Green and sustainable livelihoods

We conducted a workshop on sustainable livelihoods and rural eco-tourism development for communities in Fugong County in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province. Of the 70 participants, most were indigenous Lisu and Nu people living in the remote Gaoligong mountains, along with representatives from government agencies, local enterprises, and community cooperatives. The workshop introduced them to new approaches to green and sustainable livelihoods and helped them explore different ecological development models for poverty alleviation and rural revitalization.

Held on 26–27 December 2020, the workshop involved presentations and practical demonstrations from experts on community-based conservation, nature-friendly products, eco-tourism design and development, tea plant management, pest control, and natural hazard risk management. On the second day of the workshop, the experts along with village chiefs from Yaping Village visited the Yaping Ecological Scenic Area. The experts put forward suggestions on ways to design rural tourism routes and evaluated the possibility of pilot operations in the future.

We organized the workshop in collaboration with the Global Environmental Institute, with support from the Forestry and Grassland Bureau of Nujiang Prefecture and Fugong County. The workshop was part of a larger Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme-funded project – “Promoting climate-smart livelihood space among mountain communities in Nujiang Valley, northwest Yunnan” – which has been implemented since July 2019 in the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas in northwest Yunnan, adjacent to eastern Tibet and Myanmar.