CHAPTER TWO
THE GIFT OF DEVELOPMENT IN PASTORAL AREAS
The most significant aspect of the Great Opening of the West development strategy, which threatens to transform the whole spatial, social, economic, and perhaps cultural setting in the grassland areas, is sedentarization.
Focus on sedentarization arose in the late 1990s, when the Chinese state confronted the uneven development of the first two decades of post-Mao Reform and Opening (Ch: Gaige Kaifang) and began to implement the Great Opening of the West. It perceived three specific problems in pastoral areas of western China: people were poor, political control was difficult, and the environment was degrading. To address all these problems simultaneously, the state pushed to sedentarize the pastoralists. Mass sedentarization began in the early 2000s but picked up speed as part of the nationwide Socialist New Countryside (Ch: Shehui Zhuyi Xin Nongcun) Program, which promised to introduce comfortable living conditions within a civilized environment, as well as clean, tidy, and democratically managed villages, particularly in the rural areas of China’s West.1 It was partly inspired by the New Village Movement (Korean: Saemaul Undong; Ch: Xincun Yundong), a development program carried out in South Korea in the 1970s and targeted at the impoverished countryside.2 The Socialist New Countryside Program included support for local production development, construction of road networks in the countryside, exploitation of new energy resources, quality controls for drinking water, and encouragement to sedentarize pastoralists and relocate poor people. The most striking difference between the Korean and the Chinese policies is the local population’s active involvement in shaping the actual project. While South Korea’s program emphasized motivating the rural population to take the initiative and self-invest in the development programs that would benefit them, the Chinese strategy accentuated a top-down approach, leaving almost no space for the rural population to take part in the decision-making process or implementation.3 An evaluation of the ongoing processes and already-achieved outcomes indicates that this approach not only results in pastoralists’ becoming the passive recipients of “development” and dependent on state assistance but also hinders state representatives, that is, the implementing officials, from developing appropriate strategies that meet real local needs.
In China, the rhetoric associated with the Socialist New Countryside Program did not last longer than the Eleventh Five-Year Plan of 2006–10, and the project was later referred to as chengzhenhua, generally translated as “urbanization,” thus shifting the focus from the villages and the rural economy per se to the creation of more townlike settlements that would function as a stronger visual testimony to the successful progress of the Great Opening of the West.4
The Chinese leadership has continually stressed intensive sedentarization measures as an important step toward modernization, targeting pastoral nomads both symbolically and practically as major obstacles to progress, and pursuing sedentarization as a simultaneous solution to problems of poverty, lack of social control, and environmental degradation.5
ALLEVIATING POVERTY AND IMPROVING THE HOUSEHOLD-LEVEL ECONOMY
In 1999 most of Qinghai was classified as “poverty-stricken.” Therefore, the introduction of the Great Opening of the West development strategy has been welcomed by the provincial leadership, who hoped it would solve significant economic problems via the newly available state support or because private investors were likely to be attracted by the potential for growth created by the new infrastructure projects.6
Since then the number of financial and material aid packages offered to pastoralists by the state has gradually increased, reaching its peak as part of the Great Opening of the West development strategy. As a result of such measures, being identified as “poor” became desirable. Rural households became eligible for increased subsidies and financial aid provided by the state, which became a regular source of income for the Tibetan rural population.7 This attitude toward state support was growing costly for the state, and even the more recent shift of the focus of the poverty alleviation policy from “poor” regions, counties, and villages to “poor” households, promoted as part of the Targeted Policy Alleviation Project, does not seem to have resolved the situation.8 With development and rising living standards, households’ daily expenditure has grown. Subsequently, the poverty line has risen, causing an increase in those defined as “poor.”
Poverty in China is usually identified according to cash income per capita or per household. In this regard China has defined its own poverty line, in addition to the World Bank’s international definition. The Chinese national poverty line is updated each year and in 2017 was ¥2,952 per person per year.9 Individual provinces can also promote their own slightly different poverty lines. However, these must be higher than the national level. The provincial poverty lines in 2017 were usually set at between ¥3,100 and ¥3,300. Lower administrative levels can also identify their own individual poverty lines based on the average local income, but these must always be higher than the one defined by their superior administrative level.10 In pastoral communities, where it is difficult to delineate the exact (cash) income, poverty classification often depends on the local community leader, who is aware of the economic situation of individual households. These leaders’ proposals are later approved by the township government. Although this method should help to reveal those households that are really in need, there are still many abuses of authority, preventing subsidies from reaching the targeted population. In order to take advantage of state funds, the Tibetans do not hesitate to use their connections to local offices or find other ways to persuade government representatives to allocate subsidies in their favor.
