By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The Climate Crisis in Tibet

We have followed the Himalayan region including its political dispute, for example in a three-part article here. However, there also has been the development of a serious climate crisis which we will address here.

In recent years, China’s territorial aggression in the Himalayas, including in the Tibetan Plateau, has been growing. China’s strategy has focused mainly on using the continental version of the well-known “salami tactics” on neighbors like India and Bhutan. Notably, Tibet is a major source of insecurity for the Chinese ruling regime, namely the Communist Party of China (CPC). In Tibet, apart from the build-up of the people’s Liberation Army (PLA) and its activities to pursue Tibetan repression in the restive provinces, the CPC’s stress is also on accelerating infrastructure development, from building mega-dams to mining activities.

In this context, China has been constructing dams on rivers originating in Tibet such as the Yarlung Tsangpo (called the Brahmaputra River in India) for hydroelectricity generation and irrigation purposes. As per reports, China has built thousands of dams (more than 87,000) over the years. Moreover, China’s Ministry of Water Resources has accelerated the construction of reservoirs, dikes, and detention basins, with the capacity of the country’s reservoirs being increased by 163 billion cubic meters.

Naturally, as a number of rivers originate in Tibet and as most are often trans-boundary rivers (Brahmaputra; Mekong; and Salween, the second-longest river in Southeast Asia after the Mekong where thus far no dams, have been completed] to name a few), the environmental impact will be borne heavily by Tibet and the lower riparian countries like India, Bangladesh, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. One of the CPC’s strategies to control access to water for China “hydro-hegemony” purposes.

The repercussions are already beginning to show: In Southeast Asia, farmers and fishers across the Mekong River region experienced debilitating droughts in 2020 itself. Research has shown that this was directly due to Chinese engineers actively working to limit the river’s flow. Notably, China’s over-damming of Tibetan rivers has been pursued under a faulty assumption of the seismic potential on the Tibetan Plateau. Increased seismic activity could impact the structural integrity of the dams, further threatening the geological equilibrium and potentially causing damage to cultural heritage sites built along the rivers.

Be it the planned construction of the Kamtok (Gangtuo) dam in the sacred Tibetan mountains – one of the many dams proposed along the upper reaches of the Drichu (Yangtze) river – or reports about a new dam on the Mabja Zangbo River (which flows into Nepal’s Ghaghara or Karnali before joining the Ganges in India) in Tibet’s Burang county, bordering Nepal and India, the Chinese strategy to control Tibetan resources and divert waters for its own insatiable energy and other requirements will wreak havoc on the whole Himalayan region, and beyond.

Although international forums and research organizations such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD have already highlighted the impact of unfettered and large-scale hydropower development on ecological concerns, precious little has been achieved. Given the urgency of global warming and the melting of the Third Pole in particular, such hydropower investments need to be examined.

The Tibetan Plateau – Asia’s water tower and China’s major source of critical minerals like copper and lithium – is facing severe ecological degradation due to China’s extensive infrastructure projects, including mega-dam building, forced relocation of Tibetans, and mining. The increase in the so-called development projects such as the 2006 Golmud-Lhasa railway link among other such initiatives via China’s “Western Development Strategy,” or the “Go west” policy have only facilitated greater exploitation of Tibet’s natural reserves including critical minerals.  

Although, on paper China has referred to its development strategy in Tibet – which it has now renamed as “Xizang” to scuttle the region’s identity further – as a tool to provide economic reforms in the western provinces, at par to the high-quality development in other well-to-do parts. However, rather than reducing poverty, industrial development and other such activities are wreaking havoc on the already accelerated rate of climate change in the region, which is threatening not only the water security of downstream nations like India and Bangladesh but also Tibet’s own biodiversity and entire Himalayan ecosystem.  

Systematic and large-scale mining of minerals in Tibet began decades ago soon after China’s annexation of Tibet, which has significant reserves of the world’s deposits of uranium, chromite, boron, lithium, borax, iron and graphite. Due to the push for green transition and high-tech manufacturing, there is a high global and domestic demand for critical minerals such as lithium and rare earths. As a result, China – which is one of the major countries for supplying rare-earth raw materials and is also an importer of critical minerals for its dominant refining/processing industry accounting for approximately 60% of worldwide production and 85% of processing capacity – is looking to consolidate its lead by exploiting Tibet.

Activists have also raised concerns about China’s illegal sand and gravel mining from riverbeds (e.g., in Tsaruma village, the source of the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers) for use in construction and other human activities. This impacts biodiversity, soil erosion, river flows, pollution, destruction of farmlands, and in turn, extreme events. Research has also revealed that high arsenic content in the water and soils in Tibet, in part being attributable to the mining operations.  

Unfortunately, China’s large-scale extraction is happening at fast rate and using unethical measures. The Chinese government also uses a heavy hand against any protests by the Tibetan residents, which impedes any constructive action. So although the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has called for urgent action to avoid a “sand crisis,” Tibet-specific calls-for-action are hard to find.  

