Eco-business Podcast

The joke in Alasha League in China’s Inner Mongolia region is that people in Beijing only discovered their existence when local newspapers blew over to the capital city in a sandstorm. Such growing pollution in the 1990s nearly spelt the end of traditional animal herding in Alasha (also spelt Alxa), as China banned livestock and resettled herders to tame the deserts and restore grasslands. But community leaders lobbied for their camels – their beasts of burden since time immemorial – to be recognised as a “protected livestock breed”. And camel herding continues to this day. Success story? It’s not that simple to Dr Thomas White, a researcher who spent years living with the herders to understand what they’re going through. In his recently published book China’s Camel Country, he documented the tensions the herders faced to keep in line with China’s nation-building project. Taboos also emerged as culture courted capitalism to survive – think embellishments for tourism and butchering a treasured species to fe