Current Situation

YAMDROK TSO

Yamdrok Tso (Yamdrok Lake) is situated 100 km southwest of Lhasa at an elevation of 4,441 metres. It has a catchment area of 6,100 sq. km and a surface area of 678 sq. km. The lake is almost a closed system with only a small tributary of the Yarlung Tsangpo River flowing out from it.Inflow is from precipitation and snow melt from surrounding mountains. The lake, a resting place for many migrating birds crossing the Tibetan Plateau and then the Himalayas, is also a habitat for many native species including the endangered blacknecked crane. In addition it is one of Tibet’s four most sacred lakes and the famous Samding monastery is situated on its shores. The Tibetans regard it as a “life power lake” and the resting place of the spirit of the Tibetan nation. A legend holds that if Yamdrok Tso should dry up then the whole population of Tibet will meet their death (Free Tibet Campaign, 1996).

A 90 Megawatt pumped-storage hydropower plant has been constructed; it began trial operations in 1997 and was officially reported to be fully operational in September 1998 (Xinhua , 19 September 1998). Tibet’s extraordinary topography has enabled the designers to use Yamdrok Tso as a reservoir to generate hydroelectricity without having to build a dam. Instead, six km-long tunnels have been bored through the sides of the lake to a powerhouse situated next to the Yarlung Tsangpo River 850 metres below.

First, there is no reservoir to catch the water pumped out of Yamdrok Tso. The water from the lake drains into the Yarlung Tsangpo River and when water is pumped back, it is Yarlung Tsangpo water that is used. The lake’s water, which is oligotrophic (high in minerals and low in nitrates), is very different to that of the river’s and the mixing of the two could have adverse ecological impacts. The pH in the lake is 9.11 while in the river it is 8.13, indicating that the river is slightly more acid than the lake. The total mineralisation in the lake is 1941 mg per litre as compared to only 174 mg per litre in the river. The nitrate concentration in the Yarlung Tsangpo in 1983-84 was found to be 0.65 mg per litre, which may have increased since and may increase further given the rising population upstream and increasing intensification of agriculture.In the lake, the nitrate concentration is only 0.16mg per liter. The replenishing of Yamdrok Tso water with Yarlung Tsangpo water could increase acidity and nitrate levels.

The lake, which has been a closed system for centuries, will begin to change in its basic properties. The aquatic organisms in the lake have adapted to the unique conditions over millennia. In a very short time that ecosystem, which has never been properly studied, will alter radically (Stockman and Seibert 1997).

A second contention with this project is that the installed capacity of the plant (90 Megawatt) is the largest on the grid. This is very unusual in the light of pumped-storage requiring base load stations to provide off-peak power for return pumping. The installed capacity of the Lhasa grid is increasing with new stations coming on line in the near future.

The utility of such a large and expensive plant is thus called into question. If it is to be used as a pumped-storage plant, it appears to provide no gain for the Lhasa grid, which the plant is supposed to service. But if not the lake will be drained to provide a net gain of power. This will cause a water level drop of between six centimetres to 60 centimetres annually, depending on the rate of utilisation (Stockman and Seibert 1997). This too would have a devastating effect on the lake, reducing the area and quality of shallows around the edges which are necessary for the nesting of waterfowl. Shrinking the lake area could also increase salinity, which may affect wildlife adversely.

Protest against the plant at Yamdrok Tso has been strident from both within, and outside, Tibet. The late Panchen Lama protested strongly and construction was stopped for a while in the mid-eighties. Shortly after his death in 1989 work was resumed. After much lobbying from The International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet and the Free Tibet Campaign and others, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) passed a resolution at its World Conservation Congress in 1996 which called upon China to “strengthen their effort of co-operation with the international community in exchange of information, including that related to the local environment at Yamdrok Tso… consider establishing a nature reserve at Yamdrok Tso …[and] …calls upon the IUCN commissions to work with China in identifying areas of collaboration on maintaining the ecological health of Yamdrok Tso” (IUCN 1996). So far little progress has been made between the IUCN and the Chinese government. Meanwhile, the waters of Yamdrok Tso are draining into the Yarlung Tsangpo River.

