In recent years, Qinghai Province has gradually established the strategy of taking ecological protection as the top priority in promoting socio-economic development. And it also intends to deepen reform to consolidate the national ecological security barrier.

Qinghai is also known as "China’s water tower", since it is the source of the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, and the Lancang River (Mekong). The Sanjiangyuan (source of three rivers) has a very important ecological position in ecological protection in the world.

However, due to natural causes and human activities since the 1970s, the ecological environment in the Sanjiangyuan area has been degraded, and the Qinghai Lake basin also entered an ecological crisis.

To restore and protect the ecological environment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, between 2010 and 2015 the government launched two phases of an ecological protection and construction projects in the Sanjiangyuan area. Other major ecological projects, such as the Qinghai Lake basin environment protection and management project, have also been launched in the province.

Li Xiaonan, director of Sanjiangyuan Ecological Protection and Construction Office, said that during the nine years since the implementation of the Sanjiangyuan ecological protection project, the grassland area has increased by 123.7 square kilometres, the water and wetland areas has increased by 279.85 square kilometres, and the desert area has reduced by 492.61 square kilometres.

The latest satellite data monitoring reports show that the area of Qinghai Lake has been restored to 4389.31 square kilometres – the largest size recorded in 15 years.

"Over the years, in the field of ecological protection and construction, Qinghai has not lagged in reform, relying on state key ecological protection and construction projects, with the central government’s support in policy, science and technological advances, human resources and market, we have been actively exploring a long-term mechanisms to advance the ecological development", Li Xiaonan said.

Since 2006, Qinghai Province has cancelled the mechanism by taking annual GDP of the Sanjiangyuan area as the performance assessment of the local officials, and stopped promoting the target of industrialisation. Instead, efforts have now been transferred to ecological construction and resettlement of local inhabitants.

In March 2014, Qinghai Province listed 90 percent of the area to be the restricted and prohibited development zones. Among them, the grassland, meadow and wetland ecological zones of Sanjiangyuan is included within the restricted development zone, accounting for about 58 percent of the province’s total area, and the prohibited development zone accounts for 32 percent.

In June 2014, Qinghai also proposed that it would basically set up a complete system for promoting ecological protection results in the next five years based on the Sanjiangyuan National Comprehensive Experimental Zone for ecological protection.

Recently, the Qinghai provincial government set a goal that by 2020 significant progress should be made in the construction of a resource-conserving and environmentally friendly society in the province. By then, the design and function of the major functional zones should be basically formed to become a pilot area of ecological advancement and recycling economy.

"Based on a series of ecological construction and protection systems, Qinghai has drawn a red line for ecological protection, and begun to set up related evaluation database", said an official of the Qinghai Development and Reform Commission.

In order to encourage local people’s participation in the ecological protection work, Qinghai Province has implemented 11 compensation policies targeted to herders.