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Integrated Pastoral Development in Nakchu Prefecture, Tibetan Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China
| Project Information | Inputs and Infrastructure |
| Beneficiaries | Risk Management |
| Objectives | Rangeland Resources |
| Activities | Livestock Production |
| Outcomes | Livestock Health |
| Organizations & People | Lessons Learned |
Project Information - Total project costs are approximately USD 400 000.
Duration: Integrated Rural Development
Project: 1998-2001
Pasture Rehabilitation Project: 2002-04
Area: Nakchu Prefecture encompasses 280 000 km2, or about one third of the total land area of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China. It has an average elevation exceeding 4 500 m. Rangelands cover about 87% of Nakchu’s total area and support a livestock population of 6.8 million animals, including yaks, cattle, sheep, goats and horses.
Nakchu is home to most of the TAR’s pastoral population of about 340 000 people (approximately 50 000 households), most of whom are totally dependent on livestock for their livelihoods. Poverty tends to be higher among Nakchu’s nomadic livestock populations than it is in agricultural areas further south, particularly since the devastating winter of 1997/98 when over 1 million livestock were lost. The TAR government reports that the number of nomadic families living below the official poverty line (USD 60 per capita annual income) more than doubled as a result of these livestock losses.
Apart from adverse climatic conditions, long-term degradation of range quality also poses a threat to the livelihood and welfare of Nakchu’s pastoral population. According to the Nakchu Prefecture government, 30% of the prefecture’s rangeland is severely degraded; degradation processes are likely to continue unless improved pasture management practices are introduced. Current degradation and desertification processes are believed to be caused by a complex combination of factors, including not only global warming and desiccation of the rangeland, but also social and economic changes involving increasing population and the settlement of nomadic families in village areas.
The immediate beneficiaries of the project are some of the poorest families in the prefecture. Pastoral households in the townships of Baqing, Nakchu and Banga were selected as the direct target groups because these villages are remote, lack the forage resources to support surplus yak or sheep for the production of meat for sale and rely primarily on the minimal income earned from the sale of skins and wool. However, the households in the very poorest category (10-30% of the villagers) are not included in the target group as they are not eligible for loans and already receive government subsidies.
In the longer term, it is expected that Nakchu’s pastoralists in
general will become beneficiaries of the project as a result of the widespread
replication of improved rangeland management techniques and the introduction
of improved livestock marketing systems.
The TAR government, with financial and technical assistance from the Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund (TPAF), aims to achieve two sets of objectives through the project.
The objectives of the TPAF Integrated Rural Development Project are to:
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alleviate poverty in selected sites through integrated social and economic development activities such as income and employment generation through microfinance, small enterprise development and vocational training initiatives; and
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demonstrate the benefits of these tools and implementation methods so that they may be replicated by the government in other poverty-stricken areas of the TAR.
The TPAF Sustainable Pasture Management and Development Project is intended to demonstrate how rural nomad communities can more effectively manage and sustain their pasture resources, while increasing incomes. It promotes:
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locally appropriate strategies for communal rangeland recovery in three types of ecosystem. These strategies must be manageable and affordable given existing government expertise and financial resources, as well as the leadership and labour likely to be available at the village level; and
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improved and more profitable systems of cooperative marketing for the livestock products of households in Nakchu's emerging market economy.
The primary activities of the TPAF projects are:
- the demonstration of pasture rehabilitation (hay fields, spring pasture areas and feedlots);
- grazing management planning;
- the cooperative marketing of livestock products;
- microfinance revolving funds for small business development;
- vocational training;
- the institutional strengthening of marketing and pasture management groups;
- the participatory monitoring and evaluation of rangeland recovery and marketing activities; and
- policy advocacy and outreach.
- As part of the Integrated Rural Development Project, TPAF has successfully:
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Established a revolving loan scheme with high repayment rates. This has allowed target households to increase incomes through traditional trade in livestock, as well as create small businesses to diversify their incomes. Overall loan repayment in Nakchu has exceeded 92%, and there is a high demand for follow-up loans.