In order to stem the extensive flow of direct aid to rural areas, the government (in theory) decided to modify its poverty alleviation strategy and stress indirect support via a requalification of the rural population to increase its engagement in production. Distribution of houses belongs to direct distribution of governmental assistance in poverty-stricken areas, but at the same time and particularly in pastoral areas, sedentarization can be understood as a way of indirect support that brings pastoralists closer to the developed infrastructure. The assumption that this would encourage the pastoralists to better integrate into urban society, automatically take up urban livelihoods, and adopt urban lifestyles in many cases proved illusory.
CONTROLLING AN UNRULY POPULATION
The concentration of Tibetan pastoralists in the new centralized villages simultaneously served the state’s objective of asserting political control.11 These new urban settlements are easy to reach and usually contain a small on-site police station. The presence of police officers is intended to provide better security for the inhabitants of the resettlement or settlement sites and encourage state legal representatives to participate in solving disputes among the pastoralists.12 At the same time, the close control exercised over relocated pastoralists can be seen as part of an aggressive new policy shift in Tibetan areas, with the disturbances of 2008 acting as a catalyst for the introduction of intensified sedentarization measures.13 Above all, this shift in emphasis is evidenced in projects such as the Nomadic Settlement Project (Ch: You Mumin Dingju Gongcheng), introduced in Qinghai in 2009 and intended to force sedentarization on the remaining pastoral population. Paradoxically, the accumulation of pastoralists in one spot has also facilitated faster communication and easier assembly, which might also result in potential conflicts and expressions of discontent. Therefore, to prevent political alliances within the resettlement and settlement villages, at least theoretically the size of these villages is restricted to fewer than between 100 and 150 households.14 In reality, many of the new villages exceed this limit.
PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT
After the consequences of ecological changes in China’s West became noticeable in the East, the Chinese state began to take serious notice.15 The escalating erosion of the western rangelands, resulting in increased sedimentation in local rivers, has affected hydroelectric power systems, including large river dams, and also on the downstream populations, who increasingly face either flooding or a lack of water. A direct impact has been demonstrated, for example, in the droughts in the lower reaches of the Yellow River in 1997 and the massive flooding along the Yangzi River in 1998.16 Another example is the increase in the amount of sand blanketing the eastern metropolises during the spring sandstorm season, which emanates from the expanding deserts in China’s West. It is widely acknowledged that 90 percent of China’s grasslands currently suffer from a certain level of deterioration.17 By 1998 in Qinghai, the degradation had already affected almost 24 percent (about 1,300 million mu or 87 hectares) of the province’s grasslands, and according to the data collected by the Nationalities Cultural Committee of Qinghai Province in 2007, only about 58 percent of the grasslands in the Three Rivers’ Headwaters protection area in southern Qinghai were still usable for herding due to grassland degradation. About 20 percent of pastoral households in the affected area had reverted to being households with no or few livestock.18
Environmental protection is sometimes cited as the essence of the Great Opening of the West initiative.19 In order to strengthen and emphasize environmental protection, numerous large nature protection areas have been declared, especially in western China. In Qinghai, over half the province has been designated as a nature protection zone. This designation has been used there to substantiate the government’s actions in more strictly implementing environmental projects. The environmentally centered initiatives, which call for a halt to human activities in the protected area, however, stand in contradiction to the goal of economic development to expand local infrastructure, industry, and mining, as well urbanization.20
Tibetan pastoralists depend on a functioning ecosystem in the high plateau rangelands, so every intervention in the management of the grassland environment affects them directly. The state mechanisms for grasslands development and environmental protection are, therefore, of the utmost interest in the context of the current socioeconomic changes taking place in the pastoralists’ lives. Moreover, in the environmental context, the pastoralists are no longer perceived solely as obstacles to the development strategy but as those responsible for the extensive degradation of the grasslands who must be removed and (re)settled.
Who Caused the Grassland Degradation?
