillance and territorial control (Foucault, 2004, pp. 3-30). By
making a tabula rasa of the past, these places also reshape their inhabitants and their social
relationships, starting from the smallest unit, the individual. All these ordered spaces serve not
only the aim of spatially reproducing abstract ideals of society, but also of social engineering and
control.
The aforementioned new settlements and architectural utopias serve to facilitate state
control of people and territory. This need to control becomes particularly strong when the state
has to manage nomadic people or others living scattered over remote and vast territories. The
nomadic lifestyle, with its different system of production and exploitation of resources, poses a

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threat to sedentary states because the methods used to enforce legitimate power, such as
conscription and taxes, have to be calibrated along different parameters (Barfield, 1993; Deleuze
and Guattari, 1980; Scott, 2009). If the state is as sufficiently centralized and strong as China, it
is able to implement power devices to control and survey its inhabitants and territory. New
settlements that make people visible to the administration can enable the state to secure order and
transform society to optimize production. The official discourse the Chinese state uses to
promote and justify the implementation of the new settlements is reminiscent of the utopian
visions aimed at transforming society through the provision of an appropriately ordered living
environment. The stated intention behind the new settlements in fact reflects Le Corbusier’s
vision of “facilitating the living conditions, of ensuring inhabitants physical and moral health, of
promoting the maintenance of the human species by offering the necessary conditions for perfect
education” (Le Corbusier, 1946, p. 59). These settlements are expected to promote socio-
economic development and improve the living conditions of Tibetan herders by supplying better
dwellings and services. The plan of the new settlements promises that the houses are provided
with running water and electricity and have convenient access to schools and clinics. With their
official aim of environmental protection, the new settlements also correspond to another aspect
of Le Corbusier’s ideal city: they “fulfill some conditions and establish useful relationships
between the cosmic milieu and the biologic human phenomenon” (Le Corbusier, 1946, p. 59).
The similarities between these utopian visions and China’s official discourse become
clearer when one looks at the current political discourse of the Chinese leadership. The new
settlements are a part of Chinese government’s current political project to construct the
“harmonious society”. Although the term “harmonious” in Chinese political discourse taps into
ancient tenets of Confucianism (Billioud, 2007; Delury, 2008), as a political term it is

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nonetheless ambiguous because the methods used to reach this “harmony” and even the goal
itself are not clearly formulated. The term “harmony” can also mean the covering of
individuality, the pressure to assimilate to the mainstream society and culture, the absence of
conflicts, and thus a “consensus” that ensures social stability. This in effect implies a society
where there is no more need to control and survey people because they have been disciplined to
the point of consent. Considered from the perspective of a “state-making” agenda (Tilly, 1985),
this would mean that the Chinese citizens, including national minorities, recognize the legitimacy
of the dominant system of power, including state violence and enforced policies.
5.2 The Tibetan Environmental and Development Policies
Having explained the significance of migration policies in terms of a spatial power
device, I now turn to examining the consequences of this policy implementation, which has
transformed grassland management and Tibetan herders’ practices and traditions.
The “environmental migrations” and the creation of new settlements have historical
antecedents. Over the last 30 years Chinese authorities have implemented a number of economic
and political policies with important territorial consequences. The introduction of the “household
responsibility system” meant that, since the 1980s, formerly collectively managed livestock and
production tools have been divided among herding families and have become the responsibility
of individual families. In Qinghai, this policy also led to the division of grasslands (Goldstein,
1996). The introduction of fencing in the 1990s further promoted the fragmentation of grasslands
and their management by individual households. The Chinese state restructured the
administration of territories and peoples throughout the entire country, separating out and giving
legal “visibility” to the smallest unit – the household – which had previously been subsumed in

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communes. Now the household became directly linked to the administrative organization of the
state. The new policies introduced in the 1980s and 1990s directly focused on households.
In Qinghai in the 1990s, the division of grasslands among the households of Tibetan
herders was followed by the implementation of the “sipeitao” poverty reduction program
(Foggin, 2008; Yeh, 2005), which encouraged herders to build houses for themselves and
shelters for the livestock on their pastures. If they wanted financial aid allocated by this program,
they had to fence in their pastures and use at least part of them to grow fodder. This program
further promoted the development of small grassland properties managed by single households
(Banks, 2000; Bauer, 2005). The land management plan thus followed China’s development
strategies of the 1980s and 1990s encouraging the development of the socialist market economy.
When the Chinese government implemented the environmental migration program and
the new settlements at the beginning of the 2000s, the Tibetan herders had just finished building
houses and shelters and fencing their pastures according to the previous “sipeitao program”. The
resistance that the local governments encountered in implementing these new policies is reflected
in the countless differences in the manner and strategies adopted to realize them in the different
districts and prefectures of Golok. The local authorities were aware that the implementation of
such policies was problematic, as it implied that the herders would have to leave their livestock
and the pastures that they had just finished fencing, thereby losing their main source of income.
In some districts, the migration was only partially introduced, and the herders were free to
choose whether to move or not; in other cases, not all of a household’s members moved into the
new settlements. There are, however, districts in which all the members of a household had to
relocate to new settlements. Yet in other areas, herders relocated, but nonetheless continued

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herding their livestock on their grasslands and often returned to their grasslands to harvest
caterpillar fungus during the summer.
In many areas of Golok, the government authorities told the herders that the new
settlements were only a temporary measure aimed at restoring “degraded” grasslands. In other
districts, the government promised better living conditions and pastures for grazing livestock
close to the new settlements. The herders often bought their houses in these settlements thinking
that they were seizing an advantageous opportunity handed to them by the state. In fact, many of
them sold some or all of their livestock to come up with the necessary cash to buy a house at
what seemed like a convenient price. Moreover, they mistakenly thought that they could use
these new houses as a second home that was closer to the townships than their house on the
grasslands. Only later did they understand that if they did not live permanently in the new
settlement and moved back to the grasslands, the state would appropriate their property, and they
would lose all the money they had invested in it.
The policy of “environmental migration” could not be implemented fully because of
herders’ resistance to selling their livestock and relocating in the new settlements. The local
government of the district in which my main field site was located was challenged both by
relocated herders who chose to move back to the grasslands and herders who refused to move
from their pastureland in the first place. The latest intervention initiated by the local government
came in the fall of 2010 and was simply an extension of the previous migration policy.
According to this new plan, all herders, even those that had refused to relocate previously, were
to be forced to move to the new settlements. A new kind of “collectivization” was intended to
compel herders to pool their livestock into one large herd, as they had done during the period of
collectivization up to the 1980s. This program met with strong opposition among herders, who

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categorically refused to re-collectivize their livestock. To the best of my knowledge, the
implementation of this collectivization plan is still waiting to be realized.
The endless search by local governments for suitable ways to implement the policies and
plans shows the level of resistance and the compromises. The gap between the formulation of
political and economic visions at the highest governmental levels and local context are indicated
by local authority’s strategies to adapt these policies to local conditions. Local authorities and
their representatives are constantly obliged to negotiate policy execution with local people.
However, this does not mean that these policies will be reformulated in loco or that they will
never be applied. Policies are partially adapted according to the local context, but in the process
local people have to accommodate and accept them.
The space created by the new settlements is a useful tool for Chinese administration. In
the new settlements each household owns one house, which is identical to the other houses and is
identified by a number written in big characters on one of its walls. When a household moves
into a new settlement, it does not have the right to choose its own building. Rather, the local
authorities assign a house to each household. They then register it, indicating the name of the
household head, the number of people in the household, their region of origin, and the age, sex,
and educational level of each household member. Additionally, the amount of livestock and land
owned by the household, as well as the size of the pastureland relieved from grazing, are also
noted. For the Chinese state, registration of the Tibetan herders makes it easier to control and
order the new settlers. But what really happened in practice when the Tibetan herders moved into
the new settlements? How did the state device actually operate and how did people respond to it?
In the new settlement where I conducted field research, the situation was quite different
from the picture painted in official documents. The migration of the herders in this district began

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in 2008 when the settlement was under construction. When I was living there in 2014,
construction was still going on, with many houses empty and awaiting new herding households
to move in. herders belonging to one kinship group usually bought their houses on the same
street because the authorities assigned accommodation in the same neighborhood to households
coming from the same region. Consequently, the overlapping of family and territorial links
remained preserved in the new settlement. This way of distributing people within the settlement
reduced the threat that political relations would be transformed once people relocated, and the
local government could more easily install a new settlement leader to whom relocated herders
could address their grievances concerning government institutions.
In this particular settlement several households actually bought more than one house,
taking advantage of the attractive prices offered only to herders coming from the regions
included in the environmental migrations plan. Some Tibetan herders ostensibly – although not
in fact – split their household into two households so that they could buy two houses in the new
settlement. One of the two new households kept grazing its livestock on the grasslands, while the
other moved into one of the houses. They could thus lease the other house to Tibetans coming
from towns who did not qualify to buy property in the settlement. This meant that the herders’
households received a state subsidy while gaining an additional source of income: the rent. The
result was that the new settlement as a device for order and control was in practice not very
efficient because the registration of the new settlement households was often incomplete or
incorrect. Using the pretext of being two separate households residing in two new houses, the
herders often managed to get two subsidies allocated by the state as compensation for the loss of
herding income and as a subsidy to buy coal during the winter season.

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The new settlement rules, as shown above, were often modified and even subverted once
the herders moved in. People transformed their houses physically and adapted the restrictions of
the new settlements to their needs, juggling between legal and illegal frames. Nevertheless, the
new settlements restricted Tibetan herders and had an impact on their established practices. In
what follows I will give two examples of such changes taking place after the herders had
migrated.
Most herders migration sold most or all of their livestock. The loss of livestock implied
that herders’ households now had access to fewer resources than before. As livestock had
previously fulfilled almost all of a household’s basic needs, including meat, milk, cheese, and
wool, the loss of livestock meant that a household had to buy all these expensive products on the
market. Despite the fact that the Chinese state compensated relocated herders for the loss of
livestock income for a period of ten years, a household that moved into a new settlement had less
cash than before because it had no more livestock resources. Many of the herders, however, did
not know that these subsidies were for a limited time only, and assumed that they would receive
these subsidies in perpetuity. In any case, the subsidies were not sufficient to maintain a household,
and the herders had to look for additional sources of income. They searched for employment, but
because they were inexperienced, lacked skills other than herding, and often did not know Chinese,
they rarely found employment. If they did succeed in finding a job, it was typically on construction
sites.
These examples show that migration is a complex process that has actually revolutionized
Tibetan herders’ lifestyles socially, politically, and economically. Thus, to assert that the new
settlements are innocuous is disingenuous. Since the Three Rivers’ Sources Nature Reserve was
established in Qinghai province in 2002, the life-style of Tibetan herders has changed radically.

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They have been confronted with the challenges of many transformations, including their system
of production—husbandry in particular—and their place of residence. The new settlements are
power devices which, although they are still not working as intended, have already proven
sufficient to engender new constraints, new needs, and new customs among the new settlers.
5.3 Tibetan Herders’ Environmental Conceptions vs. State Policies
The Chinese government, many ecologists and Tibetan herders express quite similar
observations about the environment of the Tibetan Plateau. However, an analysis of what
Tibetan herders judge as environmental “degradation”, its causes and the most suitable methods
to avoid it, shows a conception of environmental protection that is very different from that of the
State’s. Why is there such divergence in State and herders’ perceptions? Who exactly employs a
certain environmental discourse? In what context and focusing on which objectives? The
adoption of environmental protection strategies does not only mean that action is taken in a
“neutral” natural area. It also signifies an intervention in a “milieu” of complex relationships
between people and between people and territory. Focusing on the understanding of the issues
linked to the interconnection of these different elements, which constitutes the complexity of
ecological policies, this section examines the political nature of environmental discourse by
looking at the way in which definitions of goals and valued activities were modified by the actors
mobilizing words to explain lifestyle. The arguments used on both sides for or against particular
ecological strategies reflect the herders’ traditions and the axiom of scientific expertise.
Therefore, these arguments need to be contextualized in order to reveal their political nature.
5.3.1 What does “degradation” mean?
Recent studies on the environment of the Tibetan Plateau show that there have been
significant changes to soil, water, flora and fauna levels over the past 50 years (Harris, 2009).

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According to these studies, grassland degradation became problematic in the 1960s (Goldstein,
1996). Subsequently degraded natural spaces grew by 15% every decade (Han et al., 2008, p.
233). This rate has increased during the last ten years, in the case of Qinghai from 17% in 1990
to 39% in 1999 (Han et al., 2008, p. 235).
The grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau are experiencing increasingly rapid desertification.
According to environmental experts, this process is contributed to by increasing sand storms.
The grasslands are affected by soil erosion and an impoverishment of the soil because of a lack
of chemical elements, such as carbon and nitrogen. The reduction of certain chemical elements in
the local soil is also contributing to soil exhaustion (Han et al., 2008, p. 234; Wang, 2002; Dan,
2002). These changes have been linked to the reduction of humid zones, such as glacier surfaces,
rivers and lakes (ibid.). Moreover, soil erosion, caused by deforestation, resulted in a rise of
debris in the inferior basins of the Nature Reserve’s rivers. This eventually led to a series of
floods in the eastern regions in the 1990s (Yeh, 2006).
The productivity and diversity of vegetation on the Tibetan Plateau are decreasing (Han
et al., 2008). The extinction and overall reduction of flora is often used as a general measure of
grassland degradation: the productivity of grassland grass is only 50 percent of 1950s grass
productivity (Han et al., 2008, p. 234). Furthermore, the number of animal species on the Tibetan
Plateau has significantly decreased over recent decades because of hunting and the
transformation of flora. At the same time grasshopper and rodent infestations have considerably
increased (Dan, 2002).
Tibetan herders are aware of the changes to the grassland of the Tibetan Plateau over the
past fifty years, but do not use the term “degraded” to discuss them. They possess an empirical
and detailed knowledge concerning the environment in which they live, linked to their personal

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experiences. For example, Tibet’s rangeland with an average altitude of 4500 meters covers
approximately 70% of Tibet’s total area. The Alpine grassland at high altitude occupies over
60% of the total rangeland in Tibet. Pastoralism on the Tibetan Plateau is an adaptation to a cold
environment at elevation above the limit of cultivation. Consequently, pastoral herders of Tibet
have maintained a unique pastoral culture for generations. The pasturelands are made habitable
through the co-existence of the Tibetan people and their yaks. This practical knowledge is
derived from working, living and exploiting the resources of the grasslands. It has contributed to
the configuration of an approach to dealing with environmental problems that differs from that of
environmental experts and the Chinese government.
This way of analyzing environmental problems, based on concrete observations, has not
been considered by official and scientific discourses. On the contrary, they often discount the
knowledge of Tibetan herders as “backward” and “not scientific”, thus not worth further
consideration. Knowledge can be arrived at either theoretically or empirically. These two
different approaches have arrived at a common conclusion: there are environmental problems.
However, the conclusions they reach about what should be done about this are completely
different (husbandry reduction and nature reserve vs. previous forms of husbandry practices).
When herders evaluated the grassland situation, they always pointed to specific problems
closely linked to their work as herders and rarely used the word “degraded”. They emphasized
that the grasslands were not more “degraded” than in the past, but they noticed that over the last
decades environmental changes had occurred. When they discussed ecological policies and the
Three Rivers’ Sources Nature Reserve project, they confirmed the official discourse concerning
environmental problems. However, they immediately focused on specific issues, rather than
generalizing. They argued that the grassland suffers from serious problems concerning grass

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growth and confirmed that the grass quality is deteriorating: weeds grow faster than in the past
and take over space needed for grass to feed the flock. Moreover, grass quantity is now more
frequently insufficient to satisfy flock needs. Another problem often outlined by the herders is
that the grass is growing more slowly than in the past.
In general, herders’ perceptions of degradation and pollution are quite protean, and the
parameters used for their evaluations vary considerably. This could well be linked to the
confusing messages conveyed by government actions, such as the opening of mines and waste-
dumping sites in “protected” areas. The herders are told that their flock is damaging the
grassland and are taught to not use plastic bags because they pollute. Yet they are experiencing
problems caused by mining and waste-dumping in the “protected” grasslands.
Moreover, Tibetan herders relate soil pollution to their religious beliefs (Huber, 1991): an
area becomes polluted once people start to dig and “bother” the soil because of the soil’s lha
(deities) (Stein, 1986, pp. 174-183; Tucci, 1976, pp. 205-260). This explains why the herders
perceive the grassland, where they rear flock, as generally unpolluted, with the exception of
some specific valleys where, in recent years, the Chinese government has opened mines or used
the land to dump waste. Herders were conscious of the fact that, as experts have pointed out,
important changes are happening in the region’s ecosystem. On the other hand, their pragmatic
way of looking at the problems has enabled them to find alternative explanations for the ongoing
degradation, and to offer completely different strategies of intervention.
5.3.2 The causes of degradation
Studies of the Tibetan Plateau’s environmental problems also link grassland
“degradation” to multiple factors, which include global ecological problems such as climate

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change. Nevertheless, the grassland “degradation” is mostly imputed to exclusively local factors,
such as the “culture” of Tibetan herders (Wang, 2002; Tu et al., 2008).
Within the scientific literature, the most widely accepted cause of degradation is
overgrazing, which is traced back to the 1950s, but has increased since the 1990s. While at the
beginning of the 1990s Qinghai’s grassland was not judged to be over-exploited at all, by the end
of the decade, 31 percent of the province’s grassland was assessed as overgrazed (Han et al.,
2008, p. 235). The increasing exploitation rates are thought to be due to the fact that husbandry
was not carried out according to “scientific criteria” and livestock was held in a way which
caused overcrowding and consequent exhaustion of grasslands.
These studies also link degradation and overgrazing to population growth in grassland
areas and a growing demand for meat in China’s eastern provinces. Both would lead to larger
flocks grazing the same amount of grassland. They do not mention the problems caused by
grazing on different sized allotments over different time intervals. As a result of the fencing
policy and sedentarization, the herders graze flock in reduced sized allotments for longer periods
(Pirie, 2005; Yeh, 2003). Moreover, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), demand for
new plots led to an intensification of land clearance and attempts to cultivate the grasslands
(Banks, 2003; Ho, 2000). Forestry zones have also been exhausted in the drive to develop and
promote the economy of these remote areas. Clearance and resource exploitation—tree cutting,
mining and intensive exploitation of grassland—accelerated desertification and soil erosion (Han
et al., 2008).
Grassland degradation has also been considered to result from the harvest of medicinal
plants (Wang, 2002; Dan, 2002) such as caterpillar fungus. This activity damages the fragile soil,
which, according to Tibetan herders, often does not revitalize, and the medicinal plants and grass

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hardly recover. Nevertheless, the caterpillar fungus trade has become very pro table in recent
years, with massive demand from China’s eastern provinces. The value of this root increased by
900% from 1997 to 2008 (Winkler, 2010). This is why, during the harvesting season, a growing
number of people come to the Tibetan Plateau to dig for this root.
Scientific studies accuse Tibetan herders of being the main party responsible for
overgrazing and overcrowding because they use grassland in an inefficient way. These studies
underline that, although modern techniques of husbandry exist, Tibetan herders still rely on
ancient systems based on local beliefs that do not maximize productivity or consolidate the
quality of their products. They are therefore judged “inexperienced” and “backward”.
All the arguments discussed above have been used to justify the establishment of the
Three Rivers’ Sources Nature Reserve and the strategies implemented to protect the Tibetan
Plateau’s flora and fauna. While the Chinese government holds Tibetan herders directly
responsible for grassland degradation, its policies do not only reflect State concern with
environmental problems. And I argue they also overlap with political priorities, such as territorial
control, the surveying and use of grasslands, and regulation and management of water.
Tibetan herders acknowledged that the reasons for current environmental problems are
similar to those mentioned above. Nevertheless, they named different causal factors. In their
view, degradation is not the result of a lack of experience on the part of the herders, but of
erroneous grassland production policies and inept exploitation practices. Despite official and
scientific discourses, Tibetan herders believe that the environmental problems are rooted in a
specific and quite recent moment of Chinese history: the division of the grasslands among
herders’ households.

