By Tenzin Monlam
DHARAMSHALA, November 16: A group of European Parliamentarians on Monday have urged the international community to protect Tibet’s environment in the run up to COP21 to be held later this month in Paris.
The parliamentarians, Molly Scott-Cato, UK Green Party member of the European Parliament (MEP) and Csaba Sogor, Romanian EPP MEP of the European Parliament, have called for a strong global action against exploitations on the Tibetan plateau. They were speaking at a conference on ‘Environmental Degradation on the Third Pole: The impact of resource exploitation on the Tibetan Plateau and beyond’, organized in collaboration the Office of Tibet, Brussels and International Campaign for Tibet.
Molly Scott-Cato, environmentalist and an economist, also expressed concerns about the deteriorating permafrost condition on the Tibetan plateau. Quoting the Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama, she said, “This blue planet is our only home and Tibet is its roof. The Tibetan Plateau needs to be protected, not just for Tibetans but for the environmental health and sustainability of the entire world.”
Gabriel Lafitte, an environmental policy consultant on Tibet of over 30 years, said that China was exploiting the vast minerals and oil reserve in Tibet. “The impact on the Tibetan pastoral land would not be replaceable with the forceful re-settlement of Tibetan nomads and herders into Chinese settlements,” Lafitte said.
Dr. Andrew Fischer, an economic development expert on Tibet and the author of The Disempowered development of Tibet in China, said, “The development changes in Tibet are not industrial process, but rather heavily state subsidiary industry.”
He also highlighted the employment conflict in Tibet due to large un-checked Chinese migrant population.
Tseten Samdup Chhoekyapa, Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, said there are 46,000 glaciers in Tibet, home to the third-largest store of ice and the largest source of fresh water on the planet. “82 percent of the glaciers ice has retreated and two-third could be gone by 2050.”
He also highlighted a recent study by Chinese scientists at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, which attributed the worsening heat waves in Europe to the decreasing snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau.
“Therefore, please don’t think that the Tibetan plateau is far away. The climate changes there has a direct effect in Europe,” he said.
Despite the recent terror attack in Paris, the French government confirmed that COP21 will proceed as planned and that it supported the decision not to let terrorism derail what will be one of the most important environmental conferences in the world.