Over-Fishing
The Chinese have described Yamdrok Tso as the “Fish Barn of Tibet”. In 1960 the reported catch was 255,000 kg. In 1994 it was 1.04 million kg. A fish-powder factory was set up in Ngari in 1993 with an annual output of 70 tons (Zhang 1997). Restrictions have also been placed on catches in the Lhasa River, in which fish over 250 grams can apparently no longer be caught due to previous over-fishing. Carp has been introduced from China and is generally bred in ponds in Lhasa (Zhang 1997). Concerns have been expressed byTibetans, and more recently by China, about the sustainability of the catch and practises such as the use of explosives and electric fishing have recently been banned.

MEKONG AND SALWEEN WATERSHEDS
The Mekong has its sources in Amdo in a remote part of the Thangla Mountains. The Salween has its sources around the town of Nagchu in the northern part of the ‘TAR’. The Salween travels east until it nears the eastern town of Chamdo where it starts to head south towards Khawakarpo Mountains to flow into the Tibetan town of Tseka, running nearly parallel with the Mekong. The two rivers continue this south, southeast direction into Yunnan Province and then separate their courses, the Gyalmo Ngulchu running into Burma to become the Salween and the Zachu later joined by Ngomchu entering Laos to become the Mekong.

The Mekong is currently the focus of a massive international development plan involving China, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. A 34 metres high dam at Chalong in Nagchu Prefecture is the largest dam on the Salween in Tibet according to our information. The Chamdo-Jinhe Power Station on the Mekong was originally completed in the 1970s. The dam was recently upgraded as part of the “62 Aid Projects” with new equipment to increase efficiency and new power lines running to the Yulong Copper Mine. The next stage in the development of the Chamdo-Jinhe Power Station is to install a 60,000 kW generation set.

There is no available information on the size of this dam but the future installed capacity of 60,000 kW suggests it is large. In the Chinese propaganda magazine China’s Tibet Vol.7 No.2, Li Mingsen reports that, “efforts are being made to construct more power plants for the formation of a power grid centred around the Mekong in the 21st century”. There are no details of these plans as yet, but it is known from proposed mining activity in the area that the focus of this development will be mining, which has its own adverse impact for the Mekong.

Toxic Metals In Rivers
Mining poses a significant pollution threat to water bodies but the severity depends upon the degree of care taken to mitigate such impacts. The main problem is the threat posed by the careless disposal of tailings which contain heavy metals, ores and leaching agents. Waste materials from mining are often piled up outside the mine and can contain pyrite and sulphide minerals which, when exposed to the atmosphere and water, may produce sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid in the tailings can leach out other heavy metals left behind in the process. These can pass into the water table or become washed into water bodies during storms.

In addition to sulphuric acid, these solutions may contain heavy metals such as silver, cadmium, cobalt, copper, mercury, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, lead, zinc,
arsenic, antimony, and selenium. Some of these are highly toxic to humans and wildlife alike. Improper storage of mine tailings and ineffective containment of contaminated waters can lead to these pollutants entering water bodies and decimating life in rivers for hundreds of miles. Dilution depends on the quantity and quality of water supply and concentration of the pollutants (US EPA 1994).

China’s record for implementing pollution control at mines, especially in Tibet, is lax and has led to severe pollution of water bodies. At the International Symposium on the ‘Qinghai Tibet Plateau’ [Tibetan Plateau] in Xining, 24 July 1998, two Chinese scientists from the Commission for Integrated Survey of Natural Resources reported of mining operations in Amdo. This is often the typical procedure at mines in Tibet, and it constitutes a serious waste of resources and an equally serious risk to the health of people and wildlife, both locally and downstream.

Clear-Cutting In Eastern Tibet
Forest erosion on the Tibetan Plateau has a history of at least 5,000 years (Winkler 1999). A thousand years ago, juniper forests existed in the Lhasa valley but they have
largely disappeared due to natural and human factors (Miehe 1998). This would suggest that there would have been a steady increase in the silt load of Tibet’s rivers, particularly the Yarlung Tsangpo, over this period. It is unclear how quickly the landscape may have changed during that period.