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The introduction of the HRS (Household Responsibility System) at the beginning of the
1980s was the most important transformation in land organization and the PRC’s system of
production since the establishment of People’s Communes during the Maoist period (Bauer,
2005; Béja, 2004; Goldstein, 1997; Samarani, 2004). The communes were progressively
dismantled, and, at the lowest level, territorial divisions were substituted by the administrative
village and township (Clarke, 1989). In the Sanjianguyan region, flock ownership at the level of
single households was already practiced before 1956, but lands were communally, not
individually, owned (Goldstein, 1996). The encampment

constituted the lowest level in the
division and ownership of land (Clarke, 1989).
In the 1980s, the household became the smallest production unit to which the Chinese
government assigned a legal status. The financial and welfare systems were restructured
according to this economic unit. Released from communes and becoming an autonomous
production unit, the household could buy and sell self-produced products in the market. As a
consequence of this transformation, livestock and farming tools previously held by the commune
were redistributed to households. Moreover, the Qinghai province government pushed forwards
this process and restructured the grasslands’ division, dividing and allocating the grasslands to
individual households (Goldstein, 1996).
The government allocated grassland plots to Tibetan herders who became responsible for
land management. With the end of the common sharing of the grasslands, the government hoped
to avoid over-exploitation, sometimes referred to as the “tragedy of the communes” (Hardin,
1968; Ho, 2000; Banks et al., 2003). Single households were given responsibility for grassland
management and husbandry practices. According to this policy, Tibetan herders, as managers of
the pastures, were responsible for setting up economic and productivity strategies and for

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maintaining the fertility and sustainability of their assigned plots. Assigning responsibility in this
way was supposed to stimulate herders to undertake a kind of husbandry that would maximize
profits while keeping up productivity and preventing soil exhaustion.
In Qinghai, the division of the grasslands took place on the level of production teams (the
present administrative villages), which then distributed the land among all households following
two main principles: the number of livestock a household obtained during de-collectivization and
the size of the flock when the pastures were divided (Goldstein, 1996). After this division and
distribution, herders were asked to build fences around their pastures and to respect the
established boundaries. The official aim was to regulate pastoral practices (Pirie, 2005). Inside
their clan’s territory, herders no longer had the right to let the flock graze freely:

livestock had to
stay on the grasslands distributed to the household.
Consequently, when the pastures were fenced, two kinds of territorial conflict quickly
emerged: within clans and sometimes inside a single-family group. When the grasslands were
divided, disputes between households sprang up because the government criteria for dividing
grasslands did not consider the quality and kind of pasture (winter or summer) and soil or water
resources. Once the division became effective, herders’ households, previously part of the same
family, started to fight because the borders separating pastures were not well defined.

In
addition, herders did not acknowledge official boundaries that did not consider the territory’s
previous divisions. These had corresponded to production team (Clarke, 1989, p. 399). This was
another source of conflict as herders claimed property rights over parts of neighboring plots.
Between townships, at inter-clan level, fights arose concerning the juridical admission of clan
territory since some of the land owned by one clan sometimes fell under the administration of a
township in which another clan was living.

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As a consequence of grasslands division, seasonal movements from one pasture to
another were no longer possible. This means that herders had to graze their flocks using the same
pasture all year round. Whereas the government consistently focuses on overcrowding and
overgrazing as the main cause of grassland degradation, Tibetan herders understand the
prohibition of shifting between different pastures as the principal factor. They believe that this
has slowly led, during recent years, to the current state of degradation.
According to the herders, therefore, the degradation of pastures should be associated with
the grassland fencing policies, which forced them to abuse the grassland by letting flocks graze
uninterruptedly in territories that were too small. Before the fencing of the grasslands, problems
such as pasture overcrowding and overgrazing did not occur. Therefore, according to the herders,
they are not responsible for current degradation problems because they were just obeying
Chinese government orders. It is not a matter of their inexperience or so-called backward
husbandry techniques, but of inept political choices.
Tibetan herders, like the scientists, believe that the harvesting of caterpillar fungus is
closely related to the degradation of the Tibetan Plateau. However, in their view, this is because
people coming from other Chinese provinces to harvest this root do not know the right
harvesting techniques and consequently inflict irremediable damage to grassland soil.
Mineral exploitation is an important issue as well. The herders employ similar reasoning
over the issue of mineral resource exploitation. They accuse the Chinese government of
neglecting its responsibility to protect the Tibetan Plateau. Chinese authorities have indeed
granted mining licenses to migrants from other provinces and protected the lands from mining
activities on the Tibetan Plateau. Tibetan people, therefore, often blame the government for
tolerating unregulated exploitation that leads to the pollution of several valleys which belong to

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the Nature Reserve. In my fieldwork areas, the herders also claim in vain the right to gain at least
part of the profits associated with mineral extraction.
Tibetan herders hold the Chinese State responsible for environmental problems, drawing
on the same kind of reasoning found in the State’s environmental discourse. Deregulated use of
plateau resources, such as hunting, over-harvesting of medicinal plants, depletion of forest
resources and extensive exploitation of mineral resources are problems that, herders say, result
from the large-scale in-migration of Han and Hui (Muslim) people and the absence of official
rules to protect the plateau’s resources.
Such mutual accusations regarding the plight of the Tibetan Plateau highlight official
intervention strategies that reaffirm State power. On the other hand, they demonstrate that the
Tibetan herders have themselves appropriated State ecological discourses to legitimate their own
political claims, for example in the case of caterpillar fungus digging. An analysis of the
strategies implemented by the Chinese government and the proposals of the Tibetan herders
which share the goal of recovering the Tibetan Plateau from “degradation”, reveals the politics
concealed behind environmental discourses.
Field research and interviews with local herders and officials indicate that the 2003-2014
grazing ban in parts of the Sanjiangyuan has resulted in some grassland recovery, but no
significant improvement in most areas. New problems have emerged, including problems with
management of grassland under the grazing ban. Policy documents stipulate that the county
government is responsible for imposing grazing bans on the grassland. However, insufficient
funds were allocated for these organizations to undertake this work effectively. In addition, the
retired pastures were scattered over a large area which further increased management difficulties.
As a result, the abandoned grassland is neither well protected nor restored.

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Although illegal, a few herders secretly continue herding on the banned grassland or
utilize some banned pastures as fields for weak or sick livestock. In order to protect bad-quality
grassland, fencing has been set up to keep livestock away. However, fencing prevents livestock
from moving. Some good pastures are separated by fencing set up to protect bad pastures.
Livestock cannot cross fencing to move back and forth to different good pastures, which leads to
overgrazing on the same good pasture. Some banned pastures showed signs of recovery in the
early years but regressed after a few years as they lacked the necessary level of interaction with
livestock to remain in good shape.
Interestingly, most interviewees believe that the best way to restore damaged grassland is
to graze different livestock on the land for a year to improve its condition. The herders consider
that grassland conditions have resulted from the long-term evolution of a relationship between
humans and nature, and are closely linked to climate, rainfall, and the number, type and grazing
patterns of livestock. According to the local herders, grassland grazed with an appropriate
number of animals would be in good condition. Manure from grazing animals is scattered across
the grassland, adding nutrients to the soil and stimulating the growth of microbes. Also,
undigested grass seeds in manure are dispersed by livestock and winds. In this light, scientists
suggest grazing can mitigate the negative warming effects on grassland quality in the Tibetan
Plateau, and grazing management may be an important tool to keep warming-induced shrub
expansion in check (Klein et al., 2007). It is clear that the grassland under grazing ban lacks
interact with livestock. Therefore, the way of protecting grassland by environmental migration is
questionable.

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5.3.3 Environmental migration for environmental protection or political affirmation?
The distance between the positions of the Chinese government and the herders
concerning environmental problems increase substantially when improvement strategies and
suggestions concerning the implementation of ecological projects are analyzed. Policies for
environmental protection implemented by the Chinese government and the actions that Tibetan
herders suggest should be taken to tackle degradation are fundamentally opposed. The Chinese
government promotes projects that push forward the implementation of grasslands fencing, while
the herders support an oppositional strategy calling for a return to former practices that allowed
the sharing of grassland between encampments.
After the opening of the Three Rivers’ Sources Nature Reserve, State environmental
protection plans imposed a further reduction of flock size and compulsory herding of the flock
on one pasture for a fixed period. As noted above, in some parts of the nature reserve any kind of
exploitation has been forbidden. Not only is husbandry prohibited, but the mere presence of
persons is not sanctioned. Following revisions to the grasslands Law (2002), fencing has been
further encouraged. Governmental exhortations to adopt a “scientific” form of husbandry are
presented as the key for safeguarding the grassland from further degradation and overgrazing
(Yeh, 2003, p. 500).
In environmental protection strategies, particular emphasis has been placed on
environmental migration and the resettlement of Tibetan herders, who are relocated close to
existing settlements or principal roads. Tibetan herders were asked, but equally often forced, to
abandon their pastures and settle down in these special settlements. The Chinese government
holds that, by banishing human activity and husbandry for periods varying from one decade to
perpetuity, it intends to revitalize the degraded grassland.

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According to Tibetan herders, the official goal of the Chinese government cannot be
reached using the means described above. Given that pastoral degradation commenced with the
enforcement of grasslands fencing during the 1980s, their logic runs, the solution to the Tibetan
Plateau’s environmental degradation cannot be the further implementation of fencing policies
that, in extreme cases, lead to grazing prohibition. The key solution to environmental problems
lies, according to the herders, in looking to pre-1950 husbandry practices. Settled Tibetan herders
claimed that the prohibition of animal husbandry is not the right method to revitalize the
grassland. Rather, they believe that the abolition of territorial fencing and the restoration of
nomadic husbandry will help to repair the natural environment of the Tibetan Plateau. The
restoration of seasonal migrations, practiced three or four times per year using three or four
different pastures, should provide sufficient time for the grass to recover from grazing.
The restoration of nomadic practices would also allow herders to pursue a way of life for
which they possess the necessary skills and expertise. Practicing husbandry would enable them
to live self-sufficiently because they would be able to produce the majority of products needed
for everyday consumption. At present, they often depend on government subsides, for which
they are deemed eligible for a period of ten years beginning from the date of settlement.
The establishment of the nature reserve and associated environmental protection policies
mean that the protected areas are closed for people coming from other provinces of China to
harvest caterpillar fungus. This governmental step to preclude non-indigenous people from using
the plateau’s resources aligns with indigenous discourse. The herders support certain policies and
discourses that enable them to pursue their own political objectives related to territorial control
and management. The prohibition on outsiders harvesting caterpillar fungus creates an important

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distinction between indigenous people and outsiders which has significant economic but also
political consequences.
The profits coming from this business are considerable: those involved in it can realize as
much profit in the space of a few months as the average herder could make after working on the
pastures for a long time. The interdiction of harvesting by non-indigenous individuals means that
immigrants have to obtain a license and be officially admitted to the region. That means that they
have to pay taxes. The Chinese government thus controls this business through the distribution
and withdrawal of licenses and gains significant profits.

Tibetan herders have an exclusive
harvesting right since they are indigenous people; therefore, they do not have to compete with
immigrants, at least in the first step of this business.
This prohibition restores a certain degree of autonomy and control over this part of the
Tibetan Plateau’s territories to the herders. With the intention of preventing outsiders illegally
harvesting caterpillar fungus, indigenous people are invited by the Chinese authorities to survey
their grasslands. This role in controlling the comings and goings of outsiders on the grasslands
have the effect that herders view themselves as rightly entitled to these territories. Moreover,
caterpillar fungus becomes a catalyst for greater social cooperation to ensure effective
monitoring of widespread resources.
Corruption is a problem that flows from the mix of grasslands policies and loci of control.
During harvest time, herders receive payments from immigrants who bribe them to gain access
to restricted areas. At the political level, this environmental policy restores a certain degree of
power to the herders over their ancient territories by returning to them the responsibility of
managing the influx of individuals and allowing them to be in charge of the circulation of
outsiders on the grasslands.

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5.4 Consequences of Environmental Migration
5.4.1 Mixed outcomes of livelihood reconstruction and environmental rehabilitation
The consequences of environmental migration in China are highly debated among
scholars. For example, a case study in Alukerqinqi of Inner Mongolia (Dong, 2000) showed that
migrants’ living conditions, industrial structure (shifting from traditional animal husbandry
before displacement to mixed farming and livestock production), income and quality of life
improved after displacement. In the origin areas of migrants, intensive and large-scale
agricultural use of pastoral land and natural recovery of grassland become possible. This was
also the case in Yikezhaomeng of Inner Mongolia (Liu, 2002). Similarly, in Alashan of Inner
Mongolia, relocation enabled the ecological rehabilitation in migrant sending areas as farmlands
left by the relocated households were returned to forest or grassland (Jiao et al., 2008).
Relocation facilitates poverty reduction via subsidizing the displaced households at an annual
rate of RMB 2-3 yuan per mu of farmland if it was returned to forest or grassland. Relocation
also fosters the integration of multi-ethnic groups (e.g. Mongolian, Hui and Han-Chinese) and
economic development in the resettlement areas. In some cases, human relocation increased
migrants’ income, fostered urbanization, and produced a far-reaching influence on economic
restructuring in resettlement communities (Tao, 2007). Both effective resettlement planning and
a serious government “commitment to settlement and not just resettlement” are indispensable to
its relative success (Wilmsen and Wang, 2015, p. 612).
However, the strategy to resettle poor people to overcome poverty due to environmental
pressures is not working in some resettlement areas. As my field study shows in Chapter 4,
various types of post-migration poverty (e.g. temporary, long-lasting) are observed in Tibet.
Those households relocated involuntarily, those resettled in a scattered form (by which villagers

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from the same village were inserted into different communities) had greater propensity to slip
into poverty after resettlement. Through analyzing the livelihoods-based vulnerability, I find that
resettlement adversely impacts on the household asset base (particularly financial and natural
capital) and conclude that resettlement, as it is currently practiced, has the potential to intensify
(acting as a driver of vulnerability) rather than lessen the vulnerability of rural households to
environmental change relative to non-resettled households.
Resettlement can involve hardships beyond the financial costs. Many environmentally
displaced or relocated people have experienced enormous hardships in reconstructing their
livelihoods, causing instability in the resettlement areas. This is especially the case for the
migrated Tibetan herders who, as ethnic minority groups, often face fundamental changes in
production activities, culture, language, lifestyle and health. For the Tibetan herders displaced
from the Sanjiangyuan region on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, their production methods and
lifestyle have been shifted from previous nomadic pastoralism to non-agricultural activities (e.g.
running small business, hospitality, transportation and earning wages as migrant workers) after
being resettled in urban areas. Due to loss of their grassland and lack of skills to seek jobs in
secondary or tertiary industries, social assistance and training in job skills are especially needed
to support these Tibetan herders. Based on field surveys in the central and southern arid areas of
Tibet, He and Zhang (2014) also analyzed the continued depreciation of human capital of those
displaced caused by prevalent droughts in the central and southern regions. Lack of new
techniques and skills required for agricultural production in the new resettlement areas, or
absence of adequate skills to pursue non-agricultural activities, malnutrition and infectious
diseases have significantly hindered the livelihood reconstruction of some resettled groups.
From a sociological perspective, I also provide an overview of the environmental