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Demonstrated planting techniques for the rehabilitation of degraded pastures and the sowing of hay fields. Those interventions selected and implemented by villagers themselves showed the best results. These practices are being readily adopted by neighbouring communities, which is a testament to their recognized benefits
- Regarding the Sustainable Pasture Management and Development Project, TPAF has successfully:
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Created a network of village-based spring reserve pastures and summer-fall fattening pastures. The related trials heightened local interest in larger feedlots that could hold livestock and maintain animal weight prior to sale during the fall. The use of these pastures has effectively increased the live weights of animals going to market and improved household incomes. This has also enhanced pasture quality within fenced areas, including the hydrological function of wetlands.
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Set up three marketing cooperatives, one of which has been functional through one marketing season and shown good initial profits: a useful demonstration to the other nascent cooperatives. The residents of this particular village have benefited from increased average incomes per household.
Organizations and People
| General Background: |
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| TPAF projects are implemented through the Nakchu poverty alleviation office, in collaboration with the Nakchu animal husbandry bureau. Nomads participating in the project have formed village organizations to take overall responsibility for the coordination of livestock marketing and pasture management activities. Training is central to TPAF’s programmes. Training in the management of microfinance schemes and marketing and pasture programmes is provided to members of village organizations formed through project activities. Policy advocacy is necessary for the promotion of an enabling environment for effective community-based efforts. Currently, China is implementing sweeping legislation to allocate pastures at the individual household level, with provisions that allow group tenure and management where appropriate. In addition, the central Government is working on a rural cooperatives policy that should strengthen the legal status of cooperatives. TPAF programmes are designed to demonstrate effective development models to government departments, and this should lead to proper policy formulation and implementation.
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| Appraisal |
Implementation |
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| Aim: establish an equitable and transparent system for the management of revolving funds; create a management committee responsible for the day-to-day management of the loan programme, including collections and banking repayments, the tracking of repayment performance, the resolution of disputes and the approval of new loan applicants. |
Township secretaries assumed the role of loan manager and were joined on the management committee by an accountant and cashier. All loan groups received training prior to the distribution of loans. Committee members were trained to supervise the lending and repayment of credit. |
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Aim: form management teams for the pasture programme at the prefecture, county and local township levels. |
Management teams were composed as follows: a prefecture team consisting of government and TPAF staff, county level teams that include vice governors and technicians, and local teams comprising township governors and village heads, plus motivated local community members (who help mobilize herders and manage rangeland works and who represent the diverse interests of villagers). To date, the local teams have been the most active. |
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| Aim: establish simple village-based cooperatives for each project site, whereby management and the costs of marketing livestock products are shared among member households. | Cooperatives were formed in all three project sites. | |
| Aim: train village cooperatives and management teams in pasture management, microfinance and cooperative marketing principles and organization. | County and local management teams from the three project sites (20 people) received training. | |
| Aim: provide driving and vehicle maintenance skills for cooperative drivers. | Six drivers (two from each site) were trained at the prefecture vocational training centre and received driver’s licenses to operate cooperative vehicles. | |
| General Background | |
| Remote project sites have poor road access. Products transported to market by horse or cycle arrive in bad condition, reducing their value. | |
| Appraisal | Implementation |
| Aim: provide vehicles that help cooperatives market their products. These vehicles will be owned and used by the cooperatives, which will share costs and profits. | Vehicles have been purchased and delivered to each village cooperative. Two drivers per site have been trained in driving and maintenance skills. |
| General Background | |
| Risk management has traditionally involved the maintenance
of high livestock numbers in order to rebuild stock after cyclic losses
from natural disasters such as severe winter snowstorms. However,
given the present overstocking and degradation of Nakchu’s rangelands,
innovative strategies are needed to help households market and destock
their livestock more effectively prior to winter. Moreover, pastoralists
need assistance in gaining access to financial options so as to develop
alternative livelihoods or income streams as part of an insurance
strategy through income diversification.
