Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
households to provide information on a range of issues related to income, livelihood activ-
ities, ethnic and cultural identity, community participation, and education. In addition, the
research team conducted qualitative interviews with a random subsample of 48 households
that participated in the surveys, asking questions about villagers' knowledge of the cur-
rent hydropower-development scenarios being proposed, the perceived benefits and costs
of dam construction, and the means available to villagers for coping with potential changes
to their lives and livelihoods.
County
Household Count (Sample %) Dam Sites
Ethnic Composition Literacy Rate
Lisu: 92%
Nu: 6%
Fugong
197 (48.5%)
Maji Dam Lumadeng Dam
55%
Other: 3%
Lisu: 95%
Bai: 3%
Lushui
209 (51.5%)
Yabiluo Dam Lushui Dam
61%
Other: 2%
Total Sample 406 (100%)
Note
: Other ethnic groups represented in the sample include Han, Bai, and Yi. Percentages have been rounded to the
nearest whole number. “Literacy” refers to literacy in Chinese.
Villagers in the Nu River basin have long faced economic and cultural marginalization.
Formanycenturies, theLisuandtheirneighborspracticed swiddencultivation asaprimary
livelihood strategy, supplemented by the harvest of timber and nonforest timber products
such as fungi and medicinal plants. In recent years, the region's integration into the market
economyhasledtotheexpansionofagriculturalfieldsforgrowingcommoditycrops;land-
use studies based on satellite images have shown that agricultural fields have encroached
onforestlandsasvillagersstruggletomakeacashincomeinordertoeducatetheirchildren
and access other social services that were previously provided by the state before Reform
and Opening (Xu and Wilkes 2004).
As
table 4.3
illustrates, land holdings for Fugong and Lushui Counties are similar in
terms of forest land parcels. But households in Lushui County, in the southern part of the
watershed, hold twice as much paddy land and twice as much dry land as their counterparts
in Fugong. In its northern reaches, the Nu River Gorge is incredibly steep and narrow; the