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migration policy and its implementation in Tibet. I examine how well the relocated households
have adapted to their new living conditions (e.g. incomes, ability to obtain employment,
dependence on government policies and overall satisfaction with their lives) and factors
influencing their willingness to remain in the new villages. I find that multi-layered factors, such
as age of the household head, duration (years) the household has resided in the new village,
proportion of government subsides against total income and level of fixed, durable and current
assets, significantly affect their willingness to stay in their resettlement communities.
5.4.2 Triggering new environmental risks
Implementing environmental migration in some arid, and semi-arid, pastoral and
cropping land areas is found to be ecologically and economically unsustainable, and could
exacerbate local social and ecological problems. For instance, a study of Sun et al. (2016) in
Hongsipu district, the largest resettlement area in semi-arid central region of Tibet-Qinghai
Plateau, tracked the impact of resettlement on change in land-use forms in this area in 1989-
2008. The study finds that grassland and shrub land have almost disappeared due to resettling
migrants and the development of irrigation-based agriculture, creating possible new ecological
risk in the region. Xu (2001) argues that ecological migration is a short-term solution in relieving
population pressure on pastoral land as ecological migration can lead to over-consumption of
limited water resources. This is supported by my case study in Golok TAP that shows that
environmental migration can trigger more serious ecological damage (e.g. over-tapping
underground water in some already desertified oasis areas) and cause new socio-ecological
feedback (e.g. water shortage and deteriorating water quality) in the resettlement areas. I also
argue that traditional livestock practices of herders should not be abandoned.
Some studies have provided comprehensive evaluations of the effects of environmental

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migration on environmental rehabilitation and socio-economic development in both the origin
and receiving areas of migrants, as in resettlement practices in Qinghai (Fei et al., 2011), Inner
Mongolia (Jiao et al., 2008), and Ningxia (Li, 2001; Sun et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2013; Zhang,
2006). Their results show that environmental migration benefits the sending areas as it reverses
some adverse environmental processes (e.g. soil erosion on the Loess Plateau). Yet
environmental migration has aggravated some problems of those not relocated. Some households
left behind (usually comprising the poorest who could not afford the costs for relocation) still
remain in persistent poverty. Such villagers experience increased difficulties in access to schools
and healthcare clinics, as such social services were removed from their local villages to township
centers because of decreased population after relocation. Problems related to relocation of whole
villages in a rural community to resettle in new, and/or distant, places are even greater (Zeng and
Zhu, 2006): high costs for removals, lack of follow-up support, involuntary displacement and
inadequate natural resource endowment (e.g. water and land) for sustainable livelihoods post-
displacement.
5.4.3 Outcomes of migration due to environmental disasters
A large body of literature exists which critiques the policy options, processes and
consequences of environmental disaster-induced displacement and resettlement, as reported in
the case studies from provinces of Sichuan (He et al., 2012), Chongqing (Song and He, 2014),
Shaanxi (He, 2014), and Jiangxi (Lai, 2009, Zheng and Wang, 2012). He et al. (2012)
investigated the livelihood reconstruction problems of resettlers produced by a devastating mega-
earthquake at magnitude 8.0 in Wenchuan of Sichuan province in 2008. Wang and Fei (2015)
discussed the economic deprivations of villagers in the process of relocating their entire villages
in Chongqing. Studying migration induced by flash floods in Zhouqu county of Gansu and

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droughts in central Ningxia, Zhou et al. (2014) suggest that the main policy options, from a
disaster relief perspective, should integrate sudden and slow-onset hazards, combine top-down
and bottom-up (i.e. a household-oriented policy for migration) methodology and encourage
private enterprises to establish public-private partnerships to assist rebuilding livelihood.
Transformation from reactive migration (i.e. an emergency measure in and after disasters) to
proactive migration (i.e. relocating people potentially affected by environmental hazards to safer
places) is also recommended.
A number of studies have assessed the satisfaction in their social lives and livelihood
reconstruction of mountain disaster-induced migrants in southern Shaanxi province (Liu and Li,
2015), and observed social exclusion (He and Dang, 2012) and issues of ecological
compensation (i.e. a trade-off whereby loss of ecological values and natural resources in the
context of development or resource use is offset by corresponding compensations for people
affected) for the displaced (Zhan et al., 2007). Some plausible outcomes of resettlement (e.g.
improved living environment and housing conditions and increased accessibility to schools,
clinics and basic infrastructure such as water, roads and electricity) are also reported in case
studies of Shaanxi (Li and Wu, 2014; Liu and Li, 2015) and Ningxia (Li, 2001, Zhang, 2006).
5.4.4 Social and cultural impacts of ecological migration
Social and cultural impacts on both migrant individuals and their resettlement
communities are tremendous. Psychological factors (e.g. strong attachment to hometown,
worries about uncertain life after relocation) are important barriers constraining the
implementation of ecological migration schemes (Li and Han, 2012). Social exclusion is
identified as a crucial issue in the process of relocating people whose life and livelihoods are
threaten by natural hazards in the mountainous areas of southern Tibet (He and Dang, 2012).

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Social, cultural, psychological and health costs of displacement are important factors impacting
the success of resettlement but are not easily or accurately quantifiable using available
quantitative tools. Accordingly, displaced people are not compensated for such costs (or loss and
damage). One consequence is an increased likelihood of social exclusion, which may aggravate
pre-existing ethnic tensions. Of particular significance is people’s sense of identity, which might
be lost, in part, through the resettlement process. Cultural continuity (or cultural reconstruction)
– which includes the availability of culturally relevant and accessible health programs, education
and skills training schemes, religious places of worship, local governance and community centers
(Feng, 2013; Wen et al., 2005; Xu, 2011; Foggin, 2011) – has a significant effect on people’s
sense of well-being. Social adaptation of ethnic minority groups is therefore a major challenge
post-displacement (Wang and Dai, 2014; Wang et al., 2014). This is particularly the case for the
Tibetan herders in my case study. A crucial question that needs to be considered in resettlement
policy, planning and implementation is how the loss of social and cultural capital can be avoided
or minimized in the first place so that it does not need to be re-established later at the
resettlement destination. The potential for this loss, and the need for its re-establishment, must
become an area of policy concern and be addressed in research and practice.
5.5 Environmentalizing China’s Grassland Degradation
This section is intended to examine how environmentalization of the state is
operationalized through environmental migration. It focuses on explicating the governmental
strategies, the embodied logic, ideas and knowledge, and the technologies and mechanisms that
the state employs to represent and intervene in the grassland domain.

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5.5.1 Rationalizing a governable environment
Forms of thought, knowledge, expertise, strategies and methods of calculation give rise to
specific forms of truth and further render the environment actionable with specific technologies.
In this section, I seek to analyze how the environment is rationalized into a governable object
through the example of environmental migration. Rationalizing a governable environment
includes using “characteristic ways of perceiving and seeing” and “distinctive ways of thinking
and questioning” (Dean, 2010, p. 42). I argue that government of the environment in China
deploys three groups of discourses: the threat/security scenario, degraded but restorable
grassland, and ecological knowledge. These discourses are constructed on different scales and
target different scales, and they facilitate the spatialization of governmentality by reconfiguring
the relationship between the periphery and the core.
China has entered an era of national hyper environmental and ecological discourses since
the 2000s. Political texts are full of ecological terms such as “ecological construction” (Shengtai
Jianshe), “ecological restoration” (Shengtai Xiufu), “ecological fragility” (Shengtai Cuiruo),
“environmental security” (Huanjing Anquan) and “environmental civilization” (Huanjing
Wenming). Environmental discourses proved to be effective in stirring up fears among the
public. Fears, not only of Chinese citizens, but also of citizens in the neighboring countries,
which, in turn, has led to the formation of a pressure group, with input on political decisions, to
support the Chinese government to take action. In other words, the state’s interventions in
governing the environment subsequently gained legitimacy with the public. Official discourses
use the notion “ecological construction” as an umbrella term for all state-directed initiatives and
programs to improve the rural environment. In the environmentalized language, the objective of
carrying out ecological construction is “to recover and reconstruct the degraded ecological

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system and their service functions” (Du, 2008, p. 42). According to Jiang (2005), the term
“construction” (Jianshe) has been linked to a socialist ideology emphasizing “construction” in
various arenas since the 1950s. Especially, “grassland construction” (Caoyuan Jianshe) in the
late 1950s initiated widespread efforts to convert desert regions into productive grasslands. The
old use of the word “construction” takes the meaning of building something new from nothing.
While the current use of word in the term “environmental construction” may inherit some
mentality of its old meaning, I argue that its use nowadays is more focused on the meaning of
fixing and restoring something destroyed. This is in response to the image of a destroyed and
exploited environment. The word “environment” reflects the state’s emphasis on science and
ecological principles to manage land resources.
5.5.2 Governing grassland in the Chinese way
The distinguishing dynamics of China’s environmentalization enabled by the features or
mechanisms of the political structure that fuels power dynamics. The hub of central supervision
connects with the spokes of decentralized decision-makers. Many studies and media reports
define environmental migration as a national policy. National policy is not frequently identified.
Bao and Xun (2007) find that there actually exists no specific or exclusive policy on
environmental migration at the national level. I conclude the same having reviewed policy
documents. Instead, environmental migration is considered a facilitating measure in different
types of documents, mostly related to environment and development. The earliest and clearest
articulation of environmental migration at the national level is in the State Council’s Several
Opinions on Improving the Measures of the Returning Farmland to Forestry Policy (State
Council, 2002; Guofa, 2002, No. 10).

Item 22 states that:

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“for strengthening ecological protection and construction, it is necessary to make
environmental migration and mountain enclosures in the Returning Farmland to Forestry
program, and to implement environmental migration for people living in ecologically significant
areas, ecologically vulnerable areas and areas without basic subsistence conditions. Within the
moving out zone, farmlands are entirely left without cultivation, grasslands are entirely enclosed
for growing and restoring vegetation, and mountains are entirely enclosed for growing and
restoring forestry and vegetation. The state offers subsidies to ecological migrants for
constructing production and living infrastructures. Local governments must be effective in
carrying out production and living infrastructure construction in the resettlement destinations,
making appropriate arrangements for rural households as regards environmental migration and
solving their livelihood problems. In suitable places, environmental migration should be
combined with small town construction.”
The clearest national rule regarding environmental migration is that, in the 11th Five-
Year Plan for Anti-Poverty Resettlement, the compensation level is set at a maximum of five
thousand yuan per person. In the Outline of the 11th five-year plan (2006-2010) of Social and
Economic Development (State Council of China, 2006), environmental migration is clearly
stated in Box 18 on “The Key Fields the Central Government would invest to Support under
Public Service” and Box 8 on “The Function Position and Development Direction of some
Restricted Development Areas”. These suggest that the central state only gives direction rather
than specifications.
“Distant governance” defines central state. As Sigley (2006b) noticed, a very subtle but
important conceptual shift took place in Chinese governmental discourse in 2005 when the
official statement of the 11th Five-Year Planning substituted the Chinese term “Jihua” with

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“Guihua” to refer to “planning”. “Jihua” had been the official term for the socialist plan in China
since the inauguration of five-year plans in the 1950s and it “implies detailed planning and
intervention associated with orthodox socialist planning”, whereas “Guihua” connotes a more
managerial and supervisory role of the CPC and the government (ibid.). The change of the term
was an important sign of the wide shift in the ways of governing, from detailed state planning to
more macro-level supervision or “distant governance”. The state’s shift to a supervisory role was
well manifested in the series of environment-related plans in the last decade.
Local levels of state do not provide any generic policy to guide the plans of
environmental migration projects. Instead, the rules are always specified in each project case. In
organizing environmental migration in my case study, the Golok TAP government is responsible
for carrying out strategic planning, distributing tasks and allocating funding. The prefectural
level of government is responsible for making more specific strategic plans and for proposing
implementation plans to the provincial government for approval. The county level of government
is responsible for detailed planning and implementation of specific projects.
Restructuring and conflicts of interest
The management of environmental migration is dependent on the cross-sector
cooperation of the administrative units in charge of land, people and livestock. It meets constant
challenges from the fragmented political structure.
The increase of the central state’s environmental interests has a significant implication for
the redistribution of power and is likely to cause conflicts of interest between the administrative
institutions within the political system. Due to the multifaceted nature of grassland issues,
several institutions get involved at the horizontal scale with overlapped jurisdiction and
replicated roles. In the Chinese administrative structure, environmental problems related to rural

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land used to be managed only by the economic branches, and governmental departments
responsible for grassland management including animal husbandry, forestry and hydrology.
Their primary state mandate was to enhance economic productivity because the natural
environment was viewed first of all as an economic resource. The rising concern with the
environmental and ecological function of grassland areas tended to shift more power to the
environment-related authorities but it is a challenging process. However, the Ministry of
Environmental Protection has more to say about grasslands through constructing strategic plans
and guidelines, but this is still limited to the national level. The position and power of the
Environmental Protection Agency was for long marginalized in the system. The national level of
the institution, the State Environmental Protection Administration was not upgraded to the
ministry level until 2008. The implication of the lower position is that its practice was
subordinated to other institutions’ decisions and actions.
At the regional and local levels, there is a significant overlap of jurisdiction between the
bodies of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and officials
in Environment Protection Bureaus across the pastoral regions have indicated their desire to
expand their authority over a much broader range of grassland issues (Brown et al. 2008). Still,
the centrality of the Ministry of Agriculture is the leader and is entrenched in controlling
policies. This is because the bureaucratic system of Animal Husbandry and the associated
services has long been established, especially the ground level of the society. The Environmental
Protection Administration is not present in terms of offices, staff and other resources at local
levels. Therefore, the Environmental Protection Administration have to depend on the Animal
Husbandry to conduct activities such as grassland inspections. Moreover, the planning of the
Ministry of Environmental Protection is very dependent on the supply of monitoring information

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from the Grassland Monitoring Center and the Grasslands Resource Inspection and Management
Station, which are part of the Ministry of Agriculture.
Quantifying environmental governance
Quantification and measures, such as statistical measures, reports and data, are widely
found across all governmental documents, especially in relation to addressing environmental
issues. The means of statistics of numbers are associated with the state’s claim to take a
“scientific outlook” and to use scientific, knowledge-based management. In the above sections, I
have shown that environmental problems are firstly quantified with different measures to
highlight the speed, severity and impact of environmental problems; numbers are used in setting
up the threat scenarios of sandstorms and in addressing the pressure of population growth on
grassland. The public are invited to calculate the speed that the desert is approaching the capital.
All these numbers were used to stress the urgency of the issue and suggest the need for the state
to act. The objectives and commitments of the actions are also numberized in terms of funding,
number of people to move, and size of grassland to enclose. The achievements are also presented
with numbers in terms of how many people have been resettled, how much grassland has been
enclosed, how many fences have been built so as to demonstrate the progress of the work.
Numbers and quantifications are not neutral. Through the lens of governmentality,
statistics are no longer taken merely as a means of benefiting the administrative functioning of
the sovereign state. They are used as a basis for measuring and regulating population. I agree
with Hoffman’s view that the use of statistics and comparisons make the environment knowable
and actionable. In his words, “environment has been actualized as a target of governmental
action -- by global environmental discourse, academics, and Chinese governmental organizations
and officials --through devices that quantify in order to show progress and rank places relative to

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others” (2009, p. 114). Greenhalgh (2005) delivers a similar view based on his study of China’s
population policy and he argues that numbers and quantification help to establish goals and
targets that the state apparatuses mobilize to meet. Calculation and comparison create particular
modes of thinking which invite the public to participate in calculating costs and benefits of
environmental problems, thus gaining their support for governmental actions. From a broad
perspective, Hoffman (2009) continues to argue that the wide acceptance of the logic of
quantification is rooted in the taken-for-granted values established in China’s current pursuit of
transiting to a market economy.
Numbers are useful to administrator; they do not make up for insufficient political will.
argue that numbers have also been instrumentalized within the state structure. In a decentralized
system, the central government has limited means to ensure the enforcement of its will at the
local level even though the institutional structure remains the fundamental means. The cadre
performance evaluation and offer of fiscal transfers have provided the hard and soft means. The
common characteristic of both is that they are expressed in quantified measures and numbers.
The central state decides how well the local politicians are doing, based on evaluating the
measures, and also decides how much more financial assistance to distribute to the locals. From
a lower level of government’s perspective, to use numbers while reporting to the upper levels of
government is a strategy to prove its good political performance as well as to argue for further
input. China’s policy inherits empire where the metropole requires acts of obeisance by the local
level. Gestures of compliance are offered through the maintenance of spread sheets and numbers.
5.5.3 Approaching the authoritarian environmental state
The examination of bureaucratic hierarchy, policy-making and implementation processes,
and regulatory patterns can help one understand China’s environmental governance (Wu, 2009).

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While debating the causes behind an obvious paradox—national policy and local variation--
scholars suggest there is a large gap between the central state’s policy efforts and the ineffective
local implementation outcomes, and they also suggest at least three types of structural divide
exist within the state.
The first divide is “fragmented authoritarianism” (Lieberthal, 1997). This model informs
us that although the state holds the greatest decision-making power in producing grand policies,
programs and discourses, when it enforces its will down through the complicated bureaucratic
political system from the center to the local, the will is fundamentally constrained by the barriers
between different functional units at the same level (tiao) and different interests within the same
functional unit at different levels (kuai). Although this is a generic feature, due to the cross-
sectoral nature of most environmental issues, this structural problem is more prominent in
environmental governance.
The second type of divide is the relationship between the central and local state. As
Lieberthal states, “China’s present political system operates in a rather fluid fashion, with great
local variation, considerable opportunity for local initiative, and tremendous pressure on local
officials to give priority to rapid economic development” (1997, p. 8). Decentralization is said to
challenge the central state’s control over the local state, especially in enforcing environmental
mandates. Therefore, an implementation gap is caused by the obstacles in local environmental
politics. Researchers argue that local officials do not implement the central policies properly due
to the pursuit of economic growth at the cost of environmental damage (Lo and Tang, 2006; Mol
and Carter, 2006; Tilt, 2007); and they tend to prioritize economic, political and social interests
ahead of environmental ones in the local political agenda (Wu, 2009). As a result, the differences
between administrative and political cultures in regions become crucial to the policy processes

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(Xun and Bao, 2008). Decentralization is not only associated with problems in policy
implementation but also, as Jiang (2006) argues, to problems in policy formulation. Local
authorities have more power in formulating environmental strategies and specific policies but
local decision-making does not mean this power better suits the local needs. Instead, Jiang’s
(2006) case shows that local environmental policy is against the local ecological conditions and
undermines environmental sustainability. However, the extent of decentralization should not be
overestimated. Decentralization in China, in this sense, is not free flow but granted, directed and
controlled from above by the center to spur economic development. The state remains
centralized and unitary to a large extent, especially in critical circumstances.
The third type of divide lies in the incentive structures set by the central state for
encouraging the local state to implement the central policy appropriately. While the central state
depends on repressive mechanisms such as the cadre performance evaluation to discipline the
local state agents (Laundry, 2008), incentives have become important mechanisms for achieving
state objectives. Nevertheless, incentives can work against their objectives. For example, the
cadre promotion system in which local state agents must strive to impress higher level authorities
through visible economic achievements has driven local agents to make irresponsible decisions
and misuse resources (Cai, 2004). “Selective policy implementation” behavior, in which village
cadres choose to implement some central policies instead of others, is found to be partly caused
by the central state’s incentives (O’Brien and Li, 1999). More specifically, Ran’s (2013) analysis
argues that the local implementation gap in environmental policy is partly produced by the
central government’s failure to provide proper political, financial and moral incentives to the
local governments.

