{"id":70646,"date":"2012-11-20T23:59:29","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T15:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seangallagher.wpengine.com\/blog\/?p=4309"},"modified":"2012-11-20T23:59:29","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T15:59:29","slug":"the-last-nomads-of-the-tibetan-plateau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gallagher-photo.com\/the-last-nomads-of-the-tibetan-plateau\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Nomads of the Tibetan Plateau"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Tibetan nomad in the Amdo region of the Tibetan Plateau. 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

“I was forced to move here three years ago. Before, I was a nomad. I’m not happy with what has happened,” explained Dhakpa as we stood on the dusty street corner. (Dhakpa’s name and those of other Tibetans in the story have been changed to protect their identity.) The wind swept through the valley in which we stood, dirt and sand swirling around our feet. Nearby, large piles of refuse started to shuffle at the edges as the wind picked up.<\/p>\n

We were standing in the outskirts of the town of Zaduo, a bustling little Tibetan community in the southeast of Qinghai Province, on the border with the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Surrounded by mountains and rolling green highland grasslands, it was described in my guidebook as “one of the remote [towns] on the plateau.”<\/p>\n

Before us lay dusty streets, flanked on either side by a series of one-story yellow buildings that made up a “relocation village” built a few years previously to house the new influx of Tibetan nomads from the surrounding grasslands.<\/p>\n

Nestled deep in the Sanjiangyuan region of southern Qinghai, the grasslands are home to the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong Rivers. In recent decades, however, the grasslands on the “roof of the world” have become progressively degraded, many scientists believe as a result of rising temperatures and drying caused by climate change.<\/p>\n

For 5,000 years the nomads of the region have roamed these lands, freely moving their flocks of sheep and cattle with the changing seasons. But over the past decade these people have been moved, often against their will, from the grasslands and into newly constructed towns and villages across the plateau.<\/p>\n

In 2000, China’s new “Western Development Strategy” was introduced by the central government, aimed at bringing improvements to the poverty-stricken west through infrastructural investment. As part of this strategy, it was deemed necessary to encourage the removal of the nomads of the highland grasslands in order to protect the important headwaters region.<\/p>\n

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