Nomad families primarily requested loans to purchase fencing for village feedlots. The grazing of livestock in these fenced lots prior to sale each fall extends the marketing season and raises the value of the animals. Households also prioritized the purchase of small tractors with trailers to help in marketing their livestock products, as well as in purchasing goods from nearby towns. These expenditures are large, often exceeding a family’s ability to repay. Given the higher costs for livestock-related activities in nomad areas and the lack of precedents for such individual loans, it was suggested that group loans would be more effective than the individual peer-group lending typically practiced in agricultural areas of the TAR. Access to markets is highly seasonal for nomad families in Nakchu and often limited by excessive transaction costs. Livestock marketing tends to take place during the brief period after the livestock return from summer pastures, when they are at their maximum weight. Thereafter, livestock progressively lose weight and sale value. A government slaughterhouse in Nakchu Municipality processes most livestock during this short period and is otherwise closed much of the year. Nomads are also constrained by the need to sell livestock before winter so as to obtain sufficient cash to purchase barley and other provisions before the snows make the movement of livestock to markets more difficult. Marketing practices vary among villages, with some acting cooperatively,
and others not at all. Typically, nomads drive their animals to
Nakchu Municipality to sell, but not if they live more than a two
days’ walk away. Remote communities are thus constrained by
lack of transportation. In some cases, nomads trade with Muslim
or Tibetan merchants that roam the rural areas with trucks, but
they often feel hesitant to sell livestock to these travelling middlemen,
fearing that they will be cheated. Market prices can fluctuate greatly,
and herders are ill informed about the value of their products. |
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| Appraisal | Implementation |
| Aim: provide funds to village-based groups for the purchase of animals, develop small businesses and diversify incomes. | Lending was provided to loan groups comprising 8 to 68 households, often representing whole villages. Loans averaged between USD 1 200 and 5 000, repayable over two years in four six-month instalments at an interest rate of 3%. This programme has benefited 390 families in the first round, with over 90% of the initial funds revolving to 144 families in the second round. |
| Aim: establish and strengthen management teams and provide training in the principles of microfinance, the management of loans (including dispute resolution), the responsibilities and roles of groups and group leaders and basic concepts of profitability and accounting. | Management committees consisting of a manager, accountant and bookkeeper were trained and made responsible for project implementation. The village-based loans involved a contract between TPAF, pairs of group leaders, and loan management committees so as to ensure accountability. The contracts were based on a 35% profit target, 30% of which went to group leaders, while 70% was divided equally among group members. This structure provides incentives for group leaders to bear the risk of the full group, while ensuring that benefits reach the intended households. |
| Aim: provide loans to individual households in urban areas so as to promote businesses. | Individual loans were dispersed to 45 urban households at 3% annual interest, with a repayment rate of over 90%. Recipients started retail operations and established guesthouses. |
| Aim: form village-based cooperatives in three project sites to promote cooperative principles, village feedlots and the extended marketing of livestock and livestock products. | In one project site, a dairy cooperative was established and has run for one season, generating a gross income of over USD 1 750 and benefiting 25 households. The cooperatives formed in the other two sites are not yet functional due to delays in the purchase of vehicles and inadequate follow-up by government partners. |
| General Background | |
| The TAR government estimates that rangeland degradation
is increasing by as much as 5% annually, seriously reducing winter
and summer grazing land available to livestock-dependent families
and their herds. Rangeland degradation and desertification processes
are believed to be caused by a combination of complex factors. To
some extent, degradation may be due to global warming and the desiccation
of rangelands. Social and economic change may also be contributing
to these processes, as mobile livestock production systems evolve
toward sedentary production, with the consequent overgrazing of pastures
around administrative villages where the settlement is occurring.
Other factors such as the proliferation of plateau pika and the concomitant
reduction in forage, along with the poisoning methods used to control
these rodents, may also be upsetting the ecological balance of Tibet’s
rangeland ecosystems.