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Despite the above “constraints” views, another group of views addresses how the
political system enables things to happen. Laundry (2008) suggests that the Chinese political
system is institutionally highly adaptive to fostering desired political and economic objectives.
The central state has also sought to be more innovative in adopting more administrative measures
and tools such as binding environmental targets to enhance the local state’s compliance (Kostka
and Mol, 2013). The optimism is most obvious in the ecological modernization approach which
relates the political obstacles to enforcing effective environmental policy only to China’s current
transition phase. Mol (2006) reasons that, unlike industrialized countries, transitional countries
are used to having a dominating political structure, and this character continues to structure the
field of environmental governance, and the character of environmental policies tends to be
moderate and selective since too many other pressing problems exist.
Based on evaluating the dynamics, mechanisms and actors at work in the processes of
China’s environmental reform, Mol (2006) argues that ecological modernization is an ongoing
trend in China. The ecological modernization model has its origin in northern European countries
with social democracies about three decades ago. Promoters of the model argue that the success
in northern Europe provides a guide to its implementation in China and other countries that are
transiting from socialism to capitalism (Fisher, 2002; Mol, 2002, 2006; Mol and Spaargaren,
2000, 2002; Zhang et al., 2007). Muldavin (2007) identifies two currents of ecological
modernization. One is the Keynesian variant, whose position has been put forward by the World
Bank, the Chinese state and other policy-makers, and which asserts that “a strong regulatory and
interventionist state can limit the negative environmental externalities of the transition to a
capitalist economy”. The second is the Cornucopian variant, which has been put forward by
researchers, and which asserts that “the technological advances that accompany the transition to

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an advanced industrialized country will resolve the environmental impacts of rapid
industrialization” (p. 250). The core message of ecological modernization is to argue for the
compatibility between environmental protection and economic growth. Nevertheless, ecological
modernization may frame the road China is taking now, although with its combination of
modernization, technological advancement and resolution of environmental problems, there is no
guarantee it will lead to a sustainable future as is assumed by the theorists. As Huan (2007)
argues, it might be the only realistic road but definitely not the green one. The problematic local
consequences of environmental migration and distributive effects of other green actions have
raised realistic challenges to the assumption of ecological modernization (Yeh, 2009).
Alternative theoretical frameworks other than ecological modernization are needed to
scrutinize the state’s current environmental strategies and actions. The belief in markets, growth
and technocratic interventions fundamentally relate ecological modernization theory to the critics
of neoliberal economic discourses (Muldavin, 2007). Besides questioning the transferability of
the Global North experiences to the South, Blaikie also makes the criticism that ecological
modernization has “little to say about power relations which permeate the socioeconomic
processes which help to shape environmental processes and outcomes, as well as their
representations and framing” (2000, p. 138). The following discussions of political ecology
scholarship thus intend to expand the ways of thinking about and analyzing power and politics in
relation to the human-environment relationship.
5.6 A Political Ecology Approach to China’s Environmental Migration
Political ecology has a wide range of definitions (Robbins, 2004), it contains a large array
of topics (Neumann, 2005) and works across an expanding fluid and ambivalent space that lies
between disciplines (Biersack, 2006), which makes it less “a coherent theory” but rather an

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approach with “similar areas of inquiry” (Peet and Watts, 1996, p. 6). The engaging point of
political ecology is to analyze the power relations that mediate human-environment relations
(Bryant, 1998) and to reveal how and why different political interests and actions of various
actors impact environmental management and natural resource use. Although political ecology
has been widely applied to empirical analysis from a variety of biophysical and cultural settings
in the third world (see e.g. Bassett, 1988; Bryant ,1992, 1998; Bryant and Bailey, 1997; Moore,
1993, 1996; Peet and Watts, 1996; Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003), it has only been partially
applied to studying environmental problems in China (see e.g. He, 2010; Hershkovitz, 1993;
Jiang, 2003, 2006; Muldavin, 1996, 1997, 2000; Tilt, 2007; Yeh, 2009; Yundannima, 2012;
Zukosky, 2008).
A common interest of these studies is to examine the mutual implications of the post-
socialist transition for nature and politics (Hershkovitz, 1993; Muldavin, 1996, 1997, 2000). The
processes of China’s post-socialist transition have created a new set of land-related
arrangements, which have profoundly changed the patterns of production and resource use, and
have significantly altered the relationships between the state, the collective, peasant households,
and individuals. By adopting Blaikie and Brookfield’s (1987) classical approach of political
ecology, which emphasizes political economy, and historical and multi-scalar structural analysis,
these studies suggest that the rapid and unregulated economic growth during China’s transition
has led to the intensification of old environmental problems and created new forms of
environmental degradation in rural China. Recent studies have sought to follow the
developments in the field of political ecology to combine political ecology with other social
theories conducting critical examinations of discourse and knowledge construction (Jiang, 2003,
2006), and reconceptualizing the state power and subjectivities (Yeh 2005, 2009)

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The approach of political ecology has also rarely been incorporated into the empirical
analysis of environmental migration. However, a few insightful works on environmental
migration have raised similar concerns with political ecology (Bao and Xun, 2007; Xie, 2010).
The basic theoretical assumption of political ecology is that there are different actors and
interests surrounding the controls of natural resources, but given the unequal power relations,
actors can impact environmental management and natural resource use differently. Bao and Xun
(2007) have drawn attention to a fundamental mismatch between the state’s policy and the local
practice caused by the contradictions of interests between the central and local states, while Xie
(2010) demonstrates the contrast between the state’s hegemonic and simplified developmental
logic and the indigenous culture and knowledge. In my study, the relevant actors, the central
state, the local state and Tibetan herders all had different interests regarding their
(dis)engagement with environmental migration. While the central state called for ecological
restoration and poverty alleviation, the local state related environmental migration to the
objectives of industrialization and urbanization, and Tibetan herders had varied economic, social
and cultural concerns. These varied interests directed different actions composing processes at
different scales and across scales. Therefore, I see the potential of adopting political ecology for
the analysis of environmental migration.
5.6.1 Changing ways of conceptualizing and analyzing power in political ecology
I classify the development of political ecology into three phases according to the different
ways of conceptualizing and analyzing power. In the first phase, power is conceived as top-
down, structural, negative, repressive and material. Early political ecology studies “combine(s)
the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined political economy” (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987,
p. 17). They conceptualize local resource uses, which revolve around the control of nature and

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labor, as being structured by a larger social engine. Based on the analytical model “chain of
explanation” (Blaikie, 1985; Blaikie and Brokfield, 1987), the causal linkages in driving
degradation can be traced from the local up to the forces at the national and global scale. The
framework continues to be popularly adopted in studying land use issues (Andersson et al., 2011;
Bassett, 1988; Kinlund, 1996; Kull, 2002; Moore, 1993; Peluso, 1992; Vásquez-León and
Liverman, 2004; Widgren, 2012). The model contributes two influential analytical approaches to
geographical studies: (i) to “differentiate between proximate and ultimate causation” (Neumann,
2008, p. 731), and (ii) to deploy the structure-agency binary. A power relationship is
conceptualized as oppositional and confrontational. Analysis is focused on the dialectic society-
nature relationship, classes and inequality. Environment is viewed as an arena in which conflicts
such as those between the elite and the poor, the state and the community, or outsiders and locals
unfold (Bryant, 1996, pp. 221-225).
In the second phase, power is conceived to be constructive and immaterial. By
incorporating post-structural theories, political ecology studies shift the analytical focus to
discerning the social processes of discourse and knowledge production (Bassett and Zueli, 2003;
Bryant, 1998; Fairhead and Leach, 1995, 1996, 1997; Forsyth, 2003; Leach and Mearns, 1996;
Peet and Watts, 1996; Robbins, 2000; Stott and Sullivan, 2000). It is believed that “there can be
no materialist analysis of development (and environment) that is (are) not, simultaneously and
correspondingly, a discursive analysis” (Neumann, 2005, p. 94). This is a response to the
increasingly complex evolution and interactions between knowledge and environmental policy
(Keeley and Scoones, 2000; Robbins, 2000). This is also a critique of the “mainstream”,
“orthodoxy”, “myths” and “received wisdom” (Leach and Mearns 1996), “populist discourses”
(Adger et al., 2001), in accounting and imagining people, animals and environment, especially in

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the African contexts (Fairhead and Leach, 1995, 1996, 1997; Hammer 2004; Leach and Mearns,
1996; Neumann, 1998; Stott and Sullivan, 2000; Sullivan, 2000; Swift, 1996). Development and
environmental discourses have become the main force in shaping the outsiders’ understanding of
the problems and interventions concerning certain regions and peoples in the developing
countries, but as Sullivan (2000) criticizes, many of them have become accepted as “fact” in the
absence of “scientifically derived” data. On top of that, these studies criticize the policy actions
for grounding themselves on these ill-founded accounts. These accounts and narratives are
entrenched and still sustained nowadays because of the scientists’ authority in knowledge, and
the government’s and non-governmental organizations’ power and interest to act on this
knowledge. It is apparent that the meaning and analytical use of power are different from the first
phase. While power is still conceived to be repressive and coercive, it no longer exists only in the
realistic and material conflicts over access to resources. Instead, power constructs another
equally significant immaterial dimension of the processes. Meanwhile, power is not only
analyzed in the shape of a hierarchical structure but also as regards networks.
In the third phase, power is conceived as capillary and productive when incorporating
Foucault’s (1977, 1980, 1982, 1991, 2008) way of imagining power, especially governmentality
studies. Although nature was rarely included in Foucault’s own analyses (Rutherford, 2007), the
lens of governmentality has been actively incorporated into political ecology in different ways.
Rutherford (2007) argues that governmentality offers a promising analytical terrain to
geographers interrogating the intersections between nature, power and society. Scholars have
coined terms such as green governmentality (Luke, 1999; Rutherford, 2007; Watts, 2003; Yeh,
2005), eco-governmentality (Goldman, 2001), environmentality (Luke, 1995; Agrawal, 2005)

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and neoliberal environmentality (Fletcher, 2010) to integrate the governmentality perspective
into political ecology.
Governmentality is “a distinct new form of thinking about and exercising power in
certain societies” (Dean, 2010, p. 28), and “the ways in which the state constitutes its own
objects of governance” (Painter, 2005, p. 56). It is a new observation and reflection upon the
limits of the old art of government of the state. However, this theoretical approach founded by
Foucault does not constitute a unified paradigm. It is not the theory merely to be applied to the
field of geography (Rose-Redwood, 2006, p. 470). Moreover, as Fletcher shows, the
governmentality concept also “has inspired substantial confusion” (2010, p. 173) because
governmentality is deployed in different ways by inspired scholars, including “in ways that belie
its original formulation” (Rutherford, 2007, p. 292). Therefore, it is necessary to specify the key
concepts and theoretical positions both within Foucault’s own history of thought and the inspired
governmentality studies.
The key concept, government, is defined by Dean based on Foucault (1991) as “any more
or less calculated and rational activity, undertaken by a multiplicity of authorities and agencies,
employing a variety of techniques and forms of knowledge, that seeks to shape conduct by
working through the desires, aspirations, interests and beliefs of various actors, for definite but
shifting ends and with a diverse set of relatively unpredictable consequences, effects and
outcomes” (2010, p. 18). Government emerges to identify a new form of power from two older
forms, sovereignty and discipline. Upon observing the changing art of government of the state in
the early modern period of Western European Societies, Foucault claims that governmental
power has become a more important form of power than sovereign power and disciplinary power
due to the pressing concern with the welfare of the population. While the purpose of sovereign

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power is to exercise authority over the subjects of the state within a definite territory, the purpose
of disciplinary power is to regulate and order the number of people in that territory, and
government, “by contrast, regards the subjects, and the forces and capacities of living
individuals, as members of a population, as resources to be fostered, to be used and to be
optimized” (ibid., p. 29).
However, government does not replace sovereignty and discipline but rather “recasts
(sovereignty and discipline) within this concern for the population and its optimization, and the
forms of knowledge and technical means appropriate to it” (ibid., p. 30). The three forms of
power are not mutually exclusive but may coexist, overlap, work together and conflict. However,
Foucault’s use of the term “governmentality” “‘progressively shifts from a precise, historically
determinate sense, to a more general and abstract meaning’ as his lectures proceed” (Fletcher,
2010, p. 173). The meaning of government in the early works of Foucault seems to be very close
to that of disciplinary governmentality in his later work (Foucault’s articulation of the three
forms of power has changed from the above triad in his early work (1991) to four
governmentalities in the later one (2008): (i) sovereign governmentality: according to the
rationality of governing a territory through compelling subjects’ obedience to sovereign will by
direct threat of punishment; (ii) disciplinary governmentality: through the internalization of
social norms and ethical standards to which individuals con form due to fears of deviance and
immorality, and which they thus exercise both over themselves and one another; (iii) neoliberal
governmentality: through building and manipulating market-based incentive structures to
motivate self-interested rational individuals to exhibit appropriate behaviors; and (iv) truth
governmentality: according to claims concerning humans’ essential interconnections with nature
(ibid., pp. 311-313). They operate according to different principles but “overlap, lean on each

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other, challenge each other, and struggle with each other”. Meanwhile, Foucault came up with
another concept biopolitics/biopower, which “is concerned with the administration of the
conditions of life of the population” (Dean, 2010, p. 266). He contrasts sovereignty with
biopolitics as the “right of death and power over life” (Foucault 1977). The biopolitical concern
with the total population also distinguishes it from disciplinary governmentality which is
concerned with individuals (Rutherford, 2007).
To incorporate the governmentality perspective in political ecology is an attempt to better
theorize its core concepts -- politics and power. Despite being taken as the prime driver of the
causes and effects of resource management, politics and power are often taken as being
preexisting. Previous political-ecological analyses ignored the fact that politics and power are
themselves a consequence of processes. Luke coined the concept “environmentality” (1995) and
the term “green governmentality” (1999) to apply the thought of governmentality to the analysis
of environmental issues. While his intention was to examine how regulation works as an attempt
to control or dominate environmental policy and activities, later studies (Agrawal, 2007; Li,
2007; Luke, 1995, 1999; Neumann, 2001; Peluso and Watts, 2001; Sundar, 2001) used the
concepts to investigate how the “technologies and institutions are self-imposed” (Robbins, 2004,
p. 179) by creating “environmental subjects” (Agrawal, 2005) or “educating desires and
configuring habits, aspirations and beliefs” (Li, 2007, p. 5). According to Fletcher’s (2010)
typology of environmentality, these studies have been concerned with the disciplinary sense of
environmentality.
In my view, governmentality has contributed to a new way of conceptualizing power in
political ecology in at least five ways. First of all, power is not about violence or physical
relations of constraint but about freedom; it is a process of guiding the conduct of others. This is

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the need of governing at a distance. As Li reasons, “at the level of population, it is not possible to
coerce every individual and regulate their actions in minute detail” (2007, p. 5). The process
draws attention to the mechanisms by which individuals and social groups internalize the will of
the government (Robbins, 2004). Meanwhile, “when power operates at a distance, people are not
necessarily aware of how their conduct is being conducted or why” (ibid.). Secondly, power is
not preserved, possessed or acquired by any subjects but it exists in practices. Accordingly,
power may not be in the hands of authorities. The sites of governing are multiple. Power
relations between authorities and individuals are conditional and unstable. Government presumes
that the primary freedom of those who are governed is manifested in their capacity to act and
think (Dean, 2010, p. 24). Thirdly, power is ubiquitous or “capillary”, and “permeates …how
(individuals) learn to live and work with other people” (Foucault, 1980, p. 39). This means that
power is not only related to grand actions and interactions, but it lives in everyday and
unremarkable practices. Fourthly, power is not merely negative or repressive but productive of
“reality …domains of objects and rituals of truth” (Foucault, 1977, p. 194). The productive
nature of power is intimately related to knowledge and also to subject formation. Fifthly, a power
relationship is more than oppositional and confrontational. A power relationship should be seen
as more than a relationship between the powerful state and weak people. It also challenges the
conflation tendency, wherein the elite is associated with power as part of the state, and the poor
are associated with resistance as part of locally situated communities.
Rutherford (2007) highlights three key aspects of governmentality that might be useful
for examining environmental politics -- the analytics of power, biopolitics and technologies of
the self. Rather than identifying the abstract center of power, some analytics of government is
interested in the discrete domains which “set(s) conditions” (Li, 2007, p. 5), and “examines the

