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5.08.2008 - 12:45pm ET
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China, Tibet, and the Strategic Power of Water: Pollution and Global Warming Threaten Asia's Most Important Freshwater Source
Circle of Blue reports on a crucial but little-known factor in China-Tibet conflict
(CSRwire) May 8, 2008 - Almost two years after a 710-mile (1,100 kilometer)railroad
across the world's highest plateau opened from central China to the
Tibetan capital of Lhasa, the deadliest clashes in a generation are
occurring between Chinese police and young Tibetan protestors. The fierce
fighting, which erupted in March, has produced casualties on both sides
and prompted demonstrations around the world. Many analysts assert that
the fighting is caused, at least in part, by fear that the Chinese
government's long-standing strategy to open Tibet's vast reserves of
copper, iron, lead, zinc, and other minerals will accelerate with the
railroad's development.
But Circle of Blue reports that a number of influential scientists, and
experts in Asian studies, now say that control and management of an even
more vital resource – the Tibetan Plateau's vast supply of freshwater
– is also emerging at the center of the increasingly tense political and
cultural strife between China and Tibet. Circle of Blue is the independent
journalism and science project reporting on global freshwater issues.
Reservoir at top of the world is retreating
The Tibetan Plateau is an oxygen-scarce landscape of enormous glaciers,
huge alpine lakes, and mighty waterfalls – a storehouse of freshwater so
bountiful that the region serves as the headwaters for many of Asia's
largest rivers, including the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Brahmaputra,
Salween, and Sutlej, among others. According to studies by the United
Nations and several prominent global environmental organizations, almost
half of the world's population lives in the watersheds of the rivers whose
sources lie on the Tibetan Plateau.
However, recent studies – including several by the Chinese Academy of
Sciences - have documented a host of serious environmental challenges to
the quantity and quality of Tibet's freshwater reserves, most of them
caused by industrial activities. Deforestation has led to large-scale
erosion and siltation. Mining, manufacturing, and other human activities
are producing record levels of air and water pollution in Tibet. Together,
these factors portend future water scarcity that could add to the region's
volatility.
Most important, the region's warming climate is causing glaciers to recede
at a rate faster than anywhere else in the world, and in some regions of
Tibet by three feet (.9 meters) per year, according to a report in May
2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The
quickening melting and evaporation is raising serious concerns in
scientific and diplomatic communities, in and outside China, about Tibet's
historic capacity to store more freshwater than anyplace on earth, except
the North and South Poles. Tibet's water resources, they say, have become
an increasingly crucial strategic political and cultural element that the
Chinese are intent on managing and controlling.
"At least 500 million people in Asia and 250 million people in China are
at risk from declining glacial flows on the Tibetan Plateau," said
Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC and winner of the 2007 Nobel
Peace Prize, in an interview with Circle of Blue. "This is one of the
great concerns – a staggering number of people will be affected in the
near future. There aren't too many researchers who have looked at this
water situation and its far-reaching impacts."
China among driest nations
With more than a quarter of its land classified as desert, China is one of
the planet's most arid regions. Beijing is besieged each spring by raging
dust storms born in Inner Mongolia, where hundreds of square miles of
grasslands are turning to desert each year. In other parts of the nation,
say diplomats and economic development specialists, Chinese rivers are
either too polluted or too filled with silt to provide all of China's 1.3
billion people with adequate supplies of freshwater.
Chinese authorities have long had their eyes on Tibet's water resources.
They have proposed building dams for hydropower and spending billions of
dollars to build a system of canals to tap water from the Himalayan
snowmelt and glaciers and transport it hundreds of miles north and east to
the country's farm and industrial regions.
But how long that frozen reservoir will last is in doubt. In attempting to
solve its own water crisis, China could potentially create widespread water
shortages among its neighbors. The IPCC warned a year ago that the glaciers
in the world’s highest mountain range could vanish within three decades.
"Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of
the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them
disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the earth
keeps getting warmer at the current rate," the report said.