In the face of ecological deterioration and in order to repair environmental damage caused during previous decades, environmental protection became the third rationale for sedentarization. The state has identified overgrazing and rodent damage as the salient aspects of environmental degradation and established new environmental protection areas to target these two ecological problems. Thus, ecological restoration policies include extensive restoration of grass vegetation and the afforestation of cultivated land, especially on mountain slopes, as well as rodent control. Reforestation and grassland restoration efforts are largely concentrated in the Returning Farmland to Forest (Ch: Tuigeng Huanlin Gongcheng) or Returning Farmland to Grassland (Ch: Tuigeng Huancao Gongcheng) Projects, predominantly carried out in the more affluent areas of the Yangzi and Yellow River basins.21 To address rodent damage, the grasslands Project for Prevention of Harm Caused by Rodents (Ch: Shuhai Fangzhi Gongcheng) was designed to reduce the pika (Ochotona curzoniae) population through poisoning and manual killing. Other projects that limit pastoral activity include the Returning Pastureland to Grassland Project (Ch: Tuimu Huancao Gongcheng), and the Ecological Resettlement Project (Ch: Shengtai Yimin Gongcheng) (see table 2.1), which operate in areas that have suffered from desertification and wind-blown sand and also in the Three Rivers’ Headwaters protection area in Qinghai.22
It is clear that some grasslands are degraded. In some areas there is an overpopulation of pikas, which eat grass roots, and excessive grazing eventually leads to the complete destruction of the upper fertile layer of grassland soil, which has been witnessed in pastures where there is an overcapacity of livestock.23 However, these phenomena are symptomatic of more far-reaching problems. The first wave of environmental policies failed to consider why the deterioration is occurring in recent decades when pastoralism has been practiced on the Tibetan Plateau for at least a thousand years.24
Only recently has research begun to suggest that there are other important factors behind the current situation on the grasslands, such as global climate change and the decline in permafrost levels.25 From a long-term perspective, the whole situation might just be the result of periodic climate fluctuations, which lead to changes in global ecosystems and determine the living conditions for animals and human beings.26 The causes for overgrazing and an increase in the pika population might also be found in land management reforms initiated by the People’s Republic of China, which probably encouraged an unsustainable use of pastureland.27
Most aspects of grassland degradation identified by researchers are strongly influenced by governmental policies. These phenomena include inward migration and population growth, increased burrowing of mammal populations due to ineffective controls and rampant hunting of their predators, increased concentration of livestock near winter settlements, reduced mobility levels resulting from restrictive pasture tenure laws, the breakdown of traditional regulatory mechanisms, and the lack of government investment in rangeland and livestock marketing infrastructure.28
Major land-use reforms, such as the collectivization drive in the 1950s and the decollectivization of land in the 1980s, have disrupted and changed the attitudes of pastoralists toward both land and livestock. During the period of people’s communes, all herders were required to place their animals in collectives and subsequently made collective decisions regarding production and rangeland use. The traditional herding system, which involved the use of pastures within a village community and the periodic redistribution of pastures according to the number of animals a family possessed, was replaced by a new policy that called for an increase in animal husbandry production.29 Within the communes, new methods of fencing, cross-breeding, veterinary services, and artificial fodder production supported herd growth.30 Livestock numbers were no longer naturally controlled by increased mortality rates during harsh weather or as a result of diseases, thus leading to increased demands on grassland capacity.
Beginning in 1983, the Household Responsibility System contracted out the management of the land and animals of the former communes to individual households.31 This policy further promoted an increase in the production rates in animal husbandry, resulting in even higher livestock numbers.32 However, there was little improvement in balancing the needs of the ecosystem and grazing methods. The original twenty- to thirty-year contracts associated with the Household Responsibility System could be prolonged to fifty years, with the possibility of an additional later extension.33 Land distribution led to the fencing off of property, which severely limited herding mobility and flexibility, on which traditional Tibetan pastoralism was based.34 Moreover, even with a signed contract, the state may reimpose usage rights over state-owned land when deemed necessary.35
The fact that the land is not their own and the lack of certainty about the usage rights are two reasons why pastoralists choose not to invest in the land and its sustainability.36 As a result, some pastoralists exploit the land without taking the long-term consequences of their actions into account and keep as many livestock as possible. In this way, they actually do contribute to grassland degradation by overgrazing. Evidence thus suggests that it is not necessarily Tibetan pastoralism that has been the main culprit for changes in the ecosystem. More probably, the policies implemented by the central government significantly contributed to the disturbances and changes in the frail symbiotic existence of pastoralists in the rangelands. The Returning Pastureland to Grassland Project and the controls imposed on herd sizes more or less aimed to reestablish the more balanced ratio of livestock to grassland capacity that existed in the pre-1950s period, though under a very different system of governance and management.
A similar restorative function seems to underpin the Returning Farmland to Grassland or Forest Projects, which promote a reduction in the number of fields, especially in areas vulnerable to erosion, such as the high rangelands. Inappropriate exploitation of such areas began with the policies of the 1950s, which called for logging forests, draining wetlands, and reclaiming land in Tibetan areas.37 As a result, in many places the grasslands were plowed up to plant grain.38 Not all high-altitude sites were suitable for crops, and the consequent destruction of the upper soil strata, which was necessary for the vegetation, negatively affected the ecosystem and accelerated the degradation of the land.
Although at least theoretically the newer reforms aim to restore the ecosystem and repair the damage caused earlier, the implementation of the current development and environmental protection policies has been launched in an ad-hoc manner similar to the land reforms of the 1950s, with not enough time spent on conducting trials, which would have evaluated the actual and long-term impact of policies such as Returning Pastureland to Grassland Project.39 In fact, older pastoralists in particular worry about the practice of long-term grassland resting, asserting that if the land is enclosed, not regularly grazed by livestock, and left fallow for several years, the entire vegetation structure will change. In the future, such land will no longer be suitable for animal husbandry, as a new ecosystem will have developed within the enclosures.40 The animal husbandry office of Hongyuan County in Sichuan reached the same conclusion after conducting an evaluation of the grassland enclosure test results. According to their findings, the maximum land rest period should be five years. After this period, the ecosystem may change irreparably.41
Questions relating to pikas’ harmful influence on the fragile ecosystem in Qinghai have also been heatedly discussed by scientists, and there is insufficient evidence to prove that pika activity is a main cause of increased grassland degradation.42 According to pastoralists, there were always large numbers of pikas on the pasturelands. However, their numbers may have increased as many of their natural predators disappeared during the early decades of the People’s Republic of China, when many wild animals were killed to feed troops and workers stationed on the plateau. This led to a collapse in the food supply chain for carnivores and a consequent decrease in their numbers. At that time, the killing of wildlife was not moderated by any form of wildlife conservation awareness.43 The increase in the number of pikas might also be seen, at least in part, as a consequence of the actual deterioration. They prefer to inhabit earth banks that often develop in eroded areas. In addition, the infrastructure constructions on the grasslands also seem to have been welcomed by the pika population, which moves into the bare banks that spring up along construction sites, such as roads. Thus, the pikas might have helped to enlarge areas that had already been degraded. It is also questionable whether the means used to eliminate the pikas has actually significantly contributed to grassland restoration or whether the large-scale poisoning might not instead lead to the next slew of ecological problems.44
It may be necessary to reconsider environmental policy’s attitude toward Tibetan pastoralism, which itself is tightly bound up with the grassland environment, as animal husbandry is an important factor that directly helps to sustain the Tibetan Plateau ecosystem.45 Unfortunately, the current policy treats the landscape and the people as two distinct elements.
THREE RIVERS’ HEADWATERS NATIONAL NATURE RESERVE
To emphasize the commitment to protecting nature and restoring ecosystems in Qinghai, especially near the sources of three of China’s major rivers—Yellow, Yangzi, and Mekong—the State Forestry Administration and the government of Qinghai established the Three Rivers’ Headwaters National Nature Reserve (Ch: Sanjiangyuan Ziran Baohu Qu; hereafter Sanjiangyuan) in May 2000.46 Tibetans compare these giant rivers that flow down from the Tibetan Plateau to the tears of the Snow Mountains.47 The Chinese are more pragmatic and refer to this area as the “Water Tower of China” (Ch: Zhonghua Shuita), indicating its national importance.48 Such rhetoric also helps to justify the scale of the implemented development policy that restricts local livelihoods, as well as cultural and spatial settings in this predominantly pastoral part of Qinghai. Chen calculated the total population of the Sanjiangyuan to be around 650,000, of whom almost 470,000 were engaged in animal husbandry. At that time, more than 90 percent of Sanjiangyuan’s population were Tibetans.49
The actual watershed of these three rivers covers 318,100 square kilometers in Qinghai, but to ease administration the province has included entire counties in Sanjiangyuan.50 As a result, the total area of Sanjiangyuan has been enlarged to 363,100 of Qinghai’s 720,000 square kilometers. Sanjiangyuan originally included 16 counties (119 administrative areas incorporating townships and towns and one area of pasture in Zeku County) of the Yushu, Guoluo, Hainan, and Huangnan Prefectures and the Tanggula Township (Ch: Tanggula Shan Xiang) of Haixi Prefecture.
