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TRIN-GYI-PHO-NYA: Tibet's Environment & Development
Digest
March 2005, Vol. 3, No. 1
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Trin-Gyi-Pho-Nya
Index
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| Conservation and Tibetan Pastoralist
Culture Not Mutually Exclusive (Tashi Tsering*) China is implementing a program allegedly to protect the source of Asia's three major rivers – the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong – on the Tibetan Plateau, known as the Three Rivers' Headwaters Park or "Sanjiangyuan" in Chinese. While this is certainly a worthy and urgent goal, the actual environmental conservation plan that is being proposed has several serious flaws. First, the plan relies on the strategy of population relocation, claiming that the presence of local pastoralists and herders is harmful to the goal of land conservation. The plan is to protect the 152,300 square kilometer park from human and animal activities by forcefully relocating local herders and nomads who have the most intimate knowledge of the local ecosystems and have lived in the area for hundreds of years in a sustainable manner. In the plans to make the core area of Three Rivers' Headwaters (TRH) a complete "non-human zone in 5 years" (China Ethnic News), reports indicate that a total number of 1,738 local households have already been moved, most of them unwillingly, into newly built houses as early as September 2004. Many more will likely be displaced as the actual relocation plan involves as many as 7,921 households, or 43,600 people and their livestock, of the Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. This situation demands that the Government of China look into a strategic environmental policy question: whether excluding the local indigenous population of Sanjiangyuan is a positive or necessary step to protect the local environment, keeping in mind that the environment in this area has thrived for thousands of years alongside the farming and herding practices of this population. The current plan is based on the assumption that the human and livestock populations are the main threats to the ecosystem integrity of Sanjiangyuan. Yet, local conservationists cite the government's development policies as the chief cause of the area’s deteriorated environmental condition. For example, the national policy of increasing productivity in the 70's and the animal husbandry policies of the 80's encouraged more nomads and herders into intensive grazing in the headwaters area. More recently, increasing numbers of mineral extraction projects to prospect gold, silver and copper have been allowed in the area. The government also has plans to build some of the highest dams in the world in the same "protected area" after Three Rivers Headwaters becomes a "non-human zone." The Chinese government still subscribes to an outdated notion of ecology that sees humans as fundamentally separate from nature, and so parks and protected areas must be separated from humans. Yet there is a growing body of scientific literature that advocates alternative approaches to park management that are particularly suitable for developing countries that still have large, indigenous rural populations. In many developing countries, protected areas and local people need each other for their survival in so far as the traditional bureaucracies tasked with managing nature parks are often corrupt and ineffective. In contrast, local people who are connected to protected land have an innate interest, as well as a proven capacity, in maintaining the integrity of local ecosystems. In the case of Tibetan pastoral nomads, experts have actually observed that traditional pastoral strategies for herding, including rotating between different grazing lands, have an inherently sustainable component. The Chinese government’s current plan to uproot the local
pastoral population and to develop the park for mining and hydropower
will only destroy the ecological integrity of the world's most important
"Water Tower." Before it is too late, the Government of
China must return the control and management of Sanjiangyuan to
its historical stewards - Tibetan pastoralists. Through experience,
traditional practices and oral teachings, Tibetan nomads have preserved
a vast body of indigenous knowledge about Sanjiangyuan's alpine
rangeland ecosystem. Villages like Mochun in Dritoe County (Zhiduo
Xian), for example, have centuries old environmental protection
regulations and customary herders' agreements to manage the alpine
grassland. Unfortunately, Mochun's people and their livestock will
have to leave their ancestral lands in the name of environmental
protection, while Inter Citic, a Canadian company has been allowed
to prospect gold near their village at Chumarleb (Chinese: Dachang
xian). - top of page -
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| Spiritual Insights of the Human Ecology
