THE SNOW LION NEWSLETTER

China Plans to "Develop" Tibet's Rivers

Reuters
August 1, 2006
Beijing

China's quest to rewrite its future through vast engineering feats could test new limits as Beijing prepares a controversial scheme to divert water from Tibet to the parched Yellow River in the country's west.

The long-discussed plan to harness rivers cascading from the Tibetan highlands to quench Qinghai and other undeveloped western parts of China has growing official momentum, with construction possibly starting as early as 2010, Liu Changming, a hydrologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Reuters.

The plan has received the general backing of China's leaders, including President Hu Jintao, a hydro-engineer who worked in western China for decades, Liu said. But it promises to be the most controversial of Beijing's efforts to yolk Tibet's "under-used" rivers to nourish national development.

Environmentalists and advocates of Tibetan autonