Local perspectives on social-ecological transformation: China’s Sanjiangyuan National Park

Change is an inevitable part of rural livelihoods. While natural disasters can trigger sudden challenges to resilience, long-term shifts in government-related socio-ecological transformation policies can pose even greater challenges to the well-being of rural households and communities. We identified and characterized the socio-ecological transformations generated by the Chinese central government’s ‘ecological civilization construction’ policy, culminating with the creation of Sanjiangyuan National Park, and analyzed the heterogeneity of household responses to these transformations. We take a mixed-method approach that is derived from Ostrom’s (2007) socio-ecological systems framework, calibrated to local residents’ self-assessments of their household well-being. Our results support three policy-relevant conclusions. First, government efforts to re-settle survivors of the 2010 Yushu earthquake appear to be well appreciated by the affected populations. Second, residents’ perceptions of their economic well-being depend upon their ability to augment government payments with income generated from natural products, particularly harvesting of Chongcao (Cordyceps militaris) and cattle grazing. Third, women and older residents tend to be more skeptical of government and demonstrate lower perceptions of their own economic and health status. We conclude that a successful socio-ecological transformation as envisaged by the “ecological civilization” paradigm requires a balance of government regulation, compensation, and sustainable access to environmental resources by the affected populations.