In addition, for many years now, China has also been mining Tibet’s fresh water resources as a “new sustainable” economic growth pillar. This has no doubt boosted China’s bottled water industry but is disastrous for the Tibetan ecosystem, as in the longer term it help rivers to dry up faster. In tandem with the over-damming and mining of critical minerals, the ramifications are unfathomable.  

For example, it has been widely reported that the Tibetan Plateau has been warming more than three times faster than the global average, with Tibet’s permafrost thawing faster. Moreover, infrastructure activities particularly mining in sensitive regions that cause disturbance and pollution have a direct correlation with glacial retreat that has accelerated in the last decade due to human activities like mining, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Glacial retreat refers to the shrinking of glaciers, which is a recent phenomenon and a major marker of climate change.  

Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change, has been highlighting these aspects in the high mountains of Asia in its reports, the Chinese government’s actions in Tibet have only grown in scope.

The broader Himalaya region,  which includes the Tibetan Plateau, is a global biodiversity hotspot and has the largest reservoir of freshwater outside the two Arctic and Antarctica polar regions, among other important features. In view of the dangers of a Himalayan meltdown, the meeting – hosted by Bhutan’s Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay – vehemently expressed the need for “coordination and support” at global forums to “represent and amplify” regional concerns that have global implications.

However, two factors highlight the complications and even the inadequacy of holding vital meetings in such an almost incidental manner: One is the general declining trust in multilateral climate conferences amid low political will. This year it was particularly apparent because of the lack of attendance of the heads of state of major powers and some of the biggest carbon emitters, including Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden. 

In addition, the election of Donald Trump – a well-known climate change skeptic who withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord during his first term – as the next U.S. president has undone any hope there was left in securing international climate solidarity. And that’s not to mention the inherent ethical dilemmas of having two big, influential oil producers hosting back-to-back COP summits (the UAE in 2023 and Azerbaijan in 2024). It highlights that countries with clout – including China, which continues to “elevate its position” at the U.N. bodies – have dominated the global climate forums.

The second problem is the absence of core Himalayan issues in the main UNFCCC agenda, which is governed not just by financial intricacies and inconveniences but unfortunately by “the very worst of political opportunism,” as the Marshall Islands’ climate envoy put it. In particular, the acute marginalization of Tibetan representation in these multilateral climate forums, where China reigns supreme, has only hampered regional concerns from being truly voiced, let alone amplified.

Against such a scenario, what more can the multilateral forums do? How should the global community – including India – respond to China’s apathy for the climate crisis in Tibet?

 

The COP29 Upside: 11th Hour Consensus as the Sole Face-Saver?

COP29 was dubbed the “climate finance COP,” formally known as the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG). After two weeks of intensive negotiations and several years of preparatory work, the new financial goal is a “course correction” on global climate action. It has tripled the finance to developing countries, from the previous goal of $100 billion annually announced in 2009 to $300 billion a year by 2035. COP29 also pledged to continue efforts to harness all actors from public and private sources to scale up finance to developing countries to $1.3 trillion per year. The climate framework intends to cover all greenhouse gases and all sectors to keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit within reach. 

The new commitment builds on significant strides forward in global climate action at COP27 and COP28. A historic Loss and Damage Fund was agreed upon at COP27, while COP28 delivered a global agreement to transition away from all fossil fuels in energy systems, triple renewable energy, and boost climate resilience. 

An agreement on carbon markets is another significant step. The final building blocks that set out how carbon markets will operate under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism have been agreed upon. This includes the standards for a centralized carbon market under the U.N. (Article 6.4 mechanism) to operationalize country-to-country trading and a carbon crediting mechanism. It entails clarity on how countries will authorize the trade of carbon credits and how registries tracking this will operate. 

Furthermore, the transparent process of technical reviews would ensure environmental integrity. This includes mandatory checks for projects against strong environmental and human rights protections. It ensures that a project cannot proceed without explicit, informed agreement from Indigenous peoples. It also allows anyone affected by a project to appeal a decision or file a complaint. This will benefit developing countries receiving new flows of finance and the least developed countries by providing capacity-building support to get a foothold in the market. 

In terms of concrete steps aimed at the Himalayan ecosystem, there were a few high-level plenary sessions at COP29 such as the “Resource Mobilization for Climate Adaptation in Asia’s High Mountains,” which stressed the “urgent need for increased investment in climate adaptation” in this region. These seem mostly ineffectual, in-name-only steps. In contrast, the launch of G-ZERO – a forum of carbon-negative and carbon-neutral small countries, which prominently includes Bhutan (also its permanent secretariat) – at COP29 is truly inspirational. Such actions that aim to “enhance carbon sinks and promote nature-positive pathways” will go a long way to build a positive ideology needed to counter climate change in the Himalayas.