of Tibet (Gabriel Lafitte*) A human ecology of Tibet starts in the minds of Tibetans, especially those, past and present, able to convey how they see the land, the sky, waters, rocks and animals. We turn to the culture heroes of the Tibetan people, the great lamas and yogis, the bards and masters of spontaneous song, the composers of inspirational poetry designed to open minds and hearts. We draw on the deep well of nature writing composed by lamas, naljorpa, togdens, madmen, yogis, retreatants, pilgrims, lineage holders, who realized the nature of mind and the nature of all that arises. We listen to the voices of Tibet's great nature poets such as Milarepa, Gotsangpa, Pema Karpo, Jamgon Kongtrul, Shabkar, to name a few. We join them in seeing rocks and valleys, peaks and passes as mirrors, holding up to us reminders of what really matters in life, how to live authentically and confidently, decisively and spontaneously. "On the vast plain of emptiness The wild beasts and bull yaks of thought circulate Breaking their pride with both dog and horse, Subduing them with both sword and spear, I kill the wild beasts and bull yaks of thought. The flesh is eaten in nonduality, The taste experienced as great bliss. If I go hunting, that's how I do it."[1] Go Drakpa 1392-1481 These words challenge us to get to the heart of what matters in life, which is to clarify the mind, so as to see clearly. Godrakpa's violent imagery confronts our romantic idea that Tibetans were all saintly environmentalists. Tibetans did and do hunt, and slaughter their domestic animals. Godrakpa's poetry works because it takes familiar scenes, as metaphors for the most important work we can do. From a classic Tibetan point of view, human, animal, vegetable and mineral realms are merged, sharing of the same nature. Rocks have human features, wild animals are omens, to those of pure perception they may be sky dancers or gods. This is landscape energized by the presence of past meditators, whose sacred visions are available to us, in their pilgrimage guides and spontaneous songs. This goes beyond likening the vast pasture to emptiness in which thoughts roam as yaks. To liken this to that is to dwell in this and that, forever comparing, seeking what is beyond, rather than awakening to what is here. Take The Great Oath Prayer to Tsari. It is a guide to the features of the sacred mountain of Dakpa Shelri, on the border of southern Tibet and India's Arunachal Pradesh. The translator Toni Huber comments that the prayer is: "the most extensive surviving index of the mountain's powerful beings, both divine and human. As an oral map it describes and catalogues over sixty toponyms of major landscape feature, including mountain peaks, hills and ridges, passes, ravines, lakes, plateaus, caves, charnel grounds, meditation retreat sites, alpine pastures, paths and even meditative states that one can travel to at particular sites." [2] The prayer to Tsari (or Dakpa Shelri Pure Crystal Mountain) says, in part: "I pray to the white-bodied sky-goer, Whose abode is the palace of Conch-shell Conduit Lake. I pray to the four-armed protector Whose abode is the palace of Demon Lord Vitality Lake. I pray to the master Choki Gonpo, Whose abode is Simultaneous Realization Glorious Woodlands. I pray to the accomplished one, Shawa Ripa, Whose abode is the palace of Iron Frog Ravine. I pray to the sky-goers who bathe secretly, Whose abode is the palace of Sky-goer's Bathing Lake. I pray to the twenty-one Drolma goddesses, Whose abode is the place of Drolma Vitality Lake." (Huber 73) These specific places on the pilgrim's route were named by meditators who sat for days and months, sometimes years, through the seasons, in the landscape, investing it with the awakenings such surroundings fostered. The deities of these places "are not ontologically distinguished from the physical environment that constitutes their abodes. The great saints and meditators of the past who are mentioned are also thought of as still present at the sites of their former dwellings." (Huber 72) To the Tibetan poets the path the pilgrim takes through consecrated natural places is, at every turn, a reflection of the path within. The Tsadra pilgrimage, close to Palpung monastery and Derge town in eastern Tibet, is a long and difficult circumambulation, involving squeezing through tight passages, crossing plains, traversing ridges and hills, passing through glens. "There are four difficult passages: Difficult passage to Distinguish Between Virtue and Non-virtue Difficult passage to Eradicate Confusion Difficult Passage to Decide Between Good and Evil Difficult Passage on the High Pass Between Cyclic Existence and Transcendence There are four plains: Well-arranged Mandala Plain Dancing Dakini Plain Fullest Happiness Plain Expansive Wisdom Plain. There are four hills of isolation: Hill of Isolation from the Demons' Obstacles Hill of Isolation from the Distractions of Desire and Anger Hill of Isolation from Emotions of the Eight Worldly Concerns Secret Hill of Isolation from Suffering and the Increase of Happiness. There are five glens: Glen of Clear Wisdom Glen of Self-arisen Nature of Reality Glen of the Wide Expanse Glen of the Changeless Mark of Stability."