-By\u00a0Zamlha Tempa Gyaltsen,\u00a0Environment Research Fellow,\u00a0Tibet Policy Institute<\/p>\n
China\u2019s latest white paper on Tibet, once again highlights Beijing\u2019s absolute lack of understanding of Tibet\u2019s History and its unwillingness to read beyond government documents.<\/p>\n
The paper \u201cDemocratic Reform in Tibet \u2013 Sixty Years On,\u201d was released on March 27, 2019 to mark the 60th year of Chinese occupation of the Tibetan plateau and suppression of Tibetan people.<\/p>\n
With a blatant display of colonial arrogance, the paper includes a brief chapter on Tibet\u2019s ecology, it says: \u201cIn old Tibet, with an extremely underdeveloped economy, people could only adapt to the natural environment \u2013 they used whatever they could exploit from nature.\u201d This out-rightly undermines Tibet\u2019s glorious history and gives no credit for Tibetan people\u2019s environmental conservation efforts for thousands of years.<\/p>\n
In fact, it was Tibetan people\u2019s belief in the sacredness of its natural environment coupled with their profound wisdom and skill to co-exist harmoniously with its surrounding environment that has helped in the conservation of the world\u2019s highest plateau until the Chinese occupation in 1959. According to a response to a \u00a0whitepaper on Tibet\u2019s ecology issued by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) in December 2018, it states \u201cHistorically, Tibetans have protected and respected their environment and have not only successfully adapted to the ever-changing climatic conditions of the plateau but also prospered there as a powerful civilization\u201d.<\/p>\n
Numerous scientific studies in recent years have affirmed the positive role of Tibetan people\u2019s cultural beliefs in the sacredness of important ecological sites in environmental conservation.<\/p>\n
According to Tibetan historical records, environmental conservation efforts were carried out on a large scale as early as during the glorious Shang Shung period. The conservation efforts were further strengthened in the 7th century during the reign of King Songtsen Gompo, the 33rd emperor of Tibet. He issued edicts that reprimanded his subjects from harming and killing of animals. \u00a0The founder of the Phagmodrupa Dynasty in Tibet, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen (1302-1364), enforced an ingenious policy of planting 200,000 trees annually and appointed a forest officer to protect the newly-planted trees. Similarly, successive rulers in Tibet such as the 5th Dalai Lama and the 13th Dalai Lama issued strict prohibitions on hunting and felling of trees at important ecological sites.<\/p>\n
But as People\u2019s Liberation Army\u2019s (PLA) marched into Tibet from three separate Sino -Tibet border fronts in 1950s, Tibet begins to witness unprecedented scale of environmental destruction across the plateau. This paper will briefly focus on three environmental issues in Tibet to give a quick glimpse into 60 years of China\u2019s environmental destruction in Tibet.<\/p>\n
The Tibetan Plateau, with 2.5 million square kilometers of area, was perceived as \u2018one great zoological garden\u2019 by early explorers to the region. Some scientists have compared its known biodiversity to that of Amazon Rainforest.<\/p>\n
The cultural way of life in Tibet, which was greatly influenced by both Bon and Buddhist traditions, strictly forbid general public from commercial hunting. Successive rulers in Tibet issued strict edicts to ban hunting at several ecological sites during various periods of its history. Prior to 1950s, there were innumerable accounts of Tibetan merchants and pilgrims travelling through vast grasslands of the northern plains, seeing large herds of wild animals.<\/p>\n
But with the Chinese occupation, Tibet witnessed sudden disruption in its age-old tradition of causing minimum harm to the natural environment and its wild life inhabitants. Many elderly Tibetans in exile have been eye-witness to People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA) engaging in hunting practices employing machineguns to hunt herds of wild animals during the invasion. Some PLA soldiers stationed in Tibet after the occupation often use dynamite in rivers and lakes to instantly catch hundreds of fish, a practice that Chinese officials followed even in 1990s despite strong objection from local Tibetan communities.<\/p>\n
Chinese government authorities in Tibet issued license for commercial hunting of rare animals, and many officials engaged in hunting for leisure. Such government attitude encouraged large scale illegal poaching across Tibet in 1980s and early 1990s. Some emboldened poachers even killed Sonam Dhargay and other wild-life protection volunteers in the region.<\/p>\n
Until 1949, Tibet\u2019s the forest cover were one of the oldest reserves in all central Asia, predominantly found in eastern Amdo, south-eastern Kham and Kongpo region of southern Tibet. But the invasion of Tibet opened up the region to hungry Chinese state-logging enterprises. China has been one of the largest consumers of timber in the world, it inflicted unprecedented scale of deforestation across the region. Tibet\u2019s forest cover was reduced to 13.57 million hectares from 25.2 million hectares, about 46% reduction between 1950 and 1985, with an estimate market value (2000 market estimate) of US $ 54 billion. The horrifying scale of logging in some part of Tibet lead to the 1998 Yangtze flood and the 2010 Drukchu flood.<\/p>\n
The 1998 Yangtze Flood in China was one of the worst floods in 44 years at the time. As per China\u2019s official estimate, the flood killed more than 3000 people, displaced 15 million and affected 223 million people \u2013 almost one-fifth of China\u2019s then population. A post-disaster study by Chinese scientists put excessive logging in the Yangtze valley, particularly in the Tibetan areas as one of the primary cause of the massive flood.<\/p>\n
Excessive deforestation in Tibet as a primary cause was also highlighted in the Final Report by United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team (UNDAC) dated September 1998, the UN report stated that the primary causes of the disaster was excessive rainfall, melting of snow accumulated on the Tibet plateau and rampant deforestation around the river\u2019s fountains head in eastern Tibet.<\/p>\n
Between 1949 and 1998, the forests of eastern Kham generated US $241 million in taxes and profits for the Chinese state-logging enterprises. The extensive and unsustainable industrial logging continued until the disastrous 1998 Yangtze flood, but large scale deforestation still continues in many parts of Kongpo. This might have led to some of recent floods and landslides in the region. Tree logging was a major employer in Tibet, for instance in the Kongpo region alone, over 20,000 Chinese soldiers and Tibetan prisoners were involved in tree felling and transport.<\/p>\n