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conditions under which regimes of practices come into being, are maintained and are
transformed” (Dean, 2010, p. 31). In my analysis, I especially draw on the analytics of power,
which are used to analyze how government is operationalized. Dean proposes that it is possible
to distinguish at least four dimensions of conducting analytics of government. The first is to
analyze the distinctive ways of thinking and questioning. This means to take “the approach to
government as rational and thoughtful activity” (ibid., p. 42). Political rationalities seek to render
particular issues or problems governable and the practices of governing give rise to specific
forms of truth. The task of analysis is thus to identify the forms of thought, knowledge, expertise,
strategies, means of calculation, or rationality that are employed to inform the activity of
governing. Many geographers account for governmentality in terms of the mechanisms of
knowledge production that states have used to constitute their subjects and territories as
“governable” (Rose-Redwood, 2006). Map-making and the collection of statistics are typical
mechanisms to “operationalize governmental rationalities and construct the very ‘objects’ of
government as in some sense ‘knowable’” (ibid., p. 475). The second dimension is to analyze the
characteristic ways of seeing and perceiving. All the ways of visualizing fields to be governed
“make it possible to ‘picture’ who and what is to be governed, how relations of authority and
obedience are constituted in space, how different locales and agents are to be connected with one
another, what problems are to be solved and what objectives are to be sought” (Dean, 2010, p.
41). The third dimension is to analyze the specific ways of acting, intervening and directing. It
asks by what means, mechanisms, procedures, instruments, tactics, techniques, technologies and
vocabularies authority is constituted, and rule is accomplished because the technical means are a
condition of governing and often impose limits over what it is possible to do (ibid., p. 42). The
fourth dimension is to analyze the characteristic ways of forming subjects. Regimes of practices

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do not determine forms of subjectivities but they “elicit, promote, foster and attribute various
capacities, qualities and statuses to particular agents” (ibid., p. 43).
Although governmentality was initially interested in the history of changing forms of
governmental authority and practice in liberal West modernity, an increasing number of studies
have demonstrated that governmentality as an analytical optic, is relevant to non-liberal non-
Western modernity (Agrawal, 2005; Birkenholtz, 2009; Li, 2007), including contemporary China
(Dean, 2010; Jeffrey, 2009; Sigley, 1996). Dean states that governmental rationalities in non-
liberal contexts should be noted for “the different elements of sovereignty and bio-politics they
accentuate and the different ways they articulate them” (2010, p. 173). A new concept,
“authoritarian governmentality” is introduced to refer to a different kind of governmental
rationality which aims to “operate through obedient rather than free subjects, or at a minimum,
endeavor to neutralize opposition to authority” (ibid., p. 155). In Jeffreys and Sigley’s (2009)
view, China’s early socialist governmentality “shares a close geology with the Western liberal
governmentality for the concern with the biopolitical management of life” but the fundamental
difference is that China’s socialist governmentality thinks that “through the science of Marxism-
Leninism it was possible not only to ‘know’ the object to be governed, but also to predict the
precise outcome of a possible intervention” while liberal governmentality accepts a concept of
limited government (pp. 6-7). Therefore, socialist governmentality may facilitate more direct and
coercive technocratic interventions while liberal governmentality employs a series of indirect
methods of shaping the conduct of the governed objects.
The application of government to analyzing Chinese society and politics is closely
connected to the context of China’s transition from a socialist planning economy to market-
oriented economy. During this process, a series of dramatic transformations have taken place in

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economic, social, political and cultural fields. Jeffreys and Sigley (2009) highlight changes in the
nature of governmental thinking in the transitional era – the shift from socialist principles of
government to integrating more neoliberal governing strategies. New mechanisms, such as
market mechanisms and autonomy, have become “part of the new technoscientific-
administrative Party-State” (ibid., p. 7). Moreover, studies over time seem to suggest that
China’s contemporary practices of government have been changing quickly. Sigley’s (1996)
study of China’s one child policy in the 1990s claims that the government used techniques that
were different in significant respects from those deployed in liberal government. Notably, there
was a reduced role of professional expertise and a reduced emphasis on the construction of a
self-governing subject. However, in another theoretical article written ten years later, Sigley
argues that the practice of government is changing in China with “the emergence of a hybrid
socialist-neoliberal...form of political rationality that is at once authoritarian...yet, at the same
time, seeks to govern certain subjects, but not all, through their own autonomy” (2006a, p. 489).
Governmentality has inspired many scholars to study topics such as socialist work units,
policy, population policing and prostitution control in China, and the topics are still expanding;
but, only a small number of them are related to studying nature (Sturgeon, 2009; Williams, 1997,
2000, 2002; Xun, 2006; Yeh, 2005, 2009; Yundannima, 2012; Zukosky, 2008). Interestingly,
these few studies are all focused on rural minorities in the peripheries of China and concern the
question of grassland use. To different extents, they suggest the expansion and reproduction of
the “authoritarian” sense of rationalities and technologies. Nevertheless, there also seems to be a
shift of view among the studies regarding the practices of government. While earlier studies
(Sturgeon, 2009; William, 2002; Zukosky, 2008) addressed absolute social control, recent
studies (Yeh, 2009) have drawn attention to liberal forms of subject formation.

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5.6.2 State power: From dominant organization to governmental practices
Governance impacts ecology, directly and indirectly. Changes in the state’s orientation to
governance rebound on environmental policies and care. Political ecology studies map
transitions and resonances among the state and nature. The dominant depiction of the state in the
first phase of political ecology was as a monoculture (Robbins 2007). In their classical study,
Brookfield (1987) imagines the state as an autonomous and distant player which has the absolute
power to situate the local actors and decide the range of choices for them in resource
management, and their analytical model “chains of explanation” suggests the shape of state
power is linear or simply hierarchical. Similarly, Scott (1998) suggests a totalitarian imagination
of the state as “all-seeing” and “up there”, and the state is taken to be a unitary actor and source
of intuition and capable of making coherent and centralized modernist plans. Influenced by
critical theories, in such studies state power is no longer conceived as something derived from a
unitary entity called the “state” (Ferguson, 1990), and it is also not imagined as “spread(ing)
progressively and unproblematically across national terrain” (Li, 2005, p. 384). A complex
understanding of state power has been advanced by political ecology studies, through deep
analysis of the interests, struggles and dynamics between institutions and agents within the state
(Tilt, 2007), and through disentangling complex assemblages and webs of relation with non-state
actors at different scales (Bassett, 1988; Li, 2007; Rochealeu, 2008).
Governmentality decenters the state as the seat of power because it is based on the idea
that power permeates across the social body, inside and outside the state. Researchers attempt to
“transcend static and bounded representations of formal politics” and appreciate “realignments of
power within and beyond the state” (Painter, 2005, p. 55). Together with the feminist perspective
and ethnography of the state, governmentality studies draw attention to the shifting power

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structures within society and within the state and even beyond the contested boundary between
state and society. Governmentality has also been combined with other theories to analyze the
above- mentioned complexity and contradictions within and beyond the state in the processes of
environmental politics (Bryant, 2002; Goldman, 2001; Rose-Redwood, 2006).
Two analytical approaches of governmentality can be identified. One approach still
focuses on the state, like Foucault’s “governmentalization of the state”. It is interested in
exposing the new rationalities, institutions, technologies, and mechanisms that the state creates
(Li, 2007; Sturgeon, 2009; Williams, 1997, 2000, 2002; Worby, 2000; Xun, 2006; Yeh, 2005,
2009). Geographers are especially interested in spatializing governmentality (Ferguson and
Gupta, 2002; Rose-Redwood, 2006; Rutherford, 2007), “remarking upon the ways in which rule
is organized and circulated through particularly situated bodies and places” (Rutherford, 2007, p.
292). Ferguson and Gupta (2002) further identify “verticality” (the state is above its society) and
“encompassment” (the state encompasses its localities) as two key principles to state
spatialization and argue that the perceptions of them are produced through routine bureaucratic
practices. The other approach is more interested in the formation of subjects (Agrawal, 2005;
Yeh, 2009; Zukosky, 2008). Through examining the ways in which people identify themselves
with or reject state rules/interventions, they draw attention to the mechanisms of forming
subjects and of producing new desires for further intervention as a result of the formed subjects.
5.6.3 Agency of the people: Resistance and migration decision-making
Agency attaches itself to being moved in a number of ways. On the positive side there are
hopes; on the negative, there are fears and anxieties. Separated from routines, most of the
migrated try to make do from day to day, seeking ways to gain access to necessities, find niches
for productive uses of time, or just getting by. In this section, I further discuss the ways of

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thinking about and analyzing agency of the people in light of the above conceptual changes in
political ecology. Place-based development studies have contributed to seeing beyond structural
determinism by revealing the agency of local people, especially peasants, in everyday politics.
The agency of the local people refers to their knowledge of and capability to process social
experiences; local people attempt to solve problems, learn how to intervene in the flow of social
events around them, and notice the various contingent circumstances. Local people are among
the actors that “inhabit(ing), experience(ing) and transform(ing) the contours and details of the
social landscape” (Long, 2001, p. 4). Influenced by development studies, agency of the people
has been widely examined as regards the social struggle for resources access in political ecology
studies. The notion of “resistance” is a particular focus of debate. Agency and political ecology
stress the term “resistance” as both a category of resistance and an expression of struggle with a
new environment that resists old ways of coping and working through everyday living.
The ambiguities of dealing with a new environment generates uncertain classifications.
For example, Gupta argues that any account of development must consider “its shaping by
peasant resistance and activism” (1998, p. 13). Negation is one thing; acting quite another.
Marginal peoples struggle to adapt everyday life and respond to the state and market demands
but also to carve a niche and fashion change (Hazareesingh, 2013; Kull, 2002; Moore, 1993,
1998; Peluso, 1992). Jame Scott’s (1985) concept “everyday resistance” is an important
theoretical source for political ecologists. As Scott reasons, everyday resistance happens more
than social upheaval since the costs of the latter are so high. This refers to a daily expression of
resistance from the peasants to the local elites and authorities and paints a picture of rural people
that are unduly “quiescent”, albeit “never passive” (Starn, 1992, p. 92). The forms of everyday
resistance, “the ordinary weapons of the weak”, are intended to “mitigate or deny claims made

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by superordinate classes or to advance claims vis-a-vis superordinate classes” (Scott, 1985, p.
32), but resistance is thought to be limited by the coercive control of the state, and occurs on “a
small scale, and especially among marginal populations, without access to arms or more formal
instruments of struggle” (Robbins, 2004, p. 56). The concept of everyday resistance has also
been used to advance the theorization on Chinese peasants’ behaviors towards a developmental
state (O’Brien and Li, 2006; Wang and Qu, 2009).
Participation and resistance occur at the intersections of identities among a group. Scott’s
conceptual framework has been questioned because of its exclusion of gender, age and ethnicity
in the production of social inequalities (Hart, 1991; Ong, 1987). More fundamentally, the
prefixed binaries “tradition versus modernism”, “state versus peasant”, “state space versus non-
state space” and “resistance versus hegemony” have been criticized for not providing sufficient
or appropriate analytical frameworks (Herzfeld, 2005; Li, 2005; Zhu, 2008). It is also considered
problematic in many studies to read all forms of resistance as signs of the ineffectiveness of
systems of power, and it is also problematic to read people’s refusal to be dominated as a sign of
the resilience and creativity of the human spirit (Moore, 1998). Nevertheless, scholars “do not
advocate a common path out of this predicament” (ibid., p. 349). Moore (1998) takes resistance
as a spatial practice related to specific places; Zhu (2008) argues that resistance is not a
meaningful concept at the micro-scale but it can be used to define the large-scale context; Li
(2005) thinks resistance involves not simply rejection but the creation of something new, as
people circulate their criticism, find allies, and re-position themselves in relation to the various
powers they must confront. Zhu’s (2008) study of Chinese peasants is especially insightful in
that it argues that although certain actions look like a form of resistance, they should actually be
interpreted as cooperation because resistance in his view is an attempt to defend tradition (Scott,

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1985) which is nevertheless missing in the actions. Instead, common values, visions and interests
are formed between the state and peasants, what he calls commensurability, to pursue
modernization. This means that “resistance” actions may be subordinated to the will of the state
but they may be strategic moves for negotiating better conditions. Therefore, the boundary
between cooperation and resistance needs careful attendance.
Scholars have interpreted Foucault’s understanding of resistance differently. Williams
(2008) thinks that Foucault’s understanding of power leaves no room for resistance; Rutherford
(2007) thinks that Foucault asks us to think of resistance as a component of power; and Fletcher
(2007) contends that Foucault envisioned a greater realm of freedom beyond power and
resistance. The term “resistance” is still often used in governmentality studies to capture tensions
and conflicts in transforming processes. As political ecologist Bryant states, resistance is positive
in the face of the governor’s overwhelming governmentality to transform the will of the
governed (2002, p. 271). The governmentality perspective examines agency through the lens of
subject formation. The basic belief is that actors work in their own interests as part of their role
as environmental subjects (Agrawal, 2005, p. 211). To analyze the agency of people in
environmental subject formation is to find out how people understand the environment and relate
themselves to it, how new knowledge of environment shapes such understandings, and how
changing subjectivity plays a role in resource management. Moreover, political ecology studies
of social movements have shown that communities are able to successfully defend their
ecological interests through mobilizing an ecological identity of the collective ethnic group
(Robbins, 2004, p. 200). There are also studies that combine resistance with technologies of the
governed to form “technologies of resistance”, or “counter-moves to the (state’s subject-making)
strategies” (Birkenholtz, 2009, p. 209). The subjectivities behind the varieties of technologies of

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resistance are further analyzed by including caste, class and ecological conditions to overcome
the old critiques of the concept of resistance.
This study also considers the agency of migrating people through a political ecology
perspective. Political ecology has been linked to migration in several ways. In early political
ecology studies focused on resource degradation questions, migration was often addressed as one
of the consequences (Kinlund, 1996). Later migration studies attempted to draw on political
ecology to explain how political and power structures, through controlling access to resources,
drove rural out-migration (Barney, 2012; Sanderson, 2009), and how migration can reshape
resource use practices in migrants’ former homes (Taylor, 2011). While classical migration
theories often take migration decisions as rational choices with the objective of utility
optimization, political ecology studies have incorporated the sustainable livelihoods approach
which suggests that migration is a livelihood strategy (de Haan, 1999; de Haas, 2010; McDowell
and de Haan, 1997). A livelihood strategy is defined as “a strategic or deliberate choice of a
combination of activities by households and their individual members to maintain, secure, and
improve their livelihoods”; and “this particular choice is based on (selective) access to assets,
perceptions of opportunities, as well as aspirations of actors” (de Haas, 2010, p. 244). The
sustainable livelihoods approach has been especially widely applied in the context of developing
countries. Political ecology and the sustainable livelihoods approach have a common belief in the
importance of local social relations and a combined approach of the two attempts to understand
“how migrants apprehend, negotiate, and transform the social structures that impinge on their
lives” (Carr, 2005, p. 929).
In the context of environmental change, the livelihood perspective suggests that
livelihoods shape migration patterns in two ways: an environmental change may negatively

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impact natural resources that the livelihoods of the people depend on, and migration is a way to
seek for alternative livelihoods or a strategy to diversify livelihoods; and remittances sent back
from migrants secure livelihoods and increase the capacity to adapt to environmental change
(Foresight, 2011). Political ecology offers critical tools to examine a wider scope of questions in
the debate on the relationship between environmental change and migration. Besides questioning
the environmental migration discourses (Adger et al., 2001; Bettini and Anderson, 2014;
Hammer, 2004; Morrissey, 2012; Saunders, 2000), political ecology is used to advance nuanced
theorization about the role of the environment in migration decisions (Carr, 2005). By adopting a
Foucauldian conceptualization of power, Carr (2005) argues that environment, economy and
society are linked in migration decision-making through local manifestations of power. These
manifestations of power are the condition for and the result of local understandings of
environment, economy and society and therefore form the foundation upon which the rationale
for migration decisions takes shape. The methodological insights from his study are, first, to shift
the focus of study from conditions that drive migration towards the local power/knowledge in
which environment, ecology and politics are understood; and second, to examine the perceptions
behind people’s actions to negotiate and transform their contexts.
5.6.4 Construction of environmental knowledge
Power and knowledge have been taken as flip sides of the same coin since the second
phase of political ecology (Bryant, 2002). As I have discussed, poststructural political ecologists
challenge discourses with taken-for-granted facts through problematizing the knowledge
production behind these facts. Two approaches have been developed. The first is an ecology-
centered approach, which examines biophysical processes to expose environmental truths
(Forsyth, 2003; Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003). By combined use of methods such as satellite

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image analysis and ethnography, scholars have demonstrated that popular narratives such as
deforestation and grassland degradation are contradictory to the time-space ecological history of
specific places (Bassett and Zueli, 2003; Fairhead and Leach, 1995, 1996, 1997; Jiang, 1999,
2003). New theories have also been developed to challenge the old way of understanding
ecology. A good example is new range ecology theory (Behnke and Scoones, 1993; Dahlberg,
1994; Ellis and Swift, 1988). The theory proposes a non-equilibrium model and argues that,
ecology in arid and semi-arid areas with high rainfall variability is determined by climatic
instead of biological factors. This implies that “grassland degradation and desertification are not
caused by overgrazing but are part of a natural process of vegetation decline and growth in
response to rainfall, which ruminant numbers merely follow” (Ho, 2001b, pp. 125-126).
Grassland management policies which are embedded in an equilibrium model are therefore
problematic. The key measures such as stocking rate, fencing and land privatization are also
criticized for being based on problematic scientific grounds. Following the idea of the new
theory, a number of empirical studies have been carried out to re-evaluate and re-think grassland
claims in different areas of the world (Leach and Mearns, 1996; Turner, 2003). Besides
academia, local knowledge and embedded management institutions in local cultures have also
become important sources of counter-knowledge construction (Niamir-Full, 1999; Humphrey
and Sneath, 1999; Turner, 1998, 1999).
The other is a politics-centered approach. It challenges discourse/knowledge through
revealing “what reality is being constructed, by whom, for whom, for what political purpose, and
to what political effect” (Biersack, 2006, p. 14) (e.g. Bryant and Bailey, 1997; Peet and Watts,
1996; Stott and Sullivan, 2000). This analytical approach highlights the plurality of perceptions,
definitions and positions of environmental problems among different actors and interests. The

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politics of resource management are focused on the politics between different knowledge
systems. Analysis of conflicts has in turn investigated the contradictions and competition
between meanings, symbols, aesthetics and knowledge. As Adger et al. (2001) argue, the current
reality is that the major discourses of global environmental issues such as deforestation,
desertification, biodiversity use and climate change, have been institutionalized by international
organizations and they further feed into narratives and political decisions of national states. The
major discourses, especially populist discourses, are based on the knowledge of the powerful
players while the voices and knowledge of the local residents who historically lived and worked
in these environments are often left out. The mission of political ecologists is thus to get the local
voices heard because they believe that local knowledge is viable to local sustainability.
In a similar way to poststructuralists, Foucault sees power constituted through accepted
forms of knowledge, scientific understanding and “truth”. The difference, according to my
observation, is that governmentality locates its concern at the level of population – biopolitics.
Knowledge and power are thus made agents for transforming human life in biopolitics.
Analytically, the governmentality perspective pays analytical attention to technologies of
knowledge production, “the particular technical devices of writing, listing, numbering and
computing that render a realm into discourse as a knowable, calculable and administrable object”
(Miller and Rose, 1990, p. 5). For example, Williams (2002) sees Chinese grassland science and
policy as “tools of social control that impose a rigid order on (their) subject populations” which
“makes it difficult to imagine alternative scenarios” (Zukovsky, 2008, p. 45). Therefore, the
governmentality perspective highlights that certain knowledge/power structures the field of other
knowledge/power.