"While the political issues swirling around Tibet and China are complex,
there is no denying that water plays a role in China's interest in the
region," said Peter Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific
Institute in Oakland, California and one of the world's foremost
authorities on water. "The water of Tibet may prove to be one of its most
important resources in the long run – for China, and for much of
southern Asia. Figuring out how to sustainably manage that water will be a
key to reducing political conflicts and tensions in the region."
A long struggle gets worse
Tibet lies north of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar, west of China, and
south of East Turkistan. The highest and largest plateau on Earth, it
stretches some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) from east to west, and 900
miles (1,448 kilometers) north to south, an area equivalent in size to the
United States region east of the Mississippi River. The Himalayas form much
of its southern boundary, and Tibet's average altitude is so high –
11,000 feet (3,350 kilometers) above sea level – that visitors often
need weeks to acclimate.
Though Tibet and China disagree about some details, the modern conflict
between the two nations began in 1950 when China invaded Tibet with 40,000
troops, and a year later seized control of Lhasa. Bloody clashes have
broken out between Chinese forces and Tibetans periodically since then,
with particularly fierce street fighting in the 1980s, and again this
spring. The new protests have attracted global attention, in large part
because they are occurring just months before China hosts the Summer
Olympic Games in Beijing.
The Tibetan Government in Exile, which settled in India in 1959 following
the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet, in recent years has consistently
identified the plateau's water as a strategic resource and criticized
China's management of it. In a report earlier this decade, the exile
government said China's water development plans, as well as global climate
change, should cause concern across Asia, because it would "seriously
decrease [the] water supplies of India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia,
Thailand, Laos and Burma, as well as the Yangtze River Basin as far as
Shanghai, especially in drought years. Meanwhile, rural Tibetans continue
to suffer high rates of hepatitis, water-borne infections, and back pain
due to inadequate village water supplies."
China quietly acknowledges water tension
The Chinese government, in its studies, acknowledges the changing
condition of Tibet's water supply. Last summer, the Institute of Tibetan
Plateau Research, a unit of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported that
the area and mass of the region’s glaciers had decreased 7 percent since
the late 1960s. The Chinese scientists reported that the melting
phenomenon was widespread, though it was not known how many of China's
46,298 glaciers were affected.
The short-term consequence of the receding glaciers, which the scientists
said was due to global climate change, was that runoff in some rivers had
increased. But because of the deepening dry conditions of western China,
the water was evaporating before it could be used.
The Chinese study offered no recommendations for reversing the melting or
better managing the Tibetan Plateau's water. Nor was there any discussion
of the Chinese government's role in overseeing it. And while most
scientists in the region agree that the Tibetan Plateau’s water
resources are crucial to the future of China and Southern Asia, many
declined to be interviewed for fear of losing access to their research
sites.
Elizabeth Economy, the director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations in New York, said it's not surprising that China is circumspect
about the strategic consequences of the Tibetan Plateau's freshwater
supplies. "Talking about this, or introducing it into any of their
conversation about Tibet, just doesn't serve their purpose," she explained
in an interview.
According to Economy, control of water resources in the Tibetan Plateau
might be an issue internally, but externally, it is not. "China wants to
minimize the range of issues it needs to negotiate. Once this issue of
water resources comes up, and it seems inevitable at this point that it
will, it also raises emerging conflicts with India and Southeast Asia.
They also receive their water from the Tibetan Plateau," Economy
said.
The new China-Tibet Railroad, built at a cost of roughly $4 billion,
crosses terrain that illustrates China's water dilemma – dry high
plains, teeming cities that are growing rapidly, lakes that are drying up,
and glaciers that are retreating into rocky and impassable mountain ranges.
"Water is seen as a strategic asset for China wherever it occurs in
China," said Geoff Dabelko, director of the Environmental Change and
Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
in Washington, D.C. "Because so much of the water for China and the region
originates in Tibet, it adds an additional level of importance and
political sensitivity and context that does not get the attention it
deserves."
Summing up the volatile situation, Dabelko added, "Nearly two billion
people are dependent on water originating on the Tibetan Plateau. By
definition, that makes it high politics and critically important in a
politically strategic sense." [Read
and hear the Entire interview with Geoff Dabelko here]
By Keith Schneider and C. T. Pope
www.circleofblue.org/waternews/
(c) 2008 Circle of Blue
Keith Schneider, a noted environmental journalist and former New York
Times national correspondent, is Circle of Blue's writer in residence.