As far as Tibet’s participation in COP29 goes, the two Tibetan delegates – Dechen Palmo and Dhondup Wangmo – raised environmental concerns at some events. They even launched a campaign to raise awareness about the risks posed by hydropower projects in China, particularly the Derge Dam – a hugely controversial project that had resulted in mass protests and a brutal crackdown by the Chinese government earlier this year. Yet the token participation of two Tibetans in a few events at the sidelines of the summit is clearly not enough.

The fact of the matter is that despite the adoption of the “Baku Workplan,” which took a decisive step forward to elevate the voices of Indigenous peoples and local communities in climate action, neither the Hindu Kush Himalaya region nor its peoples, including Tibetans, have been included in the mainstream discussion and, more importantly, in policymaking on climate change.

 

China’s Tibet Apathy: Accelerating Regional Climate Risks

That climate change is wreaking havoc in the Tibetan Plateau is old news: For years, it has been established that global warming is not only causing Tibet’s glaciers to melt and permafrost to thaw at an alarming rate but also accelerating several extreme weather events such as flash floods. In 2019, a special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that up to two-thirds of the region’s glaciers would disappear by the end of the century if carbon emissions were not cut drastically.

On top of the challenges due to global warming, China’s so-called “unprecedented” development policies have hastened Tibet’s climate crisis. China’s relentless pursuit of infrastructure, including helipads, rails, and road networks, as well as dual-use military facilities is causing environmental degradation. That’s on top of the human costs that come with the displacement of nomadic and farming communities due to the (over)damming and diversion of Tibet’s rivers. 

China’s Tibet policy is driven by its need to fill the demands of Han-majority regions, including access to Tibet’s water or mineral resources (reportedly also including rare earths). It also has a larger securitization angle: building excessive military infrastructure to not only clamp down on all separatist activities but also create conditions for a heavily militarized border, particularly against India. China’s increasing militarization in Himalayan territories and influence in countries such as Pakistan and Nepal also have repercussions for the instability of the South Asian region as a whole. 

China is also using its control over Tibet’s water resources to slowly develop into a water hegemon. Ten major rivers, from the Mekong to the Yarlung Tsampo (Brahmaputra in India) originate in Tibet, and China is planning or has already executed major dams on a number of these rivers. Beyond the impact on Tibet’s people and environment, such actions have given rise to concerns about China’s intent to block access to water to downstream countries. 

This has heated up the already tense geopolitical climate in South and Southeast Asia. China stands accused of using financial incentives as well as economic coercion to clamp down either dissent or disagreement over China’s “core national interests,” as well as to fulfill its various strategic goals.

 

The Imperative for Climate Solidarity: Beyond Multilateral Unity?

Undoubtedly, the future of Asia’s high mountains depends on the decisions of the global climate bodies and the collective efforts taken to build climate-resilient communities and protect these vital ecosystems. A unified effort to combat these challenges would mean moving beyond the business-as-usual approach and focusing on targeted investments and mobilization of international support. There is a need to quantify economic costs for loss and damage to the specific ecosystem to drive new investments and support stronger policy coordination. 

In the Himalayan region, as raised by the Himalayan ministers’ council at COP29, tackling transboundary issues with a common approach has to be given the spotlight. Some of these issues include but are not limited to cryosphere risk monitoring, disaster preparedness, increasing air pollution, biodiversity conservation, and innovative financing solutions.

Support at global forums like the U.N. climate conferences to represent and amplify common issues and concerns is critical in attracting global attention to the Himalayan region. This would hopefully also allow access to global funds, such as the Global Environment Facility, which is a partnership of 18 agencies (including United Nations agencies, multilateral development banks, national entities, and international NGOs) and  U.N. financial mechanisms such as the Adaptation Fund and Green Climate Fund (GCF), as well as other potential innovative financing solutions. Such an imperative will go a long way to fulfill the funding need that was highlighted by Bhutan’s Secretary of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources Karma Tshering at COP29

Moreover, the multilateral partnership must prioritize the Himalayan climate crisis in their common agenda. Four years earlier, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Ministerial Mountain Summit had declared some common goals, including holding a biennial summit for the eight Hindu Kush Himalaya countries and creating a task force to monitor and assess the calls for action. This needs to be taken forward with renewed momentum at the COP30 to be held in Brazil. 

While multilateral cooperation is a must, there is also a need to amplify the voices of the marginalized and suppressed communities in the high mountains. Particularly, the Tibetan Plateau and its people need the international community, including India and the West, to check China’s growing inroads into the Tibetan landscape. Be it China’s excessive damming of Tibetan rivers, mining, or construction of dual-use military infrastructure (e.g., roads and helipads), China’s actions in Tibet belie its claims of adhering to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Then there are also the human rights aspects of the Tibetan occupation, which also lends to the climate change acceleration as the original settlers are “relocated.” In this context, India and the West need to collaborate to bring the Himalayan concerns into the emerging Indo-Pacific regional architecture agenda. A common security agenda might help consolidate climate action.

 

 

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