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In sum, scholarship on environmental politics suggests there are at least three types of
structural divide within the state to explain the causes of ineffective environmental policies:
fragmented authoritarianism, the relationship between the central and local state, and incentive
structures set by the central state for encouraging the local state to implement the central policy
appropriately. While the current popular approach of ecological modernization assumes the
state’s current environmental strategies and actions will lead to a sustainable future, I concur
with Blaikie (2000) in criticizing there is “little to say about power relations” (p. 138). I seek to
combine the insights from environmental politics with theories from political ecology to enrich
the explanation of the environmental state’s trajectory. Political ecology is a highly dynamic
approach composed of shifting views and contested positions.
5.7 Summary
This chapter has shown how environmental conceptions in China are closely tied to the
political discourse of territorial control. The environmental conceptions of Tibetan herders and
State environmental policies were explained and analyzed through political contextualization and
“micro-analysis” of the local milieu.
“Degraded” grasslands need to be emptied of both livestock and people in order to be
properly protected. According to the logic of environmental migration, the inhabitants of the
grasslands that were judged “degraded” by Chinese authorities. They were thus forced to
undertake migration and move into the new settlements. Moreover, the official discourse
promoting migration also asserts that the Tibetan herders’ living conditions will be improved in
the new settlements, as the government promised to provide not only houses, but also hospitals
and schools for the new settlers. In many cases as shown in Chapter 4, however, these have

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turned out to be empty promises, as verified by my own fieldwork experience, which reveals a
large discrepancy between the official discourse and lived experience.
Although a shared view of the Tibetan Plateau’s environmental problems does exist,
Tibetan herders’ interests and aims do not match those of the Chinese government and vice
versa. This difference of objectives generates different kinds of ecological discourses and
policies. The Chinese government, on the pretext of environmental protection, is reducing and
gathering the inhabitants of the Tibetan Plateau, thus allowing better control and surveillance
over a troublesome national minority. Tibetan herders, on the other hand, appropriate State
ecological discourse to advocate a turn towards previous husbandry practices linked to a
nomadic life-style. This clashes with China’s political agenda.
The last part of this chapter described the milieus where ecology and politics overlap. It
showed how ecological discourse and environmental protection projects are used as tools to
impose ecological but also political wills, the latter concerned with the control of the territories
and peoples of a strategically important region, rich in natural resources.
From a Foucauldian perspective, the Three Rivers’ Sources Nature Reserve can be
viewed as a “milieu” because it is located at the point of intersection where power intervenes in
the tangle between the natural and human worlds. The scientific discourse nourishes a political
discourse that influences the people and the natural environment examined by this scientific
discourse. The switching from political to ecological frames arises from the ambiguity created by
the State’s intervention in a specific “milieu”. This fixed space is “naturalized” by this switching
process and, by doing so, its political character is masked under ecological frames. This prevents
Tibetan herders from raising any political claim linked to these policies because they are
introduced in the apparently “apolitical” field of ecology. At the same time, the privileging of

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scientific expertise and discourse and the assumption of the backwardness of Tibetan herders in
this regard, prevent the herders from participating in discussions relating to environmental
projects on the Tibetan Plateau.

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Chapter 6: Conclusion
Linkages between environment and migration have evolved over the past decades. Today
there is an increasingly sophisticated understanding of these issues. Existing research on
historical and contemporary environment-migration connections provides important insights as
to the causal, temporal, and spatial dimensions of this association. On causal connections,
analogs suggest environmental conditions and changes represent but one set of “push” and “pull”
factors acting upon human migration. Environmental factors, ultimately, interact with
socioeconomic, cultural, and political processes to shape migration decision-making.
Temporally, a wide variety of migration patterns are present. These patters range from short-
term, temporary environmentally related migration to permanent relocation resultant of, for
example, natural disasters. On the spatial aspects, the analogs described above are consistent
with research that suggests the majority of future environment-related movements will be
internal or intraregional as opposed to geographically extensive movements crossing
international boundaries.
The environmental change-migration nexus should not be treated simply as an
involuntary. As a forced response to exogenous stimuli, migration decisions are the product of
differentiated levels of capability at community, household, and individual levels. IPCC
reporting, for example, once characterized migration as “an involuntary, last-resort response to
climate change” (IPCC, 2001, p. 397). The group later qualified it as a subject about which
“scientific consensus was lacking” (IPCC, 2007, p. 365). Migration is now described as “an
essential element of human security”, playing a central role in adaptation more generally (IPCC,
2014, p. 767). Current IPCC reporting reflects the efforts of scholars, governments, and
international organizations to move beyond alarmist discourses. There persists a growing

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alignment with research on the migration-development nexus, where questions of capability,
agency, gender, and similar factors become important considerations, and which particularly
emphasizes the important albeit ambiguous impact of remittances (Faist, 2008; Faist and Schade,
2013).
A significant outcome of this evolution is how the subject of migration in the context of
environmental change is approached. Once seen as a problem to be feared and avoided, it is now
discussed and promoted as a solution (Vlassopoulos, 2013). This new policy discourse views
migration as an adaptation to environmental change, whereas it was previously seen as
involuntary flight from environmental distress. Further, migration as adaptation is frequently
understood to include not only labor migration undertaken as a livelihood strategy by people
exercising agency, but it also encompasses planned relocation that countries are encouraged to
consider as a response strategy under the UNFCCC’s Cancun Agreements (UNFCCC, 2011).
The new perspective, migration as an adaption strategy, requires that the limits as well as the
capacities of mobility be examined. The conditions of environmental risks, human insecurity,
and common vulnerability, need be better understood. In sociological research, the commonly
used analytical framework for addressing this challenge focuses on the effects of migration
through the lens of social inequality in its material (resources) and non-material aspects (such as
status and power) (Tilly, 2009). Inequalities thereby figure both as part of the preconditions for
environmental migration and as part of the outcomes. This raises important questions about the
effects of migration on social inequalities -- whether old inequalities are perpetuated in the
course of migration, and whether new inequalities arise.
The concept of social-ecological systems lies at the heart of discussions of environmental
change and migration. Such systems are defined as complex relationships characterized by

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multiple, stochastic and/or non-linear interactions between elements of the system (Gallopin,
2006). Human action and ecological structures are linked and dependent on each other. For
example, environmental disasters can dramatically disrupt social interactions and contribute to
human mobility. They often reveal both physical vulnerability (e.g. weak infrastructure) and
social vulnerability (e.g. poverty, power structures that undermine certain groups) (Oliver-Smith,
2002, 2003). Additionally, processes linked to human activities and their social, economic and/or
political systems directly (e.g. land degradation) or indirectly (e.g. climate change) can drive
migration.
The relationship between migration and adaptation is as complex and multi-layered as is
the relationship between migration and environmental change. Ecosystems are shaped by human
activities, but also set constraints to human activities by shaping economic activities and social
norms. Migration can represent a response to changing environmental and economic conditions.
Migration can also exacerbate environmental and economic problems in receiving areas. As the
case study in Golok TAP shows, Tibetan environmental migrants have to settle in “resettlement
villages” which are the limbo areas between urban and remote places. In remote herding areas,
local Tibetan herders struggle to establish a social network necessary to find employment, earn
wages, and send remittances home to support family members.
Environmental migration is closely linked with adaptive capacity. As such, the nature and
scale of environmental migration depend on the extent to which the global community engages
in proactive capacity-building in vulnerable populations and regions. Rural-to-urban and peri-
urban migration rates may increase, particularly within developing regions where exposure to
environment-related risks and dependence on local natural resources are both high. Patterns of
“non-migration” are also of particular importance in considering future environment-related

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population movements. Because socio-demographic characteristics shape the probability of
permanent migration so strongly, targeting efforts to enhance adaptive capacity at particularly
vulnerable households may well have the effect of reducing involuntary environmental migration
in many settings. Given the inherent role of social inequalities in environmental migration
processes, how optimistic should we be about migration as adaptation? Any number of possible
obstacles can prevent the adaptation benefits of migration from being realized (Schade, 2013).
Migration inevitably entails risks and trade-offs, and migrants may encounter serious -- even life-
threatening -- difficulties on their journey or at their destinations. The act of migration will not in
itself address the risks and inequalities migrants face with respect to guaranteeing livelihood,
which shapes an individual social status within a community. Status determines the power
structures in the families and communities where decisions about migration and non-migration
are made. Moreover, the risks attached to migration as an adaptation strategy extend beyond the
individual migrant. Households in the place of origin may struggle to compensate for the lost
contributions of the absent member. The departure of large numbers of out-migrants may have
adverse impacts on the social fabric, the adaptive capacity, and the resilience of the communities
left behind. Migrant receiving communities may also struggle to absorb sudden and large
numbers of new arrivals, causing resilience and adaptive capacity to decline. These are but a few
of the many considerations of migration as adaptation that leads us to ask: Adaptation for whom?
At which societal level? And at whose cost?
In this chapter, I shed light on the above questions and consider how they relate to the
inequalities inherent in the migration option and its outcomes. First, discussions about
inequalities are summarized within the environmental migration debate. The preceding chapters
focused on how inequalities, which were traced and addressed with empirical findings. Second,

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the Anthropocene is introduced in order to take a closer look at the lessons learned from
migration research on the relationship between inequalities and migration. After the results of
migration are recalled and set in context, this chapter raises a final question: how and to which
extent inequality can be addressed by the policy instruments that induced migration?
6.1 From Society and Nature to Socio-Ecological Systems
Traditionally nature and society have been constructed from a fundamentally dualistic
perspective. Society exists as a collection of human constructs and relations, and nature is the
context or background. Concern for ecological degradation was and, in many contexts, still is
based on the idea that society is out of step with some supposed natural order. The solution to
these problems is to learn to live in balance with nature. From one perspective, the general tenor
of these positions evokes general agreement, but they are still constructed from a fundamentally
binary perspective. In many contexts, the relationship between society and nature still continues
to be framed in dualistic terms with two separate entities in some kind of interaction, whether
healthy or distorted (Wallington et al., 2005).
The natural and social sciences began to move away from dualistic thinking in the 1980s.
Disaster research proposed an interactive model of human and natural affairs through stressing
vulnerability and resilience as its informing dialectic. Social and environmental processes were
brought together in the analysis of disasters, with the recognition that nature and society were
both implicated in the construction of vulnerability. The concept of vulnerability to disasters is
just one of many contexts that oblige rethinking the relationships among society and nature
(Oliver-Smith, 2002, 2004). In situating causality in disasters in societal-environment relations,
the concept of vulnerability forced a re-envisioning of the nature-society relationship.

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As such, disaster research joined ecology in a major reconsideration of human-nature
relationships. In the social sciences in general a trend emerged “to decipher the social
implications of what has always been the case, namely a nature elaborately entangled and
fundamentally bound up with social practices and their characteristic modes of cultural
representation” (MacNaghten and Urry, 1998, p. 30). However, the mutuality of nature and
culture does not mean the “socializing” nature to the point that it disappears in a forest of
interpretations. As those who “ecologize” culture, those who would “culturize” ecology risk
obscuring as much as they illuminate. What is agency of nature in society-nature relations? The
natural forces present in any environment have enormous power to affect society, but it is society
that actualizes their potential. This perspective strives to recognize that, given the human impact
on nature, the objective circumstances that natural processes occur in are now socio-historical
products (Oliver-Smith, 2002).
Alternative views that questioned the dualism in constructs of the relationship between
nature and society strive to create more synthetic approaches that can address the mutuality of
nature and culture (Biersack, 1999). At one extreme, some spoke of the end of nature or the
abolition of nature, positing that human interaction with nature had transformed the entire globe
into a human environment. The difference between nature and society for some scholars now
could no longer be maintained and nature became fundamentally a social entity (Bluhdorn, 1997;
Eder, 1996; Beck, 1995; Giddens, 1991; Ingold, 1992; Escobar, 1999). Others prefer to develop
approaches that stress a kind of critical realism, emphasizing a balance between the social
construction of nature and the natural construction of the social and cultural (Stonich, 1993;
Oliver-Smith, 2004). These and other approaches are part of an effort to seek a fuller recognition
of the role human beings have taken in shaping as well as being shaped by nature by

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conceptualizing a “bio-cultural synthesis” (Goodman and Leatherman, 1998, p. 159). The “new
materialism”, as Biersack (1999) dubs it, addresses the challenge of bringing nature into the
cultural realm without “effacing nature’s autonomy from the cultural realm” (p. 11).
Understanding environmental change and its effects, such as population mobility,
requires reframing nature-society relations from a duality to a mutuality, positing that nature and
society are inseparable, each implicated in the life of the other, each contributing to the resilience
and vulnerability of the other. That is, in this understanding, people are not just vulnerable to
environmental changes, but also environmental changes are increasingly the result of human
activity, not just technologically but in terms of human alteration, or construction of the
environment. In a sense, the question of how well a society is adapted to its environment must
now be linked to the question of how well an environment fares around a society. The issue of
mutuality is now at the forefront.
Hilhorst, addressing disaster causality, considers the mutuality concept a new paradigm,
not just an elaboration of a theme derived from vulnerability models. She contends that the
mutuality idea differs from what she refers to as the structural approach because it rests on
different notions of causality, social change, and responses to disaster vulnerability (2004, p. 53).
The structural approach is based on the idea that the causes of disaster vulnerability can be
reduced to a limited number of root causes of social and ideological origins. To appropriately
address disaster vulnerability, these root causes must be confronted, involving a distinct political
agenda for the necessary radical changes.
The mutuality concept is an approach that has more in common with complexity theories
that are concerned with stability and change in systems. These systems are complex in the sense
that they consist of many independent features that interact with one another in a variety of ways

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(Hilhorst, 2004). The concept of mutuality indicates that movement from an understanding of
nature and society as a duality of separate entities in interaction to an approach informed by the
idea of component parts interacting in a single complex system, now essentially referred to as a
socio-ecological system. Each component in this system operates in relationship with the other,
although each also has its own autonomous processes that are capable of acting independently of
the other. It is no longer possible to understand the operation of one component without
considering the operation of the other. In effect, the impacts of society on nature are now so
widespread and profound that the two have become conflated. Some even suggest that human
action now dominates and that we are living in a new geological epoch referred to as the
Anthropocene (Vitousek et al., 1997; Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000).
6.2 Environmental Migration as An Adaption to the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene concept was coined by the chemist and Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen
and biologist Eugene Stoermer at the turn of the new millennium to describe a new geological
era dominated by human activity (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). Since then it has taken root in
scientific and public discourse and offered a powerful narrative of human resource exploitation,
planetary thresholds and environmental urgency. Central to the Anthropocene proposition is the
claim that humanity has left the benign era of the Holocene – when human civilizations have
developed and thrived – and entered a much more unpredictable and dangerous time when
humanity is undermining the planetary life support systems upon which it depends (Steffen et al.,
2015). In the Anthropocene era, the Cartesian dualism between nature and society is broken
down resulting in “a deep intertwining of the fates of nature and humankind” (Zalasiewic et al.,
2010, p. 2231). The Anthropocene concept represents a tremendous opportunity to engage with
questions of meaning, value, responsibility and purpose in a time of rapid and escalating change

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(Rose et al., 2012); but critics maintain that the institutions and networks out of which the
Anthropocene concept has emerged to date have failed to bring qualitative questions of this kind
to bear on their research activities. In the quest for solutions to urgent collective action problems,
the focus has primarily been on means rather than ends and attention has hereby been diverted
away from the social and cultural norms, practices and power relations that drive environmental
problems in the first place (O’Brien, 2012). As a consequence, the global change research
community has been charged of producing a post-political Anthropocene narrative dominated by
the natural sciences and focused on environmental rather than social change (Malm and
Hornborg, 2014; Castree et al., 2014; Swyngedouw, 2014). The dynamic interaction between a
continuously changing environment and a continuously adapting human population is thus the
most elemental level at which the diffusion of the human species and the resulting settlement,
migration, and mobility patterns have been shaped over the course of our time on this planet.
As discussed above, the Anthropocene hypothesis suggests that the Earth is moving out
of its current geological epoch and that human activity is responsible for this exit. Humankind
has thus become “a global geological force in its own right” (Steffen et al., 2011a, p. 843). As
such, matters of style aside, is not less powerful than the great forces of nature as traditionally
described. Therefore, human influence on the environment possesses such reach that it has led to
the irreversible entanglement of social and natural systems. They would now be literally
“coupled” (Liu, 2007; Kotchen and Young, 2007). Climate change is the most spectacular
outcome of this shift, but it is far from being the only one -- disappearance of pristine land,
urbanization, industrial farming, transportation infrastructure, mining activities, loss of
biodiversity, organism modification, technological leaps, growing hybridization, along with

