China has emerged as a global front-runner in the fight against climate change, with sweeping policies aimed at curbing environmental degradation and building a more sustainable future.
Yet behind these green ambitions lies a more complicated human story. Ethnic minority communities — who make up roughly nine per cent of China’s total population and often inhabit ecologically sensitive regions like Tibet, Xinjiang, Yunnan and Inner Mongolia — are experiencing the transition in ways that involve significant trade-offs.
Where they live, how they work and the cultural practices they depend on have all been shaped by state environmental policies, often without meaningful input or representation.
My ongoing research examines the lesser seen consequences of China’s environmental agenda, focusing on how it affects the lives of ethnic minority communities across four critical dimensions: traditional livelihoods, internal migration, economic well-being and cultural identity.
Disruptions to traditional livelihoods
For centuries, many ethnic minorities in China have built their livelihoods around the land. Tibetan nomadic herders, Uyghur and Kazakh farmers and communities like the Yi, Qiang or Tu have long depended on agriculture, grazing and forest products not just for economic survival, but as a way of life deeply tied to ancestral customs and ecological knowledge.
That fabric is now fraying. Climate change, rising temperatures and desertification have degraded pasturelands in Tibet and farmland in Xinjiang, undermining herding and agriculture.
At the same time, state policies like the Grain for Green program, which converts farmland into forest to reduce erosion, have displaced upland farmers and restricted access to traditional lands.
These disruptions are compounded by restrictions on small-scale logging and non-timber forest product collection. These practices have long sustained communities such as the Hani, Dai and Yi.
Although these initiatives aim for environmental conservation, they often lack provisions for alternative livelihood options, rendering affected ethnic minority communities vulnerable to economic hardship.
Internal migration
As China’s environmental and development policies reshape rural regions, ethnic minority communities are increasingly affected by internal migration. Some ethnic minority families move voluntarily for work, while others are displaced by large-scale infrastructure or conservation projects.
In Tibet, expanded rail and road networks have boosted trade, but contributed to the migration of herding communities. In Yunnan, dam construction has displaced villages inhabited by ethnic groups such as the Nu, Lisu, Hani and Bai, often with minimal consultation.
Relocation into urban areas introduces new pressures: overcrowded infrastructure, limited services and increased competition for employment. These conditions can exacerbate the marginalization of ethnic minorities and heighten social tensions.
The effects are especially stark in Xinjiang. Uyghur communities have been relocated to new urban zones where efforts framed as economic development often fracture social structures and push assimilation.
Coupled with securitization measures, such transitions risk eroding cultural identity and deepening socio-economic disparities, particularly among ethnic minority women.
Ultimately, internal migration fragments extended family networks, an essential characteristic for many ethnic minority cultures. Without inclusive planning, these relocations can entrench the very inequities that sustainability efforts seek to address.
A double-edged economy
Green transition policies promise new livelihoods through eco-tourism, conservation work and renewable energy sectors. For some communities, these transitions have created new pathways.
Pilot programs in ecologically sensitive zones such as Qinghai have involved Tibetan herders as conservation workers, combining ecological protection with livelihood maintenance.
These examples remain exceptions. Most affected communities lack training and access to green jobs. The Grain for Green program offers short-term land conversion subsidies, but little in the way of long-term retraining. As a result, some households plunge deeper into poverty after losing access to their farmland or pasture.
Ironically, relocated families sometimes end up in low-paid construction jobs tied to the very projects that displaced them. This circular dependency — displaced by green projects, then employed in their construction — offers no route to upward mobility and deepens socio-economic marginalization.
Cultural displacement
Perhaps the most intangible impact of China’s green transition is cultural. In many ethnic minority communities, livelihoods are intertwined with the environment; rituals follow the seasons and sacred sites mark the land.
Conservation bans and resettlement disrupt ancestral customs and erase mobility patterns, as seen with the sedentarization of Tibetan nomads.
Eco-tourism campaigns and “heritage villages” try to preserve culture. However, they often turn it into a spectacle. Traditions become performances curated for tourists, while the deeper practices — language, inter-generational teaching and land-based rituals — fade.
Well-meaning efforts to promote ethnic minority festivals in the name of boosting tourism have also sometimes led to the standardization of diverse traditions into single narratives, minimizing internal variation in customs and flattening community voices.
A more inclusive green transition?
There is no doubt that China’s climate ambition is transforming its economy and the daily lives of millions. From the Tibetan Plateau to the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang and across the vast grasslands of Inner Mongolia, environmental protection is impacting the people whose lives are rooted in these fragile ecosystems.
Making this transition equitable means ensuring ethnic minorities shape, not merely receive, state policy. That includes integrating local ecological knowledge into conservation planning, providing long-term training for displaced populations and ensuring that relocation compensation reflects economic losses, as well as social and cultural costs.
China frames its environmental vision through the concept of “ecological civilization,” a philosophy rooted in Confucian ideals and socialist principles that seeks to harmonize human development with nature. At its best, this model aspires to align economic growth with ecological balance.
For ecological civilization to fulfil its promise, it must be inclusive and prioritize cultural rights alongside environmental goals. Environmental policymakers must recognize that sustainability is about both reducing emissions and preserving the dignity, heritage and agency of all communities.
China’s green transition has the potential to be a global model. To lead by example, however, it must confront not only the climate crisis, but also the deeper challenge of inclusion.
Reza Hasmath does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