The fencing of critical winter and spring pastures reduces animal mortality from winter snow disasters and disease. In addition, some villages have adopted the idea of creating pastures for fattening, which are used prior to marketing (late summer and fall months) and significantly increase the weight of individual animals and, thus, the profits herding households can earn. In accordance with the 1985 Grassland Law, pasture areas are increasingly
being allocated to the individual household level in Nakchu, despite
the fact that the vast majority of areas are still grazed by village
or household groups. However, group tenure and management arrangements
are now sanctioned by recent revisions of the Grassland Law. The
pasture areas fenced through this project have been located at the
natural village level. |
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| Appraisal | Implementation |
| Aim: finance limited experimental pasture rehabilitation, with a focus on degraded areas, so as to improve fodder availability during the winter. | The following grazing management initiatives were carried out: native jaktsa grass (Elymus sibericus) and barley were planted in village areas adjacent to households; degraded pastures were fenced and seeded, and small-scale irrigation was set-up in dry areas. The experiments demonstrated that the cost of fencing and irrigation near rivers with pumps and small tractors, while effective in promoting the regeneration of highly degraded common pasture areas, is still beyond the means of most households. |
| Aim: develop feedlots and reserve winter pastures to be managed by the marketing cooperatives. | The fencing of common winter pasture resulted in the production of 1 871 250 kg of fodder for the 229 poor village families included in the initial demonstration project. The planting of annual barley and native perennial grass on the winter pasture plots of nomads produced a significant amount of hay for the winter feeding of the herds of the nomads. |
| Aim: assist communities in formalizing grazing user groups and developing pasture management and monitoring plans for fenced improved areas and those ‘outside the fence’. | Pasture improvement activities have been significantly delayed due to a variety of factors including the SARS epidemic, which prevented international technical advisors from travelling to China, as well as lack of timely follow-up in implementation by government partners. |
| Aim: conduct pasture management training so as to explore the technical options for improvement. | Twelve trainees were selected from the three sites and received training in spring 2004 in pasture management and improvement. |
| Aim: prepare a rangeland recovery and forage production handbook, based on project outcomes, in the local language and distributed through the prefecture network of the animal husbandry bureau. | A draft handbook has been prepared by a leading Tibetan expert in pasture improvement. |
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Simple rangeland improvements (e.g., spring and fall fattening pastures) that result in significant increases in forage production and animal performance will be quickly adopted, provided that they are cost effective. These approaches are especially useful at the group or village level as they achieve economies of scale and reflect local norms and customs. Valley bottom and wetland rangeland types respond rapidly to fencing, and protecting these areas enhances the watershed function.
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Use of native versus exotic species is more cost effective and sustainable in harsh environments, especially for the rehabilitation of native rangeland. Introduced varieties of annual forage crops such as oat have been successful in many areas of the plateau as they readily establish, and seed is easy to acquire.
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Because the growing season is so short, the proper timing and coordination of technical activities are crucial in marginal environments like the Tibetan Plateau. If delays in project implementation prevent seeding activities in the spring (May), rehabilitation efforts must await the following season.
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Group lending is valuable and effective in pastoral areas such as Nakchu as long as group sizes match the local sociocultural setting. To avoid dissatisfaction with the investment choices and the distribution of profits, village loan groups should be small, typically consisting of five or six households connected as kin or as close friends and managed by a representative committee. Group loan systems may make women’s direct participation difficult to encourage.
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Building the governance structure and local capabilities for the management of revolving funds is crucial in demonstrating a sustainable and replicable microfinance model. Non-governmental and government staff should focus on training loan management groups rather than spending time in the collection of funds and the resolution of disputes. The development of management committees based on indigenous models can alleviate these pressures.
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Local leaders and community representatives, who know the income landscape of their villages well, should be primarily responsible for the selection of the households receiving microfinance loans.
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Interest rates should reflect the operational costs for the maintenance of loans. Otherwise, non-governmental organizations will continue to rely on additional funding to pay programme officers and cover the costs of management, particularly if they are precluded from charging higher interest rates by the government.
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Loan repayment schedules should be adjusted to reflect the lumpy distribution of cash flows in nomadic areas (i.e., July and January).
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The lack of formal education and literacy may reduce the effectiveness of training if good non-formal techniques are not employed. The low level of education among beneficiaries may also prevent project communities from participating fully in cooperative activities and diminish the accuracy of the financial records kept by microfinance and cooperative managers. Microfinance and marketing development should be accompanied by adult literacy and numeracy programmes.
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Current and future regulations affecting land tenure and management need to be considered in efforts to strengthen and institutionalize grazing user groups. Village-level rangeland management plans should be developed within existing legal frameworks so that proper management regimes are already in place and local institutions are granted greater legal authority to manage land as policies are implemented.
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The formation of livestock marketing cooperatives helps poorer households gain access to remote markets by reducing the transaction costs.
Best Practice: Lessons 1, 2 and 11
Innovation: Lessons 1, 6, 7 and 10
Project Reports
Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund. TPAF/02/1/N, ‘Nakchu Sustainable Pasture Development Project’. Consultant Technical Report. 1 January-31 December 2003.
Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund. TPAF/02/1/N, ‘Sustainable Rangeland Development in Two Counties of Nakchu Prefecture, TAR’. Preliminary Consultant Report, 23 November-7 December 2002.
‘Integrated Rural Development in Lhoka and Nakchu Prefectures (TPAF/98/6/KCF):
Final Report on Activities and Expenditures, July 1999 to August 2002’.