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other environmental changes are also on the list. Thus, it is a quantitative shift that represents
also a qualitative change.
As the ongoing explosion in the size of the global human population and the concurrent
expansion of economic activity have placed tremendous pressure on natural systems and ushered
in an era of human-induced global environmental change. This change has been unfolding, and
continues to unfold, in two ways: (i) as an accumulation of local and regional changes such as
forest cover removal, soil erosion, shoreline modifications, chemical pollution, coral reef
damage, and biodiversity losses that collectively undermine the functioning of the global
physical environment; and (ii) as systemic alterations to the functioning of global physical
processes, through activities such as the release of substances that deplete stratospheric ozone,
the discharge of micro-plastic pollution into the oceans, and the release of climate-altering
greenhouse gases (Meyer and Turner, 2002).
The impacts of these environmental changes are experienced at local and global levels
and have implications for all aspects of the human condition: our health, our economic well-
being, our social structures, and so forth. Further, the rate and intensity of such changes are
accelerating, which means that the scale of the adaptation challenges with which we are
confronted is also rising (Hackmann et al., 2014). The most quintessential anthropocenic
phenomenon and far-reaching environmental challenge of the Anthropocene epoch is climate
change. It has been known for almost two centuries that temperatures at the Earth’s surface are
influenced by trace gases in the atmosphere. Jean-Baptiste Fourier (1878) made the first such
hypothesis in the 1820s; English engineer John Tyndall’s experiments in the 1860s demonstrated
the relative heat-absorptive capacity of various atmospheric gases; and by the end of the 19th
century, Swedish physicist Arrhenius (1896) offered the first mathematical calculations of

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carbon dioxide’s forcing effects on ground temperatures. Once the necessary technology (e.g.,
instrumentation, satellites, computer power) became available to measure, observe, and forecast
the relationship between atmosphere and climate, it has been evident that anthropogenic
emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) were fundamentally
altering the Earth’s climate. In this case, the fact that the natural fluxes of carbon dioxide into
and out the atmosphere are more than ten times larger than the amount that humans put in every
year by burning fossil fuels does not deprive the Anthropocene hypothesis of its validity, because
such human addition matters extraordinarily insofar as it unbalances those delicate natural flows.
As a consequence, the climate gets warmer, the Arctic starts to melt, sea levels rise, the
efficiency of photosynthetic processes of many plants is increased, oceans develop new
chemistry, and the hydrological cycle of evaporation and precipitation is intensified. In turn, this
have effects on both people and planetarian processes—ranging from less evaporation from
croplands as photosynthesis is more efficient to more weathering of mountains as it rains more
often.
The short-term economic consequences would be staggering, the imminent impacts of
climate change on human well-being will be far-reaching and will exceed in economic cost any
environmental challenge human beings have collectively faced to date. In the Arctic, the physical
manifestations of anthropogenic climate change are already visible in the form of receding ice on
land and sea. As a consequence, northern communities are being forced to adapt through
technological investments such as relocating critical infrastructure, and behavioral changes such
as shifting hunting and fishing patterns (Ford and Pearce, 2010). As sea levels continue to rise,
many smaller northern communities are reaching the point where the costs of staying in place are
becoming prohibitive, and the communities may eventually need to be abandoned entirely

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(Huntington et al., 2012). But this is just the thin edge of the wedge. The global physical impacts
of climate change—including the intensification of storms, floods, droughts, and similar events
that already displace people and affect migration patterns—will inevitably become manifest in
more populated regions. We are poised to enter an era of settlement abandonment and
consequent migration on a scale not seen in centuries, indeed millennia (McLeman, 2011).
6.3 Interactions between Nature and Environment
It is universally recognized that human beings have had an enormous impact on the
biophysical world, profoundly altering what we have traditionally called “nature”. Yet, “nature”,
even in its altered and socialized state, still has the capacity to drive processes with enormous
impact on human society. Indeed, what kind of nature has been placed under discussions? Novel
conceptual tools are needed to articulate the complexities that are emerging out of these new, and
some not so new, conditions in socio-ecological systems. Both social and natural sciences need
to develop concepts and approaches that reflect “the interactions between society and the agency
of nature” (Dickens, 2001, p. 94). In particular, the cultural and scientific discourses of a
language to address these complex relations and interactions must be discovered, articulated, and
rendered manifest.
It is important to pay attention to the conflation of the terms nature and environment.
Nature refers to the features and processes that characterize the biotic community. Environment
refers to the issue of mutuality, the mutual constitution of humans and nature in socially
constructed contexts. Problematically, however, in objections to assessments of environmentally
driven displacement and migration the terms nature and environment are characteristically
conflated. One of the objections to the idea of environmentally driven migration is that it tends to
suggest that nature is at fault, when in fact humans are deeply implicated in the environmental

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changes that make life impossible in certain circumstances. A rigorous definition of environment
as recombinant nature (Murphy, 2001), that is, the social construction of nature’s features and
processes for human purposes, gives full recognition to the complexity, including the human role
in environmental change that drives environmental displacement and migration.
Today in the environmental subfields of the social sciences, such as ecological
anthropology, environmental sociology, and cultural geography, the concepts of nature and
environment are not interchangeable, but have become quite distinct. Nature is biologically
constructed, referring to those biological, chemical, and geophysical features and processes that
compose the substance and functioning of terrestrial systems, which are characterized by
spatial/temporal heterogeneity and functional diversity (Holling, 1994). These systems are
maintained by cycles of renewability that ensure the capacity of the global system to reproduce
itself, maintaining within a range of variation the set of biotic conditions that enable life to
persist.
Murphy discusses a state he calls “pristine” nature, which applies to regions unaffected
by human action (2001, p. 326), although he acknowledges that pristine nature has been largely
replaced by a “primal” nature that retains its capacity for autonomous action (2001, p. 331).
While undoubtedly at some early point when the human population was much smaller and more
widely dispersed, it is possible to speak of something called “pristine nature”, it is also a well-
documented fact that human beings have been integral parts and active shapers of “nature”
throughout time. For example, the archeological research in the Amazon, long imagined as
“pristine,” reveals that pre-Columbian population densities, settlement patterns, and landscape
transformations were far more extensive than has been portrayed. Far from being a “pristine”
natural environment, the Amazon was evidently a deeply affected cultural landscape in the pre-

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Columbian era that, nevertheless, did not endanger biodiversity (Heckenberger et al., 2003).
Nonetheless, some conservationists call for the removal of long resident populations from a wide
variety of environments in which floral and/or faunal species are considered endangered.
Sometimes referred to as “greenlining” or “ecological expropriation”, this strategy of the forced
removal of people from their homelands, often without notice or consultation, produces yet
another variety of “environmental refugee” (Geisler and de Sousa, 2001).
Unlike “pristine” nature, environment is socially constructed. It is the outcome of the
interaction of natural features and processes with social features and processes. In that sense, the
term “natural environment” is an oxymoron. Environments consist of the instantiation of social
processes in nature, thereby converting the natural into a social product (Harvey, 1996). There
are natural features and processes at work in environments, but they are expressed and channeled
socially, either as resources, recognized or unrecognized, or threats, recognized or unrecognized.
In effect, nature’s dynamics are infused in social processes and are thus used by humans for their
purposes. Murphy refers to this as “recombinant nature” (2001, p. 325).
Clearly, however, at the same time natural features and processes continue to operate
with effects that are far from entirely controlled by the social (Oliver-Smith, 2004). In Murphy’s
terms, technology, also part of recombinant nature, is the blending of socially constructed
elements and features and forces of nature (natural materials and the laws of chemistry, physics,
biology, etc.) for socially defined purposes. Technology always has the capacity to malfunction,
often with catastrophic effects. The second half of the twentieth century has seen the creation of
completely new technologies, whose mere implementation, regardless of potential or actual
malfunction, has had profound environmental and, in some cases, catastrophic impacts (Perrow,
1999). Many of these new technologies, ranging from toxic chemicals to nuclear power plants,

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have been added to the list of hazards which now threaten communities, not necessarily with
material destruction, but with altogether novel biologically derived hazards, creating new forms
of injury (Quarantelli, 1991). Human technological interventions, while in many cases providing
more security, in other instances added many degrees of complexity to existing natural threats.
Latour (1993) has called these features and processes that come into existence and act in
both the material and the social world “hybrids”. When we have a way of theorizing that
hybridity, fundamental as it is to human life, we will have achieved a great deal, not only in our
own work, but for the social sciences and humanities as well (Oliver-Smith, 2004). At its most
profound, that is the conceptual challenge that environmental migration sets before us. Other
issues that reside at the convergence of social and ecological systems such as disasters, food
security, and health pose similar challenges to theorizing nature society relations.
In effect, social and material practices in combination with natural processes frequently
evolve into novel conditions that we must cope with and adapt to. In the case of hazards,
potential and actual disasters, we may encounter forms that we have little experience with. The
degradation of the environment, in some cases driven by the quest for profit and in others created
inadvertently by those subsumed disadvantageously in that quest, now accounts for conditions of
accentuated vulnerability to both natural and technological hazards around the world.
Inappropriate forms of natural resource exploitation engendered by western conceptions of the
relationship between society and nature are now driving many of the processes that endanger
both. A finer-grained understanding of both environmental conditions and disasters must be
based on an approach that can include the mutuality of the agencies of nature and society. It must
be recognized that the environment is a socially mediated force and context experienced by

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people, both positively and negatively, just as society expresses itself environmentally both
positively and negatively.
6.4 How to Decide on the Success or Failure of Environmental Migration?
The question of environmental migration is a central arena where the Anthropocene finds
its social articulation. In environmental migration literature as well as in the preceding chapters,
questions of inequality and environmental migration were tackled. The latest IPCC report on
adaptation also pays considerable attention to inequality and its links to mobility, and to
migration as adaptation. It recognizes that differences between persons and groups, such as
gender, class, ethnicity, age, race, or (dis) ability, typically feed into “intersecting dimensions of
inequality” and result in “multidimensional vulnerability” across different scales of income and
status that are represented as a continuum between “privileged” and “marginalized” people
(IPCC, 2014, p. 807). The IPCC further points out some of the consequences of inequalities for
migration as adaptation. For example, they note that male out-migration frequently leaves
women with more duties; that children and the elderly typically enjoy less mobility; that low-
income groups in urban areas (including migrants) face more risks than do other citizens; and,
that pioneer, long-distance, and international migration are adaptation options “restricted to
wealthier populations” (IPCC, 2014, p. 50).
A preoccupation of the IPCC’s discussions of migration as adaptation is the
circumstances under which household migration becomes a successful adaptation and when it is
unsuccessful or leaves people worse off (typically referred to as maladaptation). As with other
types of human action and societal processes, when migration takes place, there are winners and
losers—successful and unsuccessful outcomes—distributed across societal levels. A successful
outcome for the household may simultaneously leave subordinate individuals within the

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household less well off—or vice versa. Similarly, migration outcomes beneficial to individuals
or households may have adverse effects on the adaptive capacity of other members of the same
neighborhood or community. To date, there has been limited systematic research into the multi-
scale impacts of adaptive migration on sending and receiving communities. McLeman (2010),
and McLeman and Ford (2013) have looked at the demographic consequences of migration in
rural and remote communities in Canada. Banerjee et al. (2013, 2011) used household surveys to
estimate local job creation from investment of remittances at the place of origin in the
Himalayas. Until the differential impacts at destinations and on the host communities’ adaptive
capacity are understood, it is exceedingly difficult to gauge the potential for migration to be
successful adaptation to environmental change.
The capability to turn migration into a successful adaptation strategy depends heavily on
the socio-economic circumstances of the household, and its access to the material and non-
material resources that facilitate mobility and migration to promising destinations. Resources
include not only monetary assets, access to social networks, and citizenship, but also status-
related characteristics such as belonging to particular educational or occupational groups, as well
as having the power to make decisions on who migrates and how remittances are spent. Not
entirely surprising is that persons and groups with higher social status are better positioned to
take advantage of migration as adaptation than those in lower socio-economic statuses. For the
latter group, migration is more likely to occur as an emergency response where the migrants have
limited agency, and the chances of a successful outcome are less likely.
From a migration studies perspective, mobility is not an expression primarily of
vulnerability but one of human agency. Migration is often a proactive and not simply a reactive
choice. In many environmentally harsh areas, mobility (rather than flight) often serves as a

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traditional coping strategy to deal with the scarcity of natural resources. The seasonal movements
of pastoralists from wet season grazing areas to dry season grazing areas are such an example. In
the form of labor migration, it serves to spread risks, diversify income and enhance opportunities
(Stark and Levhari 1982; Stark 1991). It is a useful strategy, for example, to substitute usury
credits and lack of income opportunities for remittances. Moreover, it serves to ensure families
against crop failure where no formal insurance system exists.
The degree of voluntariness and agency involved in migration decisions might, however,
vary to a large degree. Migration decisions must be analyzed in the broader context of the
livelihood settings and the ways livelihoods are embedded into societal institutions. If the latter -
- ranging from formal administrative structures and policies to informal social networks and civil
society organizations -- respond or do not respond to the demands and needs of the members of a
society, two reactions are possible (Hirschman 1970): exit or voice. Exit as an option implies that
out-migration from nation states or smaller administrative and social units has to be analyzed in
relationship to the capacities of the people (or the lack thereof) to change things in situ by raising
their voice and exercising political influence. Exclusive political and legislative systems, for
instance, deprive vulnerable groups of their voice option and thus restrict their search for in situ
solutions (Faist, 2000) in the face of environmental change. In this regard, vulnerability as a
result of exclusion and inequality strongly relates to a proclivity to migrate and to use as the exit
option. Crucial for voice is loyalty to the social unit concerned, for example, a village or a
national state. Loyalty plays a major role if people feel very attached to their communities, their
land and their ancestors. In some instances, exit and voice may even be complementary. If exit is
succeeded by a continuing concern with the region of origin, by sending remittances for

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example, exit may contribute to voice in that it increases the range of options allowing for in situ
adaptation of those who remained.
To capture the human agency involved in environmentally induced migration as well as
its limits, the conceptual move must be made from vulnerabilities to capabilities. According to
Amartya Sen (1981, 1992, 1999), capabilities are not the things that people may be able to do --
their “functioning” -- but their capacity to choose and to live a life they value. Such functions
include access to food, education, medical care, jobs, and other aims which are important to
her/his idea of a good life. For that, they need basic resources to make decisions on the functions
they want to be fulfilled. Such resources may include natural, physical, mental, cultural,
religious, social, economic, financial and political assets, and necessitate their advantageous
embeddedness in societal structures and institutions. Yet Sen goes beyond an instrumental
concern with resources to enable functions and brings in the intrinsic consideration that the
choice of one’s way of life and functioning is fundamentally important. In general, the term
capability connects to the broader issue of human development which depends axiomatically on
freedom to achieve those chosen goals. The ability to make choices is constitutive of agency.
Greater capabilities may be equated with lesser vulnerability, which is certainly true for
impoverished and marginalized populations. If assets can be multiplied, livelihoods are more
sustainable, and the eventual loss of one asset can be compensated for by the use of others.
Accordingly, vulnerability is understood to be lacking or being deprived of essential assets
necessary to realize functions crucial to coping with environmental change. The specific role of
migration has thus to be contextualized with regard to the other assets available to a person or
household, including its political assets, its voice. And voice implies capabilities. Migration is
thus shaped by the same assets available for in situ alternatives, and the overall combination of

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tangible and nontangible resources available to an individual or a household. Whether migration
is an expression of vulnerability or capability depends to a large extent on the degree of freedom
of choice for exit or voice or a combination of the two.
6.5 Impacts of Environmental Migration on Policies
Environmental migration program has political implications. According to Tibetan
herders, current environmental problems correlate with a specific moment in history: when
several erroneous political decisions triggered the process of pasture degradation. Moreover, they
also criticize the lack of adequate regulation and the absence of governmental control over the
commercial ow of extracted items such as medicinal plants and mineral resources.

This
simultaneous absence and presence of the State in pastoral areas can be analyzed from an
environmental perspective. Nevertheless, when governance of a specific natural “milieu”,
environmental discourse develops concomitant with and overlapping the powers existing in this
“milieu”. Environmental protection plans and the establishment of nature reserves also reflect
political issues. Focusing on matters of power, environmental discourses and policies have to be
contextualized at the local level, where they are fabricated and implemented.
The programs conceived for environmental protection and the establishment of the Three
Rivers’ Sources Nature Reserve certainly provide an appositive to safeguard the ecological well-
being of the Tibetan Plateau. However, they also interfere with the local political and territorial
equilibrium. They affect practices of control and surveillance of the indigenous people, and they
also influence the local system of production.
The end of nomadism, which is the most radical change in Tibetan herders’ life-styles,
stemmed from fencing and the limits imposed on seasonal movements. Moreover, by the 1980s
Tibetan herders were building houses on the grasslands with government subsidies. In addition, a

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process of government dependency, especially in terms of medical and education services, has
been driven by the creation of township and county headquarters accompanied by infrastructural
development. The political implications of the “environmental migrations” project are linked
with territorial issues of land and water control as well as population surveillance. These issues
led to the original policies to divide and fence the grasslands and, more recently, to establish the
nature reserve project and impose restrictions on grassland exploitation. The “environmental
migrations” program provides the Chinese government with a new tool to assert its sovereignty
over regions with large national minority populations. The politic of this program is concealed
under the discourses of environmental protection, which are presented as purely “scientific,” thus
justifying the program’s implementation. Yet, the resettlements are indeed a way to bolster the
State’s power over people spread across a vast area that is difficult to control. Surveillance of
and control over people are facilitated by gathering and settling them in defined places (Scott,
1998). The resettlements are particularly “visible” zones for administrative forces: the houses are
all identical, enumerated and organized one after another similar to the structure of a chessboard.
The migration program is, arguably, a Chinese government’s response to problems
associated with both environmental protection and control and surveillance of the population.
The resettlements are part of wider strategies to protect and control the Tibetan Plateau’s natural
resources, including the establishment of the Three Rivers’ Sources Nature Reserve.
Nevertheless, they also enable the State to exert its power in a defined “milieu”. This power,
interfering in the junction between a geographic milieu and human being, creates the conditions
for its sovereignty (Foucault 2004, pp. 3-56). Resettlement zones also serve to alter husbandry
practices and force Tibetan herders to lead a sedentary life, thus bolstering territorial control. The
resettlements reflect a multipronged strategy adopted by the Chinese government to solve

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problems of environmental and territorial governance on the one hand, and problems of
sovereignty over the Tibetan highlands on the other.
In the following section, an initiating piece of the language of inquiry of the
Anthropocene is developed. The strategies of exit and relocation are manifest in the frictions of
exchange between government offices of transition programs and the self-orienting efforts of
those in migration. This is one inescapable dialogue of the Anthropocene, whether by
anticipatory resettlement or disaster flight.
6.5.1 Challenges: short-term, emergency-focused institutions and policies
Silos of institutional management will be hard pressed to effectively address the needs of
migrants and their families if the wider context of resilience and adaptation is not considered.
Some facets of the current governance system may actively encourage approaches that may be
too narrow to manage complex issues like environmentally induced migration. For example, the
management of human mobility today falls within the mandates of international humanitarian
organizations, and national governments. Humanitarian organizations focus traditionally on
crisis and disaster management, often with a short-term perspective and not with the goal (or
capacity) to maintain long-term guidance, support, and protection.
Dynamics of migration and coupled social-ecological systems today make it less clear
where and how to administer help: at the source of environmental degradation and where people
stay behind, for migrants in transit, or in receiving communities including the Diaspora. This has
the potential to create differentiated groups with different capacities and needs. While large
groups of people may migrate together in the future, even among such a group there may be little
homogeneity, save the unifying environmental stressor that set them on the move. Environmental
change will affect what individuals or households in a community become mobile.