To demonstrate the state’s growing active involvement in environmental protection, in January 2003 the Sanjiangyuan Nature Preservation Zone attained national status and became the Three Rivers’ Headwaters National Nature Reserve (Ch: Sanjiangyuan Guojia Ji Ziran Baohu Qu; hereafter SNNR).51 The SNNR does not correspond with the entire Sanjiangyuan watershed and actually includes only areas with special protection needs, such as forests, parts of the grasslands, and wild animal habitats for endangered species such as Tibetan antelopes, wild yaks, snow leopards, and black-necked cranes. Its 152,300 square kilometers form the main implementation area of state-financed environmental policies. About two hundred thousand inhabitants live in this area.52
MAP 2.1. Map of SNNR conservation zones within the protection area of Sanjiangyuan
The SNNR area is divided into eighteen individual conservation areas, each containing core, buffer, and experimental zones (map 2.1). Each of the eighteen SNNR core zones is surrounded by a buffer zone, which in turn is surrounded by an experimental zone; these zones of special protection form individual patches within the Sanjiangyuan area.
The core zones (31,218 square kilometers total) mainly cover the areas around the major river sources, with the intention of protecting endangered animals and plants. Eight core zones protect wetlands and their ecosystems, nine protect forest areas, and one protects high-altitude grassland. Within the core zones, no human activities are permitted, which implies that all herding activities should be banned there. The aim of the buffer zones (covering 39,242 square kilometers) is to promote environmental conservation, with a limited amount of animal husbandry permitted according to the capacity of the pastures. Hence, Qinghai implements “ecologically” motivated sedentarization measures more widely than other Tibetan regions. The experimental zones (81,882 square kilometers total) may continue to be populated, and they include towns, farmland, and cultural relics and are open to tourism and research activities.53
Without establishing new conservation zones, in 2011 the original Sanjiangyuan area was enlarged, and a further 31,400 square kilometers of the northern counties of Huangnan and Hainan were added. Both of these prefectures have since been merged entirely into Sanjiangyuan, which now includes twenty-one counties. The newly attached regions are primarily from the farming regions of Qinghai. Local infrastructure and urbanization is more extensive here compared with the predominantly pastoral areas of the original Sanjiangyuan in the South. Additionally, in the same year, the whole Sanjiangyuan area was renamed Qinghai Three Rivers’ Headwaters Integrated National Ecological Protection Experimental Zone (Ch: Qinghai Sanjiangyuan Guojia Shengtai Baohu Zonghe Shiyanqu). The aim within this zone remained to accelerate environmental protection, so-called green development (Ch: lüse fazhan), and to improve the living standards of the local population.54 In practice, this shift has meant that more funds from the environmental budget, invested mainly through the State Forestry Administration, can be spent on construction projects aimed at urbanizing and modernizing the local countryside, such as, for example, the Beautiful Countryside Project (Ch: Meili Xiangcun Gongcheng), whose impact is visible in the creation of new settlement walls, especially in areas exposed to tourism.
MAP 2.2. SNNR conservation zones in Zeku County
In the era of the current general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, Sanjiangyuan has remained a place to exercise extensive rangeland development, poverty alleviation, and ecological protection policies. In 2015, as part of the Beautiful China (Ch: Meili Zhongguo) initiative, Sanjiangyuan National Park (Ch: Sanjiangyuan Guojia Gongyuan) was established within the Sanjiangyuan zone, covering the origins of the three rivers and the Kekexili plain (consisting of Zhiduo, Qumalai, Maduo, and Zaduo Counties, in total 123,100 square kilometers) and overlapping partly with the conservation areas of the SNNR.55
Zeku County in Sanjiangyuan
Zeku County and neighboring Henan, representing the pastoral part of Huangnan Prefecture, were already included in the original Sanjiangyuan region. Part of the area of these counties, 2933 square kilometers of Zeku and Henan, also belongs to the special protection area of the SNNR, of which 91.5 percent (2684 square kilometers) belongs to Zeku and 8.5 percent (249 square kilometers) belongs to Henan, representing 1.93 percent of the whole SNNR area in Qinghai.
