Indigenous Affairs 3-4/09: Tibet's Nomadic Pastoralists: Tradition, Transformation and Prospects

The Tibetan Plateau, known today as the Earth’s third pole,1 averages over 4,500 meters in elevation and covers some 2.5 million square kilometers in south-central Asia. The size of Western Europe, the region is bounded to the south and west by the Hindu-Kush Himalaya complex of mountains, to the north by the vast Taklamakan Desert, and to the east by lowland Han China. The region, which receives most of its scant rainfall in summer from the Indian monsoon to the south, is largely semi-arid to arid, with strong, persistent winds, long arctic winters and hot summers punctuated by local thunder-storms. Extreme fluctuations in daily temperature are common year round.