Rethinking Conservation: Ecotourism Offers Hope for Chinese Ecosystems and the People Who Live in Them

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Laojun Mountain has long been considered sacred to the Chinese minority groups who call it home. Flanking the foothills of the Himalaya in northwestern Yunnan province, the region contains more than 100 species of wild rhododendron, nearly 100 known mammal species, and over 150 distinct bird species. Many of these plants and animals are highly endangered, including two species of the Yunnan Golden Monkey, of which less than 1,500 exist in the wild. Yet despite these ecological riches, the region’s human residents remain poor and marginalized, left behind in the rapid economic development occurring around them.

The story is all too typical in global conservation efforts: marginalized humans living on marginal land, destroying critical habitat and diversity as they struggle to survive in a global economy that undervalues or ignores them. In Laojun Mountain, the population is expanding, and although the 1999 “Tianbao” Natural Forest Protection Project restricted most commercial logging in the area, villagers continue to fell old-growth trees for fuel wood and building materials. Poaching is also a problem, as the price of native wildlife products has increased dramatically in the last ten years. Future development of the area promises some flow of cash, but with it more roads and pollution. It is a dizzying cycle of humans versus nature, where neither is the winner.

For the past decade or so, proponents of ecotourism have boldly proposed a way out of this cycle. Ecotourism, in its purest form, aims to be low-impact for both local communities and the environment, offering a sustained source of income while encouraging visitors to “leave only footprints.” In the Laojun Mountain region, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Global Environmental Institute (GEI) have been working with villagers to test the ecotourism model in the local human and ecological environment.

The project, which launched its first four-day trek in May, works on the principle that instead of following the factory jobs to China’s urban centers, people native to the Laojun Mountain range should be given local, ecologically sound means of livelihood. TNC and GEI have worked with villagers over the past two years to form a Laojun Mountain Guiding Cooperative, comprised of several dozen young minority men and women. Members received training in ecotourism principles, basic business practices, and wilderness first aid. With a guarantee fund housed at a local bank, they were able to take out a loan to build sleeping stations, buy tents and other materials, and begin advertising tours.

Since May, the Guiding Cooperative has led six treks through Laojun Mountain. For the group’s members, the tours have offered a newfound sense of ownership and pride. One young Lisu guide, who preferred not to be named, described how the Eastern Han majority had looked down on her village and way of life. “They come and see that there is no electricity, no roads, that the children don’t go to school. They always say [that we are] ‘So backward, so backward.’” There was little hope of making money in the villages, she explained, so most young people moved to cities to take jobs in the service sector or factories. “But now we can make a living here. Now they will come and they will see our beautiful mountain and forests. They will sing and dance with us around the fire and eat our food, and they will see we are not so different from them.”  

Positive contact between the local minorities and middle and upper class Han Chinese tourists has created a rare platform for sharing cultures and worldviews. The treks validate the local minority lifestyles, so often portrayed as backward in mainstream Chinese discourse. Visitors value the exposure to unique customs, songs, dances, clothing, and languages, and villagers feel empowered leading “desk-job tourists” effortlessly through the rugged terrain of their 4,000-meter-high homeland.

“They are so impressive!” observed one Beijing resident who participated in the first trek in May. “They are carrying twice as much as any of us, traveling double our speed, and cooking and serving our meals!” Participants see not a group of impoverished minority people who need to be integrated into mainstream Han Chinese society, but a community of strong, competent young men and women, proud of their way of life and culture and confident in their knowledge of the land. Guiding can give villagers a sense of place in a globalized economy that increasingly values foreign gadgets and scientific know-how at the expense of the local and the traditional.

Designing a several-day trek through various villages hasn’t been easy. Villagers who had rarely spoken with each other in the past had to negotiate with each other for a fair role in the tours. “It’s easy to sit in a tea shop in Lijiang and talk about the equitable distribution of incomes and the preservation of cultures,” explains Zhang Zhiming, lead organizer of the Guiding Cooperative. “Actually achieving it is a daily struggle.” But Zhang is quick to point out how much progress has been made. “Neighbors I hadn’t even met before are now my biggest supporters.” The collaboration between villages builds a stronger community for facing the region’s problems together, he notes.

So far, the Laojun Mountain ecotourism project appears to be having a positive social and economic impact on the region. But is it helping to conserve fragile ecosystems? Skeptics often accuse ecotourism of taking a “have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too” approach—perhaps rightly so. Around the world, instances abound of tourism developers placing an “eco” label on practices that ultimately lead to more plane travel, more roads, more buildings, more trash, and more overall destruction of the world’s ecosystems.

But Wu Xiaoli, coordinator of the Laojun Mountain ecotourism project for GEI and TNC, argues that China’s environmental problems are mainly symptoms of economic struggle and lack of information—both of which can be addressed. “The tourists will come no matter what. The question is, will the local people have a say in how their area is developed?” she questions. “By empowering people with a viable source of income and a fulfilling livelihood, they are more likely to protect their environment.” This is especially true when economic stability is coupled with solid information about alternative sources of energy, organic agriculture methods, and overall ecological stewardship—which the program provides through its extensive training program. Ultimately, an empowered local community has more leverage to influence decisions made by outside investors about the future development of the region.

Rather than being a static equilibrium of nature versus humans, Laojun Mountain reflects a dynamic, ever-shifting interaction of people with their surroundings. “It is an environment of not only intense biological diversity, but also unique cultural diversity and abundance,” says Wu. “Both of these are undervalued in today’s global market economy—and in a world where money is the bottom line, undervalued means threatened.” Wu and her colleagues at GEI and TNC believe that what the region needs is not authoritarian conservation, but a new model that puts a market value on local diversity, encouraging both people and nature to flourish. With the leadership of the new Guiding Cooperative, ecotourism may well be part of the answer for sustaining Laojun Mountain and similar regions throughout western China.

Lila Buckley is Assistant Executive Director of the Global Environment Institute, a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Beijing. GEI’s mission is to make conservation profitable and economic development ecologically sound by supporting conservation efforts with market-oriented solutions.