By Tenzin Lekhden
DHARAMSHALA, Nov.3: An all-female delegation of five Tibetans at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland highlighted the intensifying threats of climate change inside Tibet. The COP26 climate summit has representatives from more than 100 countries participating to tackle what the experts regard, as a serious existential threat.
The Tibetan delegation, Tibet climate crisis team, attended the climate summit to voice this unique twofold existential threat faced by the natives, which otherwise would have been side-lined or misrepresented due to China’s forceful presence in the global economy. Research and rights group Tibet Watch’s Tenzin Choekyi on the matter explains, “colonising Tibet has resulted in Tibetans being described from perspectives not reflective of Tibetan’s experiences. The colonial patterns continue with capitalism and China dominating the manufacturing industry by relying on Tibet’s natural resources.”
When asked how should the Tibetan community navigate this layered challenge posed by China’s capitalist clout?”, she replied, “Tibetans have to first recognize that the struggle of human rights and freedom is very much part of the increasingly volatile global market system and economy. Educating and researching about the investors and corporate industries involved in extraction and supply chain of the minerals from Tibet is crucial in linking human rights, freedom struggle and the global economy.”
Students for a Free Tibet’s Pema Doma said that China’s “racist and oppressive policies…has created an existential threat to both the way of life and critical ecosystem in Tibet.”
The delegation recognises “the climate crisis [as] political, and the international community’s approach toward Tibet must be underpinned by the knowledge of Tibet’s history of occupation by China and its impacts on neighbouring countries.”
According to the Cross-Party Group on Tibet, the rivers originating from the ‘Third Pole’ provide water supply to 1.9 billion people and irrigate the farms that feed 4.1 billion people. Thus any disruption to this water supply, experts say, would directly affect half the world’s population and will indirectly have an effect on all of us.
Dechen Palmo, a research fellow at the Tibet Policy Institute, warns, “without sustained attention and action on Tibet’s climate, Tibet could become a perfect storm for climate change.”
Palmo Tenzin, Research Officer at the International Campaign for Tibet, pointed out, “[Tibetans can speak] as people with unique and valuable insights into what a sustainable relationship between humankind and the environment can look like.”
4 Responses
At least, somebody is working for Tibet. Thank you very much.
Tibet has been plundered, pillaged and raped by communist China for the last seventy years. Our natural resources have made communist China what it is today. It was our resources which made a starving China become the second economy in the world! Ever since the occupation, our timber from U-Tsang, Kham and Amdo have been mercilessly cut down and sent by hundreds and thousands of trucks and used even used the rivers of Tibet to transport our timber to China. The terrible May 12, 2008 Sichuan earthquake was said to be the result of denuding Tibetan forests in the Kham region and construction of massive dams. The epicentre of the magnitude 7.9 quake was located 50 miles from Chengdu the capital of Sichuan Province.
Our animals were not only hunted down by the PLA for game and entertain themselves but they invited western and Asian hunters to Tibet and Tibet was made a game reserve to earn foreign currency for the backward and poor communist regime of China. Tibet’s precious animals were hunted to extinction. When the Tibetan delegations visited Tibet in the 1980s, there were no wild animals to be seen in Tibet! It was reported by our own delegates. Tibet was extremely rich in flora and fauna. It had 800 species of wild animals and 5800 species of plants. One of the most common sight in Tibet was the Tibetan antelope. Hundreds of them would descend in the late afternoons to lower regions including close to human habitat to feed on salt, collected on dry patches of ground from evaporated water. However, ever since the occupation of Tibet by communist China, Tibet has been plunged into total darkness of savage oppression bordering on slavery and lowest denomination of human barbarism that is the trade mark of Maoism and Chinese communism.
Tibetans have been reduced to servitude that has stark parallel to the slavery that was practised by western colonial powers in their quest to colonise their ill gotten territories. Communist China has practised colonialism that is no different from the colonialists of the past and continues to so to this day. In fact the yellow colonialism is even more sinister because the CCP has no conscience. It believes in genocide as a tool to legitimise its illegally occupied territories as we see in occupied Tibet, East Turkistan and Southern Mongolia.
Tibet and it’s people including the animals have been bull dozed by communist China for the last seventy years. We must rise and own our country. Without ownership of our country, Tibet will be erased from the face of the earth.
Mohammed Ali Jinnah fought for Pakistan despite Gandhi Ji’s assurance that the Muslims will be treated equally in a United India. However, Jinnah knew that in order for the Muslims to survive, they must have ownership of their destiny and for that, without carving a seperate Pakistan, it would be impossible and that’s how Pakistan came into existence. We have been an independent nation since 127 of the Christian Era. We must struggle to regain our nation for OUR OWN SURVIVAL. Without an independent Tibet, there is NO HOPE OF SURVIVAL!!!
Dear gyalchepa, although you seem well aware of the Tibet situation as your reaction shows here, I have my appreciation for it. But your concluding paragraph was like red chilli in bhaktsamarkhu. You wrote about the partition of India citing the role of Jinnah which didn’t go well your piece. Almost felt like mooh may ram bhagal may churi. It almost felt like you are advocating khamistan under your leader doing the role of Jinnah. Marayway? You proved again and that you are indeed a barbarian with computer.
China’s cunning policy of relocating our Tibetan nomads, and taking out all the mineral deposits in Tibet would prove fatal to the climate change and glaciers “South Pole” would melt faster and billions would suffer water crises in South East Asian regions, I wonder how they can remain silent even seeing all these clear dangers? Insane cowards!