Three regions of Zeku County (Duohemao Township, Maixiu Town in Duofudun Township, and Xibusha Township), which form the Maixiu core zone, are included in the SNNR special protection area (map 2.2). These regions include 3,636 households (20,005 people), of which 563 households (3,098 people) live within a core zone; 1,198 households (6,590 people) within a buffer zone; and 1,875 households (10,317 people) within an experimental zone within Zeku County. The Zeku core zone includes the Maixiu Forest Region (Ch: Maixiu Linqu) and the Guanxiu Forest Region (Ch: Guanxiu Linqu). The core zones of Zeku and Henan occupy an area of 543 square kilometers (1.74 percent of the province’s core zone area); the buffer zones, 1,048 square kilometers (2.67 percent of the province’s buffer zone area); and the experimental zones, 1,342 square kilometers (1.64 percent of the province’s experimental zone area).56 The situation of Zeku County within the Sanjiangyuan area and the incorporated special protection zone led this county to experience the full-scale implementation of the environmental projects, including reductions in herding activities, exclusion of pastureland, and relocation of pastoralists from grasslands to new urban areas.
Ecological Protection and Construction in the Sanjiangyuan Area
Between 2003 and 2006, the local government in Zeku County emphasized in particular the following projects and measures of ecological protection: Returning Pastureland to Grassland, Ecological Resettlement and completion of facility sets, Enclosing Hillsides to Grow Forest (Ch: Fengshan Yulin), Fencing, Fire Protection of Forests and Grasslands (Ch: Senlin Caoyuan Fanghuo Gongcheng), Prevention of Harm Caused by Rodents, Constructions to Raise Livestock (Ch: Jianshe Yangxu), Construction of Energy Sources (Ch: Nengyuan Jianshe), Drinking Water Supply for People and Livestock (Ch: Ren Xu Yinshui Gongcheng), Putting in Order Black Earth Banks (Ch: Heitutan Zhili), and Distribution of Solar Cookers.57 These propositions are summarized in the context of the development policy targeting the Sanjiangyuan grasslands under the term “Ecological Protection and Construction” (Ch: Shengtai Baohu yu Jianshe), designed in 2003. By 2007 their management was divided into three project groups, namely the Ecological Protection and Construction Projects (Ch: Shengtai Baohu yu Jianshe Xiangmu), the Farmers’ and Pastoralists’ Production and Basic Living Facilities Construction Projects (Ch: Nong Mumin Shengchan Shenghuo Jichu Sheshi Jianshe Xiangmu), and the Sustainability Projects (Ch: Zhicheng Xiangmu; table 2.1).
In the SNNR the central government invests directly only in the areas of special protection; the environmental and socioeconomic projects implemented in the rest of the area must be financed from the annual budget granted to the provincial government.58 According to Qinghai News, at the beginning of the development policy’s implementation in the Sanjiangyuan area between 2003 and 2005, central and local governments invested a total of ¥1.23 billion, mainly aimed at prohibiting grazing, resettling pastoralists, and replenishing the ecosystem in about 65,000 square kilometers of grassland. After 2005 a further ¥3.13 billion was invested in the Great Opening of the West development strategy, with the hope of achieving a “sustainable balance between environment and social-economy” in Sanjiangyuan by 2020.59 By 2007 the total investments spent in the nature protection zone of Sanjiangyuan on policy addressing the degradation of the grasslands had climbed to ¥7.5 billion, and the amount further increased in the following years.
The majority of the projects of the Sanjiangyuan Ecological Protection and Construction initiative (table 2.1) result in the adoption of sedentarization measures. The push for direct sedentarization and resettlement was a particular focus of the Returning Pastureland to Grassland Project, the Ecological Resettlement Project, and the Small Town Constructions Project. Some other initiatives encouraged the sedentarization of pastoralists indirectly, through further limitation of mobility, for example fencing programs, constructions of ranching facilities, and reduction of pastureland programs, as well as boosts to agriculture, such as the Artificial Rain project implemented as part of the grassland development program.