![\"3\"](\"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/3.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\n
Michael Buckley renders an important service in this outspoken book by alerting us to the fact that, for millions of Tibetans, the desolate future evoked by Gandhi has been a reality for decades. Buckley, a Canadian journalist and photographer, has been traveling to Tibet for more than 30 years. Here, he documents the calamitous consequences of China\u2019s unsparing usurpation of Tibet\u2019s natural resources. Since its violent annexation of Tibet in 1950, China has relentlessly disfigured the hypnotically beautiful plateau. It has mined and carted away Tibet\u2019s mineral wealth, dammed and diverted waters from its bountiful rivers, herded innumerable Tibetans into what it calls \u201cNew Socialist Villages,\u201d suppressed the expression of Tibetan identity, and annihilated whole ways of life. \u201cTibet,\u201d Buckley reminds us, \u201cis the largest colony in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buckley is a keen observer. Seemingly minute changes in Tibet\u2019s environment set him off on a quest to uncover their underlying causes. Stung by a mosquito in Lhasa, Tibet\u2019s capital, he is at first baffled: Mosquitoes aren\u2019t supposed to be able to survive above 11,000 feet, and Lhasa sits at an altitude of 12,000 feet. Historically, Tibet has never been affected by malaria, still among the most fatal diseases in the vicinity. But as China\u2019s aggressive colonization degrades Tibet\u2019s habitat, this may soon change. The railway line from Beijing to Lhasa \u2014 a feat of engineering and a fount of pollution \u2014 brings trainloads of Han Chinese tourists and settlers who, occupying the top tier of China\u2019s ethnic hierarchy and indifferent to the local customs, increasingly resemble the British in India: foreigners seeking fortunes and adventure in an exotic outpost.<\/p>\n
Despite his emotional investment in Tibet, Buckley\u2019s prose is not weighed down by sentimentalism. He does not romanticize or exalt the victims. \u201cTibetans were not environmentalists,\u201d he notes. \u201cThey had no concept of sanitation, plumbing, or garbage disposal.\u201d But unlike the starry-eyed Western observers of China who, enraptured by the glitz of Shanghai\u2019s skyscrapers, have rushed to pronounce this the Chinese century, Buckley is mindful of the unfathomable human suffering on the periphery that underwrites the glamour of the governing elite who inhabit China\u2019s metropolises. To them, Tibet is a source of prized minerals, hydropower and water \u2014 officially classified as \u201cWater Tower Number One.\u201d Having survived waves of genocide, Tibetans must now endure ecocide: deforestation, landslides and \u201cecological migration,\u201d the Chinese euphemism for mass displacement caused by damming.<\/p>\n
But the crisis engineered by China extends beyond its Buddhist colony.<\/p>\n
Tibet, the third-largest reservoir of freshwater on Earth, is the source of some of Asia\u2019s most vital rivers: Yangtze, Mekong, Yarlung Tsangpo. By Buckley\u2019s estimation, the survival of more than 750 million people in nations downstream \u2014 India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Laos, Cambodia \u2014 depends on waters originating in Chinese-controlled territory. By aggressively damming transboundary rivers and curtailing their flow, China has not only jeopardized Tibet\u2019s fragile ecology; it has gained political leverage over the downstream nations. The rapidly proliferating megadams and reservoirs within China\u2019s borders \u2014 more than 26,000, or half the world\u2019s total \u2014 are taps that Beijing can turn on and off at will. Unlike neighboring India, which has signed generous water-sharing treaties with Pakistan and Bangladesh, China has repeatedly rebuffed efforts aimed at equitable resource allocation. In 1997, Beijing rejected a United Nations convention that prescribed a framework for water sharing. When Vladimir Putin threatens to block oil supplies to Europe, it at least spurs talk among his clients of alternative sources of energy. But for China\u2019s weak and impoverished neighbors, there is no alternative to water. They are increasingly at Beijing\u2019s mercy.<\/p>\n
Traveling to \u201cthe tail-end of the mighty rivers flowing from Tibet,\u201d Buckley meets the people whose lives have been devastated by China\u2019s actions. In Cambodia, for instance, he finds that the fish, along with the river silt so essential to the soil\u2019s fertilization, are disappearing. China\u2019s dams have halted their natural movement. Although Buckley does not directly state this, his book reaffirms the warning contained in Brahma Chellaney\u2019s indispensable 2011 study, \u201cWater: Asia\u2019s New Battleground\u201d: that China, through its unrestrained damming of transboundary rivers, may soon plunge Asia into a deadly conflict over water.<\/p>\n
Amid the gloom, Buckley offers Bhutan as a model for other Asian states. This is an unrealistic solution. Asia\u2019s overpopulated countries cannot duplicate the environmental policies pursued by a tiny and reclusive Buddhist monarchy. Yet, arriving at a time when many Western authors are acquiescing in censorship for the tawdry privilege of being published in China, \u201cMeltdown in Tibet\u201d is made indispensable by the mere fact of its existence. As the worsening condition of dissidents from Tibet to Xinjiang demonstrates, the old trope that China\u2019s unelected rulers can be softened through engagement has proved to be a disastrous fantasy. Tibet\u2019s fate now looks like a chilling preamble, rather than the coda, to the story of China\u2019s ruthless race to the top.<\/p>\n
Source: www.tibet.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mahatma Gandhi delivered a trenchant assessment of the British Empire in 1928. \u201cThe economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom is today keeping the world in chains,\u201d he wrote. Gandhi would lead India to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tibetnature.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}