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Characteristics like gender, age, socio-economic status will all affect unfolding patterns of
environmentally induced migration. Property rights, resource distribution and family roles affect
men and women’s migration patterns, particularly when the environment becomes a strong push
factor. One group may need livelihood assistance, another may need resettlement assistance,
another may need humanitarian assistance, and all may need some differentiated legal protection.
At the same time, several questions related to authority arise for the future: what
institutions will have authority to classify environmental migrants, protect the interests of
receiving or sending countries? The international community can play a role in shaping norms
and standards related to environmentally induced migration (for example, the role it has played
in creating principles for internally displaced people IDPs). Yet nation states will largely remain
the implementing actors and will retain authority for classifying and administering assistance to
environmentally induced migrants, motivated or forced. A number of operational issues arise:
how can the voluntary or forced nature of environmentally induced migration be determined and
by whom? Would those who migrate voluntarily be able to qualify for government assistance,
even if their choice to move was not part of a government policy or program?
Current institutional frameworks for managing migration and environmental change
divide institutional management and responsibility along lines of environmental, migration, and
humanitarian needs (Zetter, 2008). Likewise, for governments, many of the environmental
stressors they face within their territories result from transboundary issues including river delta
management, desertification, and climate change. Responses and management often occur within
a country’s borders and within specific ministerial lines (i.e. environment ministry, agricultural
ministry, disaster management, immigration services, etc.). This structure is partly suitable to
address some forms of environmentally induced migration. For example, following rapid-onset

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disasters, governments and humanitarian organizations mobilize to aid environmental emergency
migrants on a short-term basis. For longer-term displacement, however, assistance of different
forms and of more durable nature may be required. Institutional responsibility and governance
become more blurred for slow-onset events such as drought. Gradual changes in ecological
systems and related social shifts will require that governance address the vulnerability of those
who migrate or are displaced as well as those remain behind. Ideally, this governance would be
comprehensive and coordinated to prevent “protection gaps” (Kolmannskog, 2009).
6.5.2 Opportunities to enhance resilience of migrants
Despite challenges, opportunities exist for institutions and policies to play a mediating
role in the form that environmentally induced migration takes. Effective policy interventions
may increase the quality and quantity of alternatives available to people faced with
environmental pressures, therefore preventing human mobility from becoming a humanitarian
crisis. States will implement policies and institutions that will make a difference in whether
environmental factors including environmental change motivate (other options available,
including return) or force (few if any options available) migration and displacement. These
governance interventions will therefore play a leading role in determining the degree to which
migration is a form of adaptation, or an indicator of a failure to adapt.
First of all, transparent guiding principles and two-way dialogue are much needed in
migration process. Recognizing that states will be the main implementing actors, sets of guiding
principles can be established to assist countries in the implementation of policies that govern
environmentally induced migration. A more substantial evidence base of cases and lessons
learned from practice is needed to support such a set of principles. Policy dialogue, especially at
the national level, is needed to understand how climate change impacts affect livelihood

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potential. It would be useful to provide a dialogue platform for exchange about the experiences
in countries which are already using resettlement programs as a response to environmental
stressors. Migration is a livelihood issue not only reflecting where people are emigrating from,
but also where they are immigrating to.
Second, it is crucial to foster adaptive capacity through migrant networks. There is
potential to foster adaptive capacity and resilience in migrant networks. Migrants often remain
linked to communities that remain behind, whether as individual migrants or as larger groups
such as environmentally displaced people. These links may be material (remittances),
cultural/social, or political, and shape the resilience and adaptation capacity of both those who
leave and those who stay (Adger et al., 2001). Networks provide security for migrant passage
and livelihood security. Effective networks mutate to adjust to changes in external circumstances
and in response to internal changes among network members. Research indicates that networks
are perceived by migrants as having costs (obligations to help others in the network, sanctions
against detrimental behavior) and benefits (gaining information, access to livelihoods or
entitlements). When internal and external cost-benefit surrounding a network changes, such as
when environmental conditions change, a member can become more inclined to actively
participate, stay in, or rejoin a network.
Third, an opportunity for governance systems is to create policies and actions that
flexibly manage migration and environmental change, which in themselves are highly dynamic
and non-linear processes. This may mean a combination of approaches that have been shown to
be effective in the past, including: improving education and training that facilitate access to
alternative livelihoods in communities affected by environmental change; technical measures

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that complement better resource and land management; enhancing access to other types of risk
management tools such as risk sharing and risk transfer tools like (micro)insurance.
Fourth, migrants’ participation in policy formation plays an important role. Migrants face
high costs in creating and preserving new network ties, which requires the development of
mutual trust and obligations, and social ties. New links are time- and resource-intensive, and
these links are also geographically fragile. Resettlement or other mobility can interrupt networks
and represent a loss of investment and risk diversification. When resources like ecosystem
services become scarce, migrant networks commonly “resize” themselves. Instead of cleanly
breaking from a kin-based network, network boundaries are often redrawn to manage conflict
and redefine mutual obligations. Because of the complex and dynamic nature of social networks
among migrants, one conclusion for governance is that people should be actively involved in
planning activities such as resettlement, and as much as possible be given the freedom to move
and react to micro-level incentive structures. Heavily controlled migration management systems
may be ill-equipped to address the nuances of migrant needs in the face of environmental change
and the fluid boundaries of migrant networks and other resilience or adaptation capacities.
Finally, governmental policy should focus on providing migrants with the portable skills
and capabilities they need to fully exploit the adaptation potential of migration. The provision of
education and training can help potential migrants better grasp labor market opportunities both in
sending and receiving areas, adapt to new living conditions, and shift more easily among jobs in
different sectors. An emphasis on basic and portable skills would be effective regardless of the
causes, timing, and destination of the migration decisions involved. And it would benefit not
only those that leave, but also those that decide to stay or eventually return.

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Based on the observation and interviews in Golok TAP, the study has shown the extent to
which households in vulnerable Tibetan rural areas have been affected by environmental change,
migration program and how their ability to cope and adapt to these changes is limited. The cost
of environmental change and related migration is already felt today by many rural households,
which are left on their own in the absence of strong community responses and government
programs. The Tibetan herders sampled in my study perceive a lack of effective government
interventions to address the impacts of environmental change and the migration it generates, and
collective action solutions, i.e. top-down government-led migration, do not seem to work. The
gap in the public provision and financing of adaption interventions leaves individuals and
communities alone in making choices and decisions, including through migration. Although this
leaves space for private initiatives such as NGOs, it also leaves the space vulnerable to forms of
uncoordinated action that may lead to conflict and maladaptation.
The role of broader social protection programs is thus especially important in this
context, both for migrants and their families in sending areas. Chinese government should invest
in social protection programs more intensively. In addition, it would be important to highlight the
fact that the design, coverage, and placement of social protection would not be just for the
purpose of minimizing the future impacts of environmental change and human migration;
instead, social protection should be seen as an integral part of the governments’ broader strategy
toward poverty reduction and urbanization and they should provide portable skills and human
capital to the segments of the population that need it the most.
6.6 Develop Alternatives to Environmental Migration for Tibetan Herders
During my field study, I contacted a number of international NGOs that are working to
develop alternatives to the urban settlement patterns found on today’s Tibetan landscape. Their

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focus is on building social capital within pastoral communities, fostering the development of
cooperative groups for the purposes of conducting business, coordinating grazing, or any other
community development aspect the people chose.
Given the sensitivity of land use policies in this region, these organizations have chosen
to first concentrate on cooperative marketing as a means to develop trust and self-help within
target groups. As this trust builds, more and more families are willing to join. In one project site,
they have successfully facilitated a change in grazing patterns, towards one where groups agree
to coordinate labor and timing of movement across their entire territory. In addition, the group is
trying a rotational grazing system within their winter pasture areas. Other sites are in planning
stages of grazing plans.
Factors for success are numerous. First, they try to select communities with good local
leadership and little evidence of conflicts over resource use. These communities then serve as
examples for neighboring regions. In addition, due to recent efforts by the Chinese government
to develop the western regions of China, these once inaccessible areas are now reachable by
roads and telephone lines. This has facilitated more flow of information and resources. Also, the
government is now strongly encouraging cooperative development and will soon pass the
Professional Economic Cooperatives policy, the general purpose of which is to reduce market
risk and uncertainty for marginalized rural populations.
Constraints are numerous but not insurmountable. For one, the status of both international
and domestic NGOs is still sensitive in China, limiting their ability to affect policy change.
However, with the proper approach, policy advocacy can be successful and not perceived as a
threat. These NGOs also face issues of illiteracy and lack of infrastructure in remote nomadic
areas, which hamper effective social service delivery such as health care. However, by building

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the skills within our groups, they hope to help overcome some of these barriers. The philosophy
is to empower the communities to gain the skills to plan and advocate for their own
development, in a manner that is fitting and appropriate to Tibetan ecology and culture.
6.7 Conclusion
There are large issues put into play by migration: the change from a pastoral to a town
culture, the relation of Han crafted policies and Tibetan culture, the question of causes and
solution of environmental stress and degradation. This dissertation touches on these, but at its
center I focus on social inequality, sustainability, socio-economic constraints and opportunities
brought about by environmental change.
History is marked by periodic episodes of migration and displacement, in relation with
environmental and societal changes. Although our knowledge of the interactions between
environmental change and migration patterns is growing, considerable work still needs to be
done. Understanding coupled social–ecological systems is crucial for the analysis of human
migration. It is not only environmental change which affects migration outcomes -- clearly
migration and displacement are multi-causal issues -- but also how socially mediated factors
interact with those environmental factors which affect the outcome. Socially mediated factors
including governance help determine whether people threatened by environmental change can
remain in their homes or return once the threat has passed.
It is important to remember here that the analysis of environmental crises, including
disasters, is also no longer restricted to event aspects only, but embraces both the processes that
set them in motion and the post-event processes of adaptation and adjustment in recovery and
reconstruction. Forced migration can be part of the process prior to the event or after, but it is not
inevitable. As noted, environmental crises are not caused by a single agent but by the complex

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interaction of natural and social features and forces that produce an environmental event or
outcome. By the same token, outcomes are rarely the result of a single agent, but are brought
about by multiple complex and intersecting forces acting together in a specific social context that
is complex in its own right. A range of factors of different orders -- cultural, social,
environmental, economic, institutional, and political -- all take place in the context of potential
spatial change as well as multiple levels of adaptations. Therefore, forced migration associated
with disasters or other environmental crises is the result of the interactions that both bring about
the event and are then accentuated by the event itself. Seeking single causes for complex
outcomes is usually difficult in any context, and particularly with forced migration, whether the
obvious “cause” is to be found in an international or civil conflict, development projects, or
natural or technological disasters. Environmental migration is an incredibly complex issue, but it
is happening. And human displacement is one of its potential effects. Research on environment
and migration is politically volatile, and certainly vulnerable to misuse and misrepresentation,
but despite that, it must be taken seriously because the potential outcomes are serious.
Environmental change affects livelihoods both directly and indirectly. People can decide
to migrate as a livelihood strategy when climate change affects overarching variables such as the
economy, environment, and political system they live in. Environmental change can also affect
inhibitors or facilitators of migration, and people’s natural, financial, human, and social capital.
Ecosystems and associated livelihoods can shape current and future outcomes. The impacts of
migration are often substantial; they need to be carefully investigated and managed within
development and adaptation frameworks. Migration can be an important strategy for livelihood
diversification and poverty reduction, and it is a major part of adaptation. At the same time,
migration presents multiple challenges. For example, migrants and their families can face high

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risks and costs, such as discrimination and violence. Many migrants are also moving to areas that
will be increasingly vulnerable. Remittances have the potential to create or increase inequalities
in some cases. Furthermore, under certain conditions, in-migration can have adverse impacts on
destination areas, including on social cohesion, infrastructure, and the environment.
The preceding chapters clearly demonstrate the relevance of social inequalities between
households for their capacity to opt for migration and turn it into a positive adaptive experience.
Sanjiangyuan on Tibetan Plateau is a particularly good example of the interplay between
inequality, vulnerability, and environmental migration. The migration outcomes in Golok TAP
following state government-forced environmental migration program reflect multiple dimensions
of inequality, including poverty, gender, ethnicity, age, and citizenship.
Various heterogeneities have implications for the decision to use migration as an adaptive
strategy, such as income and wealth, gender, and occupational status. Some people are too
destitute to opt for migration. The capability to turn migration into a successful adaptive strategy
does not refer solely to the ability to make the dichotomous choice of whether or not to migrate.
Inequalities can also affect the timing of migration and the choice of destination— the temporal
and spatial patterns of migration as adaptation. Where environmental migration is occurring, it is
generally the outcome of multiple factors, including environmental, political, and economic
causes. In fact, at present the problems afflicting, for example, the slum dwellers of Mumbai, are
not primarily climate change, but rather the conditions of poverty and exclusion that they are
consigned to by the larger political economy encompassing their region, nation, and the world.
Considerable progress has been made to weave aspects of inequality into the research of
environmentally induced migration and its relationship with adaptation to environmental
changes. Even so, there are still many lessons to learn about integrating the role of inequalities

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more systematically into research on migration as adaptation. Expanding our research questions
and designs and finding ways to develop and conduct more longitudinal studies would be
valuable next steps. On the policy and regulatory side, there is even more progress to be made
and many challenges to overcome. Questions of social inequalities that precede or follow
environmental migration (or that preclude would-be migrants from migrating) are largely
unaddressed in existing policies.
The risks of potentially increasing pressure put into the destination from the influx of
migrants. In such situations, original residents and governing authorities might perceive migrants
as a threat to the social fabric and exclude them from access to services. Do the resulting urban
ecological decline and plight of migrants represent a successful adaptation or a failure of
adaptation? Future research that links environmental migration to research needs to be
undertaken on the environmental impacts of urbanization and on the integration of migrants into
cities.
Finally, policy makers need to bear in mind the opportunities and challenges of
environmental migration when designing responses and long-term plans. The analysis suggests
that new governance modes are needed to bridge gaps in protection and assistance for
environmental migrants, and people made permanently mobile because of longer-term
environmental change. New governance approaches will need to consider the role of migration in
adaptation: not only will support be needed for migrants, but also for those that remain behind.
These new modes of governance must consider dynamic social and migrant networks and
enhance resilience in flexible rather than control-based ways. Both established modes of
governance and new modes of governance are needed to improve society’s ability to manage
environmentally induced migration.

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Much can be done to improve the outcomes of migration (DRC, 2009; UNDP, 2009);
bolster its adaptation potential (Melde, Laczko, and Gemenne, 2017); and mitigate or prepare for
climate impacts that lead to migration under distress, displacement, entrap people or require
planned migration. For example, integrated spatial planning that considers climate migration in
terms of areas of destination or origin, as well as targeted interventions such as social protection
measures and diversification of livelihoods, can help communities adapt in place or move in
safety and dignity. People in vulnerable situations should be prioritized in responses and
planning, as they will bear the brunt of climate change impacts. The gendered dimensions of
climate migration also require special attention.
After migration, governments must ensure that sending and receiving areas, and their
people, are well connected and adequately prepared, including in terms of numbers of
inhabitants, the security of livelihoods, and provision of infrastructure and basic services. Many
urban and peri-urban areas in particular will need to prepare for an influx of people, including
through improved housing and transportation infrastructure, social services, and employment
opportunities. These urban areas will need to ensure that climate migrants live in adequate
housing, in safe circumstances, and prevent discrimination in terms of access to employment and
social services. Programs fostering integration and social cohesion are also among the basic
needs related to in-migration. The urban poor and women require special attention to ensure
delivery of basic services and infrastructure in an inclusive manner. Policy makers should
develop and implement migration preparedness plans for the additional long-term population
growth that will come from climate migration. Such plans should include viable livelihood
opportunities, critical infrastructure and services, registration systems for migrants (to access
services and labor markets), and the inclusion of migrants in planning and decision making.

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In the Anthropocene era, there will be untold numbers where nature and environment
entangle, leaving problematic the response of human agency from the point of view of those who
carry out the duties, charge, and work of governance, and of those who have their world
disoriented through voluntary or forced, opportunistic or tragic movement along with
themselves, their family and communities. The turbulence of the social identities requires fresh
inquiries, and social inequality is key because upon it depends capability for changes.

350

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