Tibet Third Pole Action

Scientists call Tibet the Earth’s Third Pole because it is home to some 40,000 glaciers, storing more freshwater than any other region except the North and South poles. These same scientists also know that Tibet is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world. Tibet’s glaciers will be gone within decades. Expert glaciologists estimate that, at present rates, almost two thirds of the glaciers on the plateau could be gone by 2060 (Chinese glaciologist Yao Tandong, quoted in China Daily, 2004). These glaciers feed the rivers that are the lifeblood of Asia, providing water for more than one billion people in ten nations downstream of Tibet.

China’s response to climate change on the Roof of the World is to:

• dam and divert Tibet’s rivers.

• displace Tibet’s nomadic people – the traditional stewards – from Tibet’s grasslands.

• crush any voice that dares speak out against China’s policies.

Since invading and occupying Tibet in 1949, China has degraded Tibet’s ecosystems, displaced and impoverished hundreds of thousands of Tibetans, and threatened Asia’s regional security. China’s policies have aggravated the environmental degradation that is affecting the quantity and quality of Tibet’s grasslands and water resources. With drought and water scarcity on the rise across Asia, China’s dams will disrupt already fragile water supplies in the region. In turn, China’s policy of forcing tens of thousands of nomads into permanent exile in their own homeland and severely restricting the movement of most remaining nomads is creating a new human rights crisis in this already oppressed and occupied country. 

China needs Tibet’s nomads, who learned centuries ago that only through good stewardship is life on the Tibetan Plateau humanly possible and ecologically sustainable. Tibet’s nomads are essential to sustaining the long- term health of the ecosystems and water resources that China so desperately depends upon – and for which its army invaded Tibet sixty years ago. 

The world’s nations and peoples now recognise that local communities must be at the centre of any just and enduring solution to determining the best way to adapt to climate change. For Tibetans, this means full participation in all aspects of decision-making and governance of Tibet’s ecosystems, natural resources, and conservation zones.

It is the stated policy of China's government to permanently "settle" nomadic families. This online action is directed at the Party Secretaries of the five Chinese provinces into which Tibet has been subsumed; the Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan.

Subject:

Your Letter:

We are writing to demand that you overturn your policy of uprooting and displacing the Tibetan nomads from their traditional homeland, the grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau. As you are aware, after China's invasion of Tibet in 1949, Tibet's traditional territory was annexed into the present-day provinces of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Yunnan, and the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Your provincial government's policy of forcing tens of thousands of Tibet's nomads into permanent exile in their own homeland, and severely restricting the movement of most remaining nomads, threatens their culture and sustainable livelihoods. China's national government has stated its intention to "permanently settle" 560,000 nomads over the next five years in Qinghai province alone.

We are aware that climate change is gravely impacting Tibet, the Earth's Third Pole, but we believe that your policies are leading to further degradation of the Tibetan Plateau's fragile environment, which in turn is increasing poverty and social breakdown, both among Tibetans and among more than a billion people in ten nations downstream from the plateau.

Tibetan nomads have long lived sustainably in Tibet, combining sound livelihood practices and a deep religious devotion to assure not only their own well-being in the harsh and fragile environment of their homeland, but also assuring the stability of the plateau's ecosystem services which Asia, including China, have for so long depended upon. Tibet's nomads must therefore have decision-making power over any and all efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change in Tibet.

We urge you to:

1. Halt the displacement of nomads from the grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau and return stewardship of Tibet's grasslands to Tibet's nomads.
2. Halt all land uses that threaten the Tibetan Plateau's ecosystems and ecosystem services, especially water resources.
3. Urgently review your provincial government's policies in the light of new scientific studies, which suggests that grazing can mitigate the negative warming effects on rangeland quality (Klein Julia A., J. Harte & X.Q. Zhao. (2007)), and examine other models of adaptation to climate change, especially the model applied in Mongolia, which is designed to protect the livelihood and culture of nomadic herders.
4. Introduce genuine community co-management, that gives a central role to Tibet's nomads, such as is being practised in a part of the Three Rivers Headwaters project, Tsanggo Sum (Sanjiangyuan).

Zhang Qingli

Party Secretary, Tibet Autonomous Region

Bai Enpei

Party Secretary, Yunnan Province

Lu Hao

Party Secretary, Gansu Province

Liu Qibao

Party Secretary, Sichuan Province

Qiang Wei

Secretary of the CPC
Qinghai Provincial Committee