Climate Change in Tibet

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to China focused on climate change. She sought to make the case for action on global warming as a human rights issue.  Certainly, the rights to clean air and water are universal, though there are other rights implications to climate policy, notably in the Tibet context.

Chinese government control of Tibetan resources has proven destructive to the environment. Decisions made in Beijing do not properly take into account the input of those who live on the plateau. As the main stakeholders in their environment’s survival, Tibetans should have stewardship over their land. This is not just a rights issue. Their involvement has implications for many millions of people who rely on water flowing from Tibet.

Known as the “World’s Water Tower,” the Tibetan plateau is the source of seven of Asia’s major rivers, providing water for millions of subsistence farmers and cities downstream. Chinese policies to harness these rivers turning many into dams and to transfer water to dry regions of China, threaten Tibetan ecosystems by siphoning off water upon which much of Asia depends for survival. Tibetans are effectively barred from managing their water supply.

As resources begin to disappear, Tibetan nomads must adapt to shrinking pastureland while coping with Chinese government policies limiting their grazing land. A single policy known as nomad settlement — moving nomads into urban areas and housing developments — removes the people from the land who understand the environment the best, and who have managed the grasslands sustainably for centuries. Because the predictability of the summer monsoons is significantly influenced by the health of ecosystems on the Tibetan plateau, the impact of Chinese grassland development policies and programs reaches as far as Pakistan and eastern China.

This situation is grim.

Without more thoughtful scientifically-based policies and development programs involving Tibetan stakeholders in the governance of their own land and water resources, Asia faces catastrophic consequences. It is imperative that actions involving and empowering Tibetans as stewards in their own resource management are taken immediately to mitigate the effects of climate change.

To learn more about how urbanization, nomad settlement and climate change are linked, read ICT’s report: Tracking the Steel Dragon.

For more information on climate change in Tibet and China, check out these websites and blogs:

Katherine Morton on climate change and the water issue: http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/2961

Daniel J. Miller on why Tibet matters now http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/2811-Why-Tibet-matters-now-1-

http://www.asiasociety.org/chinagreen/

http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/khadijasharife/2008/04/18/tibet-shifting-climates-on-the-roof-of-the-world-p2/

http://www.tibetjustice.org/reports/ (See their Development and Environment publications.)

(Photo Caption: These bales of wire have been left in the grasslands for herders to fence off the pastures in an attempt to settle nomads.)