However, the barren state of the upper reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo is a contributing factor to the river’s extraordinarily high silt load. The Chamdo area of Kham province, which includes significant portions of the Mekong and Salween watersheds, was once home to extensive cold-temperate forests, largely of juniper, pines and spruce. It is relevant to state that in the Chamdo area logging practises have been unsustainable and this may pose a threat to the hydrology of these vital Asian rivers.
Clear-cutting has been the norm in these areas and associated soil erosion correspondingly high. Countries downstream planning hydro-development on the Mekong
or Salween should be aware of the threat of increasing siltation.

Yellow River Watershed

The headwaters of the great Yellow River — known as Machu to the Tibetans and Huanghe to the Chinese — lies entirely within the Amdo region of Tibet. From Amdo the
river flows into the arid North China Plain. Heavy utilisation is creating an emerging water shortage in North China and developments along the Yellow River may be to blame.

The Yellow River has run dry each year with the dry period becoming progressively longer; in 1996 it was dry for 133 days and in 1997, a year exacerbated by drought, it failed to reach the sea for 226 days and its 1998 annual dry period was 137 days (SEPA 1999; Brown 1998). The amount of water flowing down the Yellow River in Amdo at present is 23 per cent less than that in the 1970s, which is one of the main factors causing drying up of the river in its lower reaches (China Daily 1999a). For long stretches it did not even reach Shandong Province, the area growing one-fifth of China’s corn and one-seventh of its wheat, depends on the Yellow River for half of its irrigation water (Brown 1998).

Unconstrained development in Amdo on the upper reaches of the Yellow River is exacerbating the situation in China as well as causing widespread environmental degradation in Amdo. The deteriorating environment and lack of rain are reported by Xinhua to have caused more than 1,000 lakes
to dry up in a region of Amdo around the Yellow River’s source (Xinhua, 7 April 1999). Amdo has experienced intensive industrialisation and population transfer since the Chinese invasion. A former pastoral heartland of Tibet, it has been transformed into a landscape of factories, dams, big cities, large mechanised farms, laogais (forced labour camps), mining operations and oil wells. Towns have sprung up in places where only nomads once camped, and the new population is predominantly Chinese.

While many areas retain the designation of “Tibet Autonomous County” the reality is that the burgeoning Chinese population dominate most counties and Tibetans have little or no say in “the development plans”.

The focus of industrial development in Amdo (Ch.Qinghai) is on mineral extraction and processing. Amdo boasts China’s biggest potash fertiliser plant, the biggest asbestos production base, and the second biggest lead and zinc mine.

The impact of this industrial development came to light in 1996 when authorities announced the desperate state of the Huangshi River valley, a tributary of the Yellow River. The area contains 60 per cent of Amdo’s population, industrial and agricultural output on only 2.2 per cent of the province’s total landmass.

This is an example of how industrial development in Tibet has been carried out in an uncontrolled and careless fashion resulting in severe environmental degradation. The rivers are choked with eroded soil and industrial pollutants. They are also being destroyed by massive dams and diversions. In order to power the industrial drive in Amdo, an extensive network of major hydroelectric power stations has been built, some of which are amongst the largest in China. Vast areas of pastoral and agricultural land have been
inundated by reservoirs. Nomads have been disenfranchised by the fragmentation of their range lands. The main focus of this development in the coming years will be the “Upper Yellow River Cascade”. This consists of 15 major dams which are projected to generate 13,462MW. Five of these were supposedly completed in 1992 and two more were under construction (Cheng 1994). It would appear that the two major dams discussed below are part of this scheme, as well as many of those under construction or planned (see table 3).

The two biggest projects operating on the Upper Machu (Yellow River) in Amdo — and some of the abuses reported by Tibetans that have resulted from the construction and operation of these plants — are discussed here. The environmental impact of these dams is far-reaching. In general, these huge projects are turning the Machu into a series of semi-stagnant water bodies. The release of water into the river is largely dependent on the demand for electricity generation and follows no natural pattern. The river’s ecosystem is breaking down, causing a sharp drop in biodiversity. Conflicting needs along the basin — between electricity generation, irrigation and water supply for industrial and domestic use in cities — are pushing the Yellow River to crisis point.

