Norhla: Restoring the glory of khullu wool for social development and environmental protection in the High Tibetan Plateau

For centuries, the local communities of yaks’ transhumant cattle farmers of the Tibetan High plateau have lived on their yak breeding activity, providing them with all they need: milk, a source of butter and cheese, and hair, which they weave into the heavy black tents that characterize the nomadic population. In the last decade, however, changes occurred that have destabilized this activity. The changes are three-fold: (1) increasing economic difficulty to live from this activity (Melvyn et al., 1990), and its two corollaries: (2) rural desertification (Yang, 1992) and (3) increasing herds’ sizes, threatening the environment (Wu, 1999). Norlha, meaning “wealth of the Gods”, proposes an alternative to remedy these problems. By improving the value added cattle that farmers derive from the yaks, Norlha’s social business model suggests that selling extremely high range products to luxury houses can be a way out of poverty and rural desertification for these communities.