[3] Each place is associated with, and is conducive to specific steps on the spiritual path. Each of the named inner experiences is a stage or realization, which is explained in detail in many texts, and in the oral transmissions of living teachers. A brief poem listing places, classed together as glens or hills, gorges or expansive plains, serves as a mnemonic, readily remembered so that, on arrival, the qualities listed come to mind and are readily engendered. Other texts expand, sometimes at length, on the meditative realizations best suited to specific places. The modern science of ecology has no place for any of this other than to admire it as poetry, appreciated strictly as art. Nature and culture must be kept apart, in separate realms. China came to Tibet with science as one of its major rationales for conquest and reshaping of the landscape. Science would make the land more productive. Scientific socialism would revive a stagnant civilization, a sluggish and primitive people in danger of dying out, or remaining slaves to nature. Socialism has disappeared as China's policy for Tibet, but science has not. In China's Tibet, there is no space for Tibetan poetry, or for landscape as locus of meditative insight into the nature of reality. That was swept aside, and to this day remains the private knowledge of meditators, not something to be brought into the public sphere of mainstream of Tibetan environmental policy debate and advocacy. Such materialism is not new. In the 19th century Jamgon Kongtrul said: "He who always visits sacred places without faith or respect, *Gabriel Lafitte, an advisor to Tibet Justice Center's
Environment Committee, runs a Human Ecology of Tibet program at
Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. He can be reached via
email. - top of page -
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Response to our last editorial on Tibetan
medicine (Tsultrim Tsering Gyaltsen) The plants and substances used in Tibetan medicine are also part of the fabric of life particular to Tibet and therefore a part of the heritage of the Tibetan people. The fact is that companies selling Tibetan medicines are not only profiting from the knowledge of Tibetan medicine but are also using the actual plants integral to the wholeness of the land. In consequence, I suggest the following two conditions. 1) There should be strict limits established regarding the sustainable
harvest of these plants and that all companies, in some fair way,
should share in that supply and those restrictions. Such measures could insure benefit for future generations in three ways. 1) The integrity of the environment would be assured by mitigating
potential environmental damage from overuse. Furthermore regarding the production of medicines the traditional texts often specify many conditions under which the ingredients for the medicines were to be collected, handled, and prepared. The texts may state, for example, that certain plants are to be collected only in certain months because their medicinal properties are then active, or that some medicines were only collected from north facing slopes, or in a certain season, or at night, or during a certain phase of the moon. These are some of the many subtleties that, in combination, make Tibetan medicine effective. It does not suffice for a manufacturer to have a list of ingredients that can be haphazardly combined to hopefully produce a positive result. If what is called a "Tibetan medicine" is in the sole judgment of physicians, fully qualified in the Tibetan medical tradition, to be found to be of diminished quality, efficacy, or that it has a negative consequence for the environment as a result of its production, that product and its producer should be made to conform to traditional practice or the production should be discontinued. Furthermore if the Tibetan medical system is to be regulated it should be done from the bottom up, not the top down. It must be put under the supervision of those who are intimately familiar with the traditional training and all of the prerequisites for the qualification of doctors and the production of the medicines. In such case, there should be assembled a congress of knowledgeable and qualified Tibetan doctors to establish the requirements for the formulation of the compounds used and the practice of the traditional medicine. Regulation should come only from within the ranks of those who have an intimate understanding of the tradition and not by governmental officials or profit driven companies who know little or nothing of its nuances. The members of that congress should provide certification for a qualifying product that the product has been produced in accord with tradition and is an "authentic Tibetan medicine." This is the only way to insure the continued efficacy of the medicines and to prevent the bastardization of the Tibetan medical tradition for profit. With this approach the twin goals of establishing standards of practice and production would be accomplished along with the guarantee of the preservation of all of the many nuances of understanding that are critical to the authentic continuation of the tradition. A final point is that all names traditionally used for medicines should be part of the public domain. They should be available for use to anyone who produces medicines in accord with the above standards. They must not belong to any single company who could disenfranchise other legitimate producers of traditional medicines simply by controlling the rights to the names.
