UNESCO defines a world heritage site as a cultural and/or natural site, area, or structure recognized as being of outstanding international importance and, therefore, deserving special protection. In order to become a World Heritage Site, there is a four step process that must be followed. First, a country must create a tentative list of important natural and cultural heritage spots that it wishes to nominate. Second, a state party decides when they want to present the nomination. The nomination is then sent to the World Heritage Site committee, which, if they approve it, sends it to the advisory bodies for evaluation. The three advisory bodies chosen by the World Heritage Convention evaluate the sites. Finally, the World Heritage Committee makes the final decision on the site’s inscription.
The Qinghai Hoh Xil region, designated a natural world heritage site, lies in the north-eastern part of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in China. The plateauis the largest and highest plateau in the world, with alpine mountains reaching more than 4,500 meters above sea level and diverse ecosystems, including grasslands, scrublands, glaciers, and tundras. Its unique topography of alpine mountains and steppe systems, and climatic conditions, allow for a multitude of species and diverse plants to thrive. More than one third of the plant species and all herbivorous mammals are indigenous to the area. The heritage site nomination was part of an effort to protect the chiru species, Pantholops hodgsonii to scientists, tsö in Tibetan, commonly known as the Tibetan antelope, according to Chinese officials.
The plateau’s glaciers are an important source of freshwater in the wetland system of lakes and rivers, making up a total area of 180,000 hectares. Due to rising temperatures, about 15 percent of the plateau’s glacial area, about 8,000 square kilometers since 1980, has retreated in the past half-century, according to a Chinese government-related study. Climate change effects would likely result in the destruction of the Tibetan antelope’s habitat, as well as other plant and animal species in the area. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species states that the chiru is near-threatened because the population size can be maintained with higher levels of protection and controls on trade and manufacturing from its fur. The local Tibetan herders protect the antelopes from hunters by patrolling the area, with little equipment or money.
During the evaluation of the Qinghai Hoh Xil region as a World Heritage Site, members of the local population expressed concern about the possibility of being displaced or resettled as a result of site’s new status. The IUCN report states that “it is imperative that questions of rights, access and traditional use are addressed rigorously and carefully by the State Party, and the World Heritage nomination must not be used to justify any deprivation of traditional land use rights of the concerned communities.” The report suggests that local herding communities should be consulted and involved in governing the land. It notes, as well, that the Qinghai Hoh Xil region contains many cultural and spiritual sites valued by its people, and it should be properly recognized.
The Chinese government has affirmed its plan to guarantee the integrity of the region. Han Jianhua, the Vice-Governor of Qinghai Province, in which the site is located, stated “[The Chinese government] made a commitment that [they] would protect the ecological environment heritage in strict accordance with the relevant requirements of the Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.”
The decision has been scrutinized by many advocacy groups, such as the International Campaign for Tibet, who have argued that the new site’s status would aid China in displacing tens of thousands of Tibetan nomads from the grasslands to towns, threaten the habitat of the antelope, and endanger the environment. The 2017 World Heritage Watch Reportdescribes the nomination as an “international endorsement for China’s policies of intensified development and mass tourism, and the removal of Tibetan nomads from their lands.” By removing Tibetan nomads, the survival of the rangelands and the plateau’s biodiversity is threatened.
What does this new status as a World Heritage Site mean for the local populations? In the nomination which the Chinese government submitted to UNESCO for the site, it listed 35 households of 156 herders within the nominated region, and 222 households of 985 herders and 250 other residents in the buffer zone. In the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Heritage Evaluations, one of the three Advisory Bodies, the Chinese government stated that “there will be no forced relocation or exclusion of the traditional users of the nominated site, whether before or after succeeding in the application for World Heritage site.” However, it also indicated that across a large section of the site, the management agencywill graduall
One of the goals under UNESCO’s operational guidelines is to establish services for the protection and conservation of the cultural and natural heritage of local and indigenous people. When asked about the effects of UNESCO’s decision on the local people, Marc Foggin, associate director at Mountain Societies Research Institute at the University of Central Asia, said, “consideration of local people’s livelihoods has been explicitly embedded within the review process leading to the nomination/approval of the World Heritage Site (WHS), particularly through the lens of ‘community co-management’. The area’s previous classification as ‘nature reserve’ really considered only the natural heritage, but under WHS both natural and cultural heritages are explicitly considered. The WHS actually may allow for – and to some extent even promote – more equitable forms of resource governance than in previous