Tsanga Gag

Tsanga Gag or Tsanga Dam (Ch. Longyangxia) is located to the south of the Tso Ngonpo in Tsolho (Ch. Hainan) County between Chabcha (Ch. Gonghe) and Trika (Ch. Guide) on the Machu (Yellow River) and was completed in the late 1980s and stands a staggering 178 metres high. This makes it the largest dam in Tibet and the second biggest in China after Ertan in Sichuan, which will remain the biggest until the Three Gorges project is complete. Tsanga Gag reservoir can store the entire flow of the Machu for three whole months (Tsering 1998). This creates a reservoir covering a surface area of 393 sq. km (Wang 1984).

The powerhouse has an installed capacity of 1280 Megawatt producing 5.8 billion kWh annually. It took 30,000 Chinese workers to construct the dam which cost 1.769 billion yuan (US$221.12 million). Around 10,000 people who were displaced from prime agricultural land to make way for the reservoir were allocated land in formerly pastoral areas which they had to convert to farmland. They were supported by the government for two years after which they had to achieve self sufficiency (Tsering 1998). On top of this the dam brought over 100,000 Chinese workers to Amdo, many of whom stayed there, thereby increasing pressure on the dwindling natural resources (ICT 1992).

Tibetans have seen little benefit from this project as much of the power goes to military bases and cities dominated by Chinese inhabitants and state-owned industries. The provision of power spawns development that has, in turn, consumed ever-increasing quantities of Tibetan land and resources, caused pollution and excluded Tibetans from the economy. The Longyang Gorge where the dam is located is 1,688 km from the source of the Yellow River. It is the first in a series of 15 dams to be located downstream of Longyang, between Longyang and Qingtong. Upstream from Longyang, which is all Tibetan territory, there are future plans for a chain of 12 more power stations between the source and Longyang. These are expected to be installed with a total of 6,330 Megawatt capacity (Bian 1987).

Ngogyai Gag

Ngogyai Gag or Ngogyai dam (Ch. Lijiaxia) went into full operation early in 1998 (International Water Power & Dam Construction, March 1998). The 165 metres high and 420 metres long dam wall holds back 1.65 billion cubic metres of water and is the third of the 15 plants planned as a cascade between Longyang and Qingtong. It is situated 109 km downstream from Tsanga Gag on the borders of Chentsa Tibetan Autonomous County and Hualong Hui Autonomous County in Amdo.

The reservoir inundated at least 430 hectares of land and involved the relocation of at least 4,012 people. To give an idea of the level of earthworks and construction at such large dams, Ngogyai Gag construction involved 4.5 million cubic metres of rock and earth excavation; 3.25 million cubic metres of concrete placement; 4.8 million cubic metres of earthworks; 144,000 metres of consolidation grouting; 47,000 metres of drilling for curtain grouting; and 10,000 tons of metal works (Huang 1996). More than 20,000 Chinese workers worked at the dam site and many settled permanently afterwards (Tsering 1998).

Tsanga Gag and Ngogyai Gag are the largest dams currently operating in Amdo. According to Xinhua in 1992 there were 156 medium and small hydropower stations operating in Amdo with a combined annual output of 236 million kWh.

 The damming of the Machu River and its tributaries in Amdo has uprooted tens of thousands of people from their homes and is expected to move thousands more. The loss of agricultural and pastoral land has uprooted Tibetan communities from their traditional economic base. The environmental impacts associated with the economic development accompanying these projects are far reaching. Mining and associated processing industries are the main benefactors of power from these dams as Amdo Province has become a major centre of the metallurgic industries. A lack of regulations has led to severe water and atmospheric pollution in the province while power has facilitated the expansion of major cities, consuming more and more land in a region that used to be occupied by nomads and their temporary camps.

 In interviews with recently-exiled Tibetans in Dharamsala in July 1998, refugees from Amdo told of how water was released from dams in the region without warning, posing great dangers to people living downstream. People working in fields by the rivers are drowned in flash floods and houses and farm buildings are often washed away. Many claimed they have never received any compensation for these losses. One man spoke of how his family had to give up farming and become road labourers as their land was so often washed away by these sudden releases from dams that it became unusable.

The utilisation of the Machu River and its tributaries in Amdo appears to be taking place at a rate that implies maximum exploitation. There seems to be no consideration  of sustainable development, no consideration of the wishes and aspirations of local people, and no consideration of the long-term survival of the river’s ecosystem. Tibetans in Amdo express concern for the future viability of such development and equal consternation over the safety of people living around these projects who suffer frequent inundation from rising reservoirs and flash floods associated with dam releases.