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| Tibetan issues raised at IUCN's World Conservation
Congress (Kate Lazarus*) In November 2004, IUCN convened its World Conservation Congress (WCC) in Bangkok, Thailand, which was attended by more than 4000 people. The WCC gave the opportunity for both IUCN members and non-members to discuss environmental and social issues related to various types of global development as well as to put forward relevant resolutions to the overall Congress. Tibet groups were represented by the Tibet Justice Center from Berkeley, California to discuss the growing development challenges in Tibet and China. A roundtable discussion on "Water for Human Development" was sponsored and featured representatives from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China, Thailand, Philippines, USA, Australia and as well as the Mekong River Commission, a transboundary management authority mandated to negotiate development in the Mekong River Basin. The discussion concluded that the immense developments already taking place along some of the great rivers flowing off of the Tibetan Plateau, such as the Lancang-Mekong are causing serious environmental and social impacts both within China as well as in downstream countries such as Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Participants agreed that more awareness and understanding is needed about the important role that these rivers play for local peoples' livelihoods as well as the preservation of local cultures. In addition, future developments planned for the Nu-Salween River are expected to mirror those already occurring along the Lancang-Mekong. There is much learning that needs to occur between these two basins. Representatives from peoples' organizations have already been working to raise awareness among farmers within various basins in China although more work is needed both within the country, regionally and internationally. In addition to the roundtable discussion organized by the Tibet Justice Center, The Nature Conservancy-China Chapter organized a seminar on protected areas in China. This seminar featured presentations by the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) in China. Presentations focused on the importance of protection of natural resources in China as well as the need for cultural preservation of the Tibetan people. Similar to the seminar organized by the Tibet Justice Center, participants concluded that more work needs to be done in China to protect its natural resource base. In addition, more local people need the tools to build their capacity and increase their skills and knowledge to effectively participate in decision-making processes. At the moment, there are limited avenues for local people to participate and advocate for change based on their local knowledge and opinions. However, in a turn of events, in January 2005, SEPA requested to halt over 30 infrastructure projects after they failed to comply with the Environmental Impact Appraisal Law of China. One such project that was suspended included the heavily-reported Xiluodu hydropower project in Yunnan province of southwestern China. This suspension is a good sign for people both inside China as well as outside who are concerned about developments in China that don't meet social and environmental regulations. It is hoped that future developments in China will go through rigorous environmental and social appraisals and include the concerns and views of local people affected by such development schemes. In order to preserve local culture and livelihoods, the people need to be at the center of development and choose their own path. The IUCN WCC provided such a forum for such groups to gather and share experiences. More exchange of knowledge and understanding is needed coupled with increased capacity-building and learning from past mistakes. A motion put forth at the IUCN World Conservation Congress calls on financial institutions to evaluate dam projects in the context of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) strategic priorities and not to fund dam projects that do not respect WCD strategic priorities. It was approved by an 'overwhelming' majority of IUCN's government and NGO members. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China provided the following statement for the record: "The Government of China takes very cautious approach to proposals of dam development. Any new proposal will be subject to comprehensive assessment according to relevant laws. Environmental impact assessment is an essential component of the comprehensive assessment process. Decisions on new proposed dams will be made on the basis of balancing social, economic and environmental considerations." *Kate Lazarus is a researcher/analyst of water related
issues in China and Southeast Asia. She can be reached via
email. - top of page -
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| Another setback for China's environmental
law Earlier this year, in a major show of seriousness to curb China's unrestricted public works sector, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) announced a suspension of thirty mega projects that were not complying with the required procedures of the Environmental Impact Assessment Law. These include twenty-six hydro-power dam projects and a section of a highway that would connect Tibetan areas to the far northeastern border of China and North Korea. The suspension announcement was made by SEPA's deputy director, Pan Yue, a media icon known for his outspoken and incisive comments on the reforms necessary to correct China's ominous environmental conditions. Chinese environmental groups, hoping that the decision will be followed through, released a joint statement welcoming the news. However, on February 17, South China Morning post reported that SEPA has given the "go-ahead" to resume construction work on most of the suspended projects, quoting officials from the governmental environmental watchdog's EIA department that the projects had "only minor problems." According to Trin-Gyi-Pho-Nya editor Tashi Tsering, "China cannot continue to ignore the social and environmental costs of its large-scale public works. While China's extensive body of toothless environmental law has become a joke, the price that the people and environment are paying will eventually cost the government. To steer China's economic boom towards a sustainable future, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao must give real powers to its weak environmental bureaucracy's promising leaders like Pan Yue - to help fix the country's poor environmental enforcement mechanisms." (Source: Peoples Daily, AP: Jan 18-19; South China
Morning Post: Feb 17) - top of page -
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| "No Tax Policy"? In March of 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao announced China's plan to eliminate all agricultural taxes in China within 5 years to bridge the income gap between urban and rural areas. Nine months later, in January 18, 2005, Xinhua reported that China will eliminate all agricultural taxes in 22 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions and stated, "no farming and stockbreeding taxes have ever been imposed" in the Tibet Autonomous Region. In a press release that seems more in response to the news, the Central Tibetan Administration, more commonly known as the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, welcomed the "no tax policy" and says that the "claim by the Chinese government that it has never imposed 'farming or stockbreeding taxes' in TAR, might be true, but it is also true that local government continues to impose a range of taxes and fees on the Tibetan farmers and nomads." While TGIE believe that tax reduction is the first step towards improving the life of rural Tibetan farmers and nomads, "unless major changes in development policy that benefits and empowers the Tibetan farmers and nomads are instituted, whatever progress rural Tibetans have made since collectivization may not continue, let alone increase, in the coming decade." Andrew Fischer, a development economics specialist of Tibetan areas expresses concerns over the tax policy's eventual implications on local government's ability to render basic social and health care: "The reduction of the tax burden on the poorest of the poor is a good start to eventually achieve some form of progressive taxation in China. Nonetheless, in this particular case, reports from Tibetan areas, as well as from other areas in China, indicate that the burden of reducing local taxation has been largely absorbed by local government budgets. This means that the reductions in local taxation will ultimately return to the local farmers and nomads either in the form of reduced services (in quality or number) or else as increased user fees, for instance, in education and health. These considerations are particularly serious in the Tibetan areas outside the TAR, which are far less privileged by central subsidies than the TAR even though education levels and health standards are as bad. For instance, in Qinghai Province, general consumer price inflation between 1997 and 2003 was less than seven percent, whereas in the specific category of health care services, inflation was 349 percent and in tuition it was 122 percent. In other words, without serious consideration for introducing a comprehensive system of progressive taxation in China, or at the very least, addressing the fiscal situation of local governments in China, such tax exemptions are bound to be short-turn public relations stunts." (Sources: Xinhua, www.tibet.net and personal communication with Andrew Fischer. January, 05)
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| A closer look at foreign investment in Tibet
