Scientists call Tibet the Earth’s third pole because Tibet has more freshwater, stored in glacial ice, than any other region on Earth except the North and South poles.  

Those glaciers are now melting – climate change is affecting Tibet twice as fast as the rest of the world – creating a water crisis across Tibet and for more than a billion people in ten downstream countries. 

And China is worsening this water crisis: China’s population is still growing, its economy is still booming, it is still running out of water, and three-quarters of its rivers, lakes, reservoirs and groundwater supplies are badly polluted.  

Today, with climate change transforming China’s water crisis into a water catastrophe the stakes couldn’t be higher because China’s water crisis has become Tibet’s and Asia’s latest human rights crisis.  

To address its water catastrophe, China plans to build nearly one hundred dams across the Tibetan plateau. It also plans to build several water diversion projects to move these waters away from south and SE Asia and into China. These dams and diversions are expected to address China’s water quantity crisis. To address its water quality crisis, China is uprooting and displacing Tibet’s nomads from the grasslands – 700,000 so far – using the false claim that the nomads’ grazing practices are a threat to the region’s ecology – which really means a threat to the quality of China’s water.  

We formed Tibet Third Pole to show the world how climate change is threatening the health and security of Tibet’s two million nomads and over a billion people in ten countries downstream from the Tibetan Plateau. To show the world how climate change is threatening Tibet’s ecosystems and ecosystem services necessary to life in Tibet and Asia. And to show the world how China’s half-century of failed policies in Tibet continue to exacerbate this climate and human rights crisis. 

Tibet Third Pole advocates for the fundamental human right of Tibetans to assure the persistence of their cultural, social, and economic lifeways, which are inherently linked to Tibet’s high-altitude grassland ecosystems, and the right to determine their own fate and future in their efforts at adapting to climate change. 

We seek full participation of Tibetans in all aspects of the long-term assessment, analysis, planning, restoration, management and use, and conservation of Tibet's ecosystems, ecosystem services, and conservation zones, for the benefit of all beings. Tibetans have been and must continue to be full partners in the stewardship of Tibet’s ecosystems. 

We seek alliances and collaborations with scientists, governments, NGOs, and peoples across Asia whose fate and future depend on the ecosystem services that the Tibetan Plateau provides. Together, we will work to achieve the following goals: 

1. A halt to the removal of Tibetan nomads from the high-altitude grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau. Tibetans across the Tibetan Plateau have a fundamental human right to determine how best to live in the homeland they have known for millennia. They have a fundamental human right to determining their own fate and future in how best to adapt to climate change.

2. An immediate halt to all land uses that threaten the Tibetan Plateau's ecosystems, ecosystem services, and traditional sustainable land uses. We are especially concerned for the water resources of the Tibetan Plateau, which provide life-giving waters to people in ten downstream nations, including China.

3. An independent, international scientific assessment of the Tibetan Plateau's ecosystems, ecosystem services, & land-use policies. Only through the participation of scientists and relevant stakeholders from Tibet, as well as from those nations that depend on Tibet’s ecosystem services, will there be a rigorous examination of the environmental conditions, a credible analysis and interpretation of the findings, and an equitable and durable approach to designing adaptation and mitigation strategies to deal with climate change in Tibet and the broader region.

4. The use of social & ecological assessment tools & data, including the nomads’ traditional ecosystem knowledge, to determine appropriate human & ecosystem adaptation and mitigation strategies on behalf of the sustainable land uses of local communities and landscape-scale conservation initiatives.

5. The creation and active use of transparent, inclusive, on-going local and trans-boundary resource management & decision-making mechanisms that include all regional stakeholders, especially Tibet’s nomadic herders.

6. The creation of ecologically strategic conservation zones across the Tibetan Plateau in order to restore and enhance not only the health of ecosystem services but which also involve and support Tibetans' traditional livelihoods and their sustainable livelihood and land-use practices.

China needs Tibet's nomads, who learned long ago that only through good stewardship is life on the Tibetan Plateau humanly possible & ecologically sustainable. Tibet's nomads are thus essential to sustaining the long-term health of the Tibetan Plateau’s ecosystems and water resources, which China so desperately craves – and which Asia so desperately needs.