The Upper Yangtze Watershed

The source of the Drichu (Yangtze River) lies deep withinAmdo in the Thangla Mountains (Ch. Tanggula) and it runs through Tibet for more than 2,000 km of its 6,380 km length. It is the longest river in Tibet and the third longest river in the world after the Amazon and Nile (DIIR 1995). The catchment area of the Yangtze and the regions to its south contain 82 per cent of China’s total volume of water flow, but only 36 per cent of its cultivated land (Chen and Edmonds 1989). While the river and its main tributaries, the Yalong Chu and Daduchu, rise from Amdo, the Yalong and Dadu lie east of the main channel and enter Kham (western Sichuan) before joining the Yangtze in the Chengdu Plain.

In Sichuan and beyond the Yangtze is extensively dammed, as are some of its main tributaries such as the Dadu and Yalong. China’s biggest dam in operation, the massive World Bank-funded Ertan Dam (240 metres) is located on the Yalongchu just before it meets the Yangtze. The construction of the projects themselves incurs a large toll on the local environment, involving massive earthworks and road building. Further, it attracts migrant labourers, who become established in new towns with new transport links, and facilitate industrial development and settlement upstream.

In Kham, where forests and wildlife are coming under increasing pressure, dam-building is the next step on the path to increasing environmental destruction. The establishment of a power source in one place attracts new settlements and new industries (such as resource-intensive paper and pulp mills), and upstream areas become the focus of further development.

Among the schemes to build many major dams on the Upper Yangtze and its tributaries there is also a plan to divert water from the upper reaches to supplement the ever decreasing flows in the Yellow River. This plan envisages taking water from the main stream and the Yalong River from a point on the Tibetan Plateau (Zhang 1989).

Forest Loss and Water Loss
While the development of a network of hydropower projects in the Upper Drichu watershed is supposed to include flood protection facilities, this has been severely frustrated by massive deforestation which increases the impact of flooding greatly. In the summer of 1998, the Yangtze reached record flood levels, yet actual flows were not at a historical high. This was analysed as a sure sign that deforestation activities upstream were causing floods to be more severe, despite lower actual water quantities Zhuang Guotai, a member of China’s State Environmental Protection Agency, told a Chinese newspaper that for every 70,000 hectares of forest lost, a natural reservoir that can store one million cubic metres of water is also lost (US Embassy in Beijing, August 1998). This gives a vivid insight into the potential flood protection provided by leaving forests intact.

Much of the deforestation in the Yangtze watershed has taken place in Tibetan areas, with little benefit to the local people as most of the wood is trucked out. Only recently are the Chinese authorities beginning to realise the true value of the Tibetan Plateau and its environs in relation to the ecological protection of much of China.

Flood Deaths
The worst Yangtze flood in China of August 1998 resulted in an economic loss of US$37.5 billion and the death of 3,656 people (DIIR 1999a). At a rally on 28 September
1998, held in Beijing by the Communist Party to declare “victory” over the disastrous summer floods, President Jiang Zemin admitted — in a significant ideological departure — that Communist governments had too often tried to impose their will on nature. It was important now, he said, “to understand the law of nature, correctly manage it and learn how to follow it to facilitate our economic development and other social undertakings” (Lawrence 1998).

The International Red Cross on 4 August 1999 said that more than 400 people have been killed and 66 million affected by disastrous summer flooding along the Yangtze river in August 1999 and an international appeal for emergency aid was launched (Inside China Today 1999b).

Amdo’s Shrinking Lake                                            

Tso Ngonpo (Blue Lake) as it is known to the Tibetans, more familiarly known by its Mongol name, Lake Kokonor,

is the largest lake in Tibet. It has a size of 4,460 sq. km and is situated at an elevation of 3,197 metres above sea level (Chang 1987). It has in recent decades been intensively fished, mined for salts and the heavy utilisation of the rivers flowing into it may be causing a decline in the water level. In May 1998, World Journal reported that the level of the lake had dropped three metres. It is anticipated that within 30 years the sandy region of the lake will increase from 450 sq. km to 700 sq. km. This is expected to have a major impact on birds nesting in the area and on other wildlife (World Journal 14 May 1998).

Source: www.tibet.net/Environment and Development Desk,DIIR