The practice of community-based conservation : heeding the role of indigenous populations in the Three-River-Source National Park

Abstract

Building national parks is a systematic undertaking of preserving biodiversity and constructing ecological civilization in China. As the largest project, Three-River-Source National Park (TNP) is home to vast numbers of Tibetan herding communities and it has significant geographical overlap with the regions marked by economic backwardness, vulnerability and relatively fragile livelihoods. Ecological conservation policies are typically designed with multiple policy targets. Likewise, TNP policy has combined the objectives of poverty alleviation, livelihood diversification and biodiversity conservation. Setting up public welfare ranger jobs and recruiting local impoverished people as national park rangers manifest a representative practice of community-based conservation in TNP. However, a series of reasons that involve unbalanced local government agenda-setting, the country’s conservativeness and reluctance of acknowledging Indigenous People’s contribution to biodiversity and sustainable use of natural resources, and a lack of substantive participatory mechanisms, etc. give rise to limited involvement of Indigenous populations in co-building and stewarding national park areas.