Reach him at keith@circleofblue.org. C. T.
Pope is a Circle of Blue staff researcher. Reach him at cody.pope@circleofblue.org
At a Glance
An estimated 70 percent of China's rivers are polluted, leaving an
estimated 300 million people with limited access to clean water.
Almost half of the world's population lives in the watersheds of the
rivers whose sources lie on the Tibetan Plateau.
Scientists say glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau are receding faster
than in any other part of the world -- if the rate continues, most will
gone by 2035.
There are more than 1000 lakes on the Tibetan Plateau, including the
world's highest salt lake -- Namtso (Nam Co).
Both sourced in the Tibetan Plateau, the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) River
and the Yellow River serve roughly 520 million people in China.
The Yangtze River is the third-longest in the world, after the Amazon
and the Nile.
Contact
Circle of Blue
J. Carl Ganter
media@circleofblue.org
+1.202.351-6870
x110
www.circleofblue.org
Links and Resources
CIA Factbook -- China
www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html
The Pacific Institute
http://worldwater.org
National Geographic -- Tibet
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0204/feature1/index.html
Water and Conflict (from the Pacific Institute)
http://worldwater.org/conflict.html
Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (English)
www.itpcas.ac.cn/System/English.asp
Official Website of the Tibetan Government in Exile
www.tibet.com
Tibet 2000: Environment and Development Issues
www.tibet.com/eco/tibet-2000.html
The Council of Foreign Relations -- The Question of Tibet
www.cfr.org/publication/15965/tibet_question.html
World Water Assessment Program -- UN
www.unesco.org/water/wwap/
The Mekong River Commission
www.mrcmekong.org/
Tibet: Facts and Figures from China.org
www.china.org.cn/english/zhuanti/tibetfacts/163173.htm
NASA Flyover of the Himalayas
val.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/himalaya/index.html
China taps Tibetan waters -- International Herald Tribune
www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/01/business/river.php
Yellow River: A Journey Through China -- National Public Radio
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17101893
Bitter Waters -- Yellow River Photo Story, National Geographic
ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/05/china/yellow-river/photo-map-interactive
A Melting Glacier in Tibet Serves as an Example and a Warning --NYTimes
www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/science/earth/09glac.html
National Security and the Threat of Climate Change - CNA
http://securityandclimate.cna.org/
Interview with Geoff Dabelko, talking water and environmental peacemaking
in China, Tibet and Darfur
www.circleofblue.org/waternews/world/africa/geoffrey-dableko-talking-water-and-opportunities-for-environmental-peacemaking/
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars - Waterstories
www.wilsoncenter.org/waterstories/
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars China Environment
Forum
www.wilsoncenter.org/cef
Other Water-Related Conflicts
UNICEF - Darfur Overview
www.unicef.org/infobycountry/sudan_darfuroverview.html
A Godsend for Darfur, or a Curse? - NYTimes
www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/weekinreview/22polgreen.html
About
Circle of Blue
Founded by leading
journalists and scientists and based on the shores of the Great Lakes,
Circle of Blue is a nonprofit, nonpartisan independent journalism, science
and design project of the Pacific Institute. It was featured recently at
the Aspen Ideas Festival, Clinton
Global Initiative, World Economic Forum and Aspen Environment Forum.
Partners
Circle of Blue partners announced at the
Clinton Global Initiative include the international photojournalism agency
Contact Press Images; the Environmental Change and Security Program and
China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars; exhibit firm Evergreen Exhibitions; acclaimed artist Greg Mort;
SustainAbility, the global independent consultancy for corporate
responsibility and sustainability; and Sea Studios Foundation, producer of
the PBS series, "Strange Days on Planet Earth." Also included are Getty
Images and Magnum Photos Foundation, and Globescan, the international
public opinion and research firm. Circle of Blue's reporting is only
possible through the generous financial support of individuals,
foundations and companies. Circle of Blue adheres to the Society of
Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
info@circleofblue.org
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