While the Tibetan Plateau has received much attention from the global climate science community, little attention is being paid on the social context, although research shows that the combination of natural and social sciences opens up new perspectives on both humans and climate. Klein et al. (2014) showed, for example, that local knowledge confirms the delayed summer phenomenon and helped to resolve the ongoing debate about whether plant phenology on the TP is advancing or retreating, where different satellite data and statistical analysis resulted in different conclusions. Yeh et al. (2014) found that Tibetan pastoralist’ vulnerability to climate change has increased as a consequence to decreased mobility resulting from fencing policy, and an ethnobotanical study by Law and Salick (2005) demonstrated that Tibetan medicines are threatened by both overharvest and climate change (Salick, Fang, and Byg 2009). More specifically, Liang (2018) showed that the collection and trade of Ophiocordyceps sinensis, a highly valued medicinal fungus, has altered Tibetan’s livelihood and their environment drastically.
The aim of this study is to understand the human-environment interaction from two perspectives:
1) Historical perspective: Important lessons can be learnt about how societies have responded to climate change in the past. Therefore, the past human-environmental relations on the Tibetan Plateau will be studied.
2) Present perspective: In order to contextualize the impact of climate change, how local communities perceive climate change and how they respond to these changes, we will ask the following questions: What are the local observations of climate change? How do local people interact with their environment? What are the coping strategies for the future?
Analytical tools will include political ecology and empirical anthropology, and geological records, literature, folktales and local knowledge will be explored to understand past events on the Tibetan Plateau. In order to understand the contemporary local human-environment relation, qualitative research methods including participant observation, focus group and interviews will be employed. Fieldwork will consist of a several months stay in local communities. Therefore, Tibetan language skills are required for this research. The research area will be Nam Co and Nagchu Province.
Chinese partners from Tibet University will explore the impact of climate change on family and community life and human health, by conducting surveys of nomads at Lake Namco and intensive literature research. As both researches share common interests in the human dimension of climate change, this will contribute to a holistic understanding of human-environment relation on the Tibetan Plateau.
Prof. Dr. Antje Schwalb, TU Braunschweig
Prof. Dr. Bettina Wahrig, TU Braunschweig
Dr. Ciren Yangzong, Tibet University