On December 23rd, People's Daily reported that foreign investment in Tibet was around US $26 million during the first eleven months of 2004. A month later, it reported that foreign trade in Tibet was US $223 million for the year 2004. These figures, although impressive at face value, are modest amounts considering the fact that foreign investment in China is never less than US $50 billion. Still, these figures seem exaggerated to many analysts. While in most countries, net foreign trade is ascertained by subtracting total imports from total exports, Chinese figures adds total imports to total exports, i.e., $130 million in exports + $93 million in imports = $223 in net foreign trade. While most news readers assume "foreign investment" to be major corporate ventures, these statistics include all non-Chinese sources such as foreign aid, a soft loan to finance rural development or an international aid to install plastic water pipes in Tibetan villages. Three main sectors attracting foreign investments in Tibet are tourism, mining and Tibetan medicine, according to the People's Daily. Gabriel Lafitte, an advisor to Trin-Gyi-Pho-Nya Environment Board explains what constitutes these sectors in a critical reality of Tibet: "While foreign financed mining is yet to materialize, tourism is growing fast, not because more foreigners come to Tibet, but because more domestic Chinese domestic tourists take holidays in Tibet. Although the domestic tourists from China create demand for hotel beds, buses, taxis, tour guiding etc, this creates more employment for Chinese immigrants than Tibetans; the Chinese tourist are keen to cash in the popular Chinese fascination with the exotic Orient within China's control: Tibet. No major international hotel chain has sold franchise rights to its brand name to a Tibetan hotel. As for Tibetan medicine, China's official Statistical Yearbooks show that Tibetan medicine, supplied to China then to global markets, is indeed a big business. Right now, the only source of yartsa gumbu is what nomads dig up, but if the molecule can be synthesized in laboratories, the boom - on which many nomads depend as their main source of cash income- may suddenly collapse. Already, Chinese pharmaceutical companies have trademarked yartsa gumbu as their intellectual property, now called Cordymax. So keen is the demand for this "grass-worm", that Chinese investors in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere are keen to capture sources of supply. There is money to be made, but very few Tibetans make it."
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| T.I.N. reports: Tibetans lose ground in
China's public sector employment "After several years of rapid wage increases, privileged staff and workers in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) have remained the second highest paid in the People's Republic of China (PRC), according to the most recent statistics from the Chinese Statistical Bureau. These average wage increases have been far above the typical national experience and with little relationship to conventional 'hardship' considerations. They increased from about one and a half times the national average wage level in 1998 to twice the national average in 2002 when, for a single year, they were actually the highest wages in the whole PRC. Essentially the government has been restricting state-sector employment, particularly towards Tibetans, even while enhancing the remuneration of such positions. (See: TIN News Update on 20 January 2005: Tibetans lose ground in public sector employment in the TAR: Streamlining effectively discriminates against Tibetans). As a result, the benefits of the sharp wage increases have been decidedly and disproportionately captured by non-Tibetans over this same short time period." "These state-sector wage increases in the TAR derive largely from decisions made in Beijing, rather than being linked to productivity or output factors. Combined with the fact that labor remuneration accounts for around two-thirds of GDP in the TAR, which is much larger than other provinces in China, a large component of GDP growth itself is essentially the result of these wage increases administered from Beijing. In light of Tibetan losses in public employment and non-Tibetan gains, these statistics reveal that Tibetans are increasingly marginalized from the key factors generating growth in the TAR, i.e. wages in government administration and large - scale construction projects." To read full report and data analysis: click here. (Source: Tibet Information Network: www.tibetinfo.net . Direct quotes)
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| Tibetan government in exile urges foreign
mining companies to reconsider (Source: www.tibet.net) On January 20, the Tibetan Government-in-Exile expressed concerns about foreign mining companies' intent and plans to explore gold and copper in Tibet. The Chinese government has been selling thousands of prospecting rights through bids, auctions and other public means to attract foreign investment including junior mining firms, and lately several Western companies have started exploration inside Tibet. The mining projects that are currently of concern to the TGIE are Nagartse/Nagarze gold mine venture of Australia based Orchid Capital Limited, Shethongmon/Xietongmen gold and copper mine venture of Canada based Continental Minerals Corporation, and Dachang Gold mine venture of Canada based company Inter-Citic. In a press statement, TGIE urges "the above concerned companies to reconsider their involvement in these projects on moral and environmental grounds as World Bank, BP Amoco and SinoGold did after a careful study of the current reality inside Tibet." Read the complete press statement.
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| Oil and Gas output in Tsaidam Basin (Source: China National Petroleum Corporation. January, 05) Tsaidam Basin (Qaidam Basin in Chinese) delivered 2.22 million tons of crude oil and 1.78 billion cubic meters of gas in 2004, as per statistics from the National Petroleum Corporation. The Basin, an area of roughly 220,000 square kilometers or 85,000 square miles in northern Amdo (Qinghai Province), is one of the most intensively exploited areas on the Tibetan Plateau for its rich mineral deposits of lithium, gold, lead, zinc, potash, asbestos, along with oil and gas fields. Chinese exploration and drilling in the area has been going on since the 1950's. Currently, there are four gas pipelines: Sebei-Golmud, Sebei-Dunhuang, Nanbaxian-Huatugou, and Sebei-Xining-Lanzhou pipelines, supplying gas to Xining, Lanzhou, Golmud and Dunhuang.
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| Tibetan wetlands in the Ramsar List (Source: China Daily, WWF, February 2, 05, Courtesy of Simba Chan) On February 2nd, China's State Forest Administration announced the listing of nine wetlands in the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance. Six of the nine sites are of direct significance to Tibetans: they are Nakpa Tso (Bitahai wetland) near the town of Gyalthang in Kham or Yunnan Province, Kyaring Tso (Lake Eling) and Ngoring Tso (Lake Zhaling) in Amdo or Qinghai Province, Midika (Maidika, of Lhari county) and Mapham Yumtso (Mapangyong Cuo, near Purang county) in Tibet Autonomous Region. Other sites are Dashanbao and Lashihai wetland in Yunnan Province and Shuangtai Estuary in Liaoning Province. Adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar in 1971, the Convention on Wetlands is an intergovernmental treaty that provides a framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. The adoption of these new sites in the Ramsar List is a recognition of their hydrological significance locally as well as downstream. These sites are also extremely valuable for their endemic fish species as well as for attraction of migratory birds such as the endangered Black-necked Crane (Grus nigricollis).
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| Triplophysa nujiangensa, a new species
of loach found in Gyalmo Ngulchu (Source: Nu-Salween e-mail listserve. Courtesy: Kevin Li) A new species of nemacheiline loach has been found from the main stem of the Salween River (Gyalmo Ngulchu in Tibetan, Nu Jiang in Chinese). The balitorid, which has been named Triplophysa nujiangensa was described by Xiao-Yong Chen, Gui-Hua Cui and Jun-Xing Yang in their study, "A New Fish Species of Genus Triplophysa (Balitoridae) from Nu Jiang, Yunnan, China," published in the journal, Zoological Research, Vol. 25, No. 6 (2004). The loach is believed to be closely related to T. tanggulaensis, T. stoliczkae, T. crassilabris and T. stenura.
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| China to launch a project to protect a
highly endangered species of antelope (Source: Xinhuanet, January 11-13; WWF) Reports indicate that China will launch a project to protect an endangered species of Tibetan antelope, Przewalski's gazelle (Procapra Przewalskii). According to Xinhua, the habitat of these gazelles, listed in IUCN Red List of Endangered Species, historically stretched as far as Mongolia from the Tibetan Plateau. Currently, there are only 300 of these gazelles left around the Tso-Ngonpo (Qinghai Lake) area in Amdo. Some reasons driving these gentle animals to extinction are high juvenile mortality rate, habitat fragmentation and increased human activity - road construction and grassland fencing in the area has isolated these gazelles into separate terrestrial zones, preventing them from exchanging genes among different populations. Now, the government plans to improve the natural conditions near Tso-Ngonpo area for Przewalski's gazelle’s survival and growth - the current protected area will be extended to provide more grazing land and water sources for the antelopes. **Thupten Norbu, a student
from the College of the Atlantic in Maine, USA, is currently studying
Human Ecology of Tibet at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia.
Thupten interned with Tibet Justice Center’s Environment and
Development Program as a part of the Center’s training program
for Tibetans in environmental research and advocacy. He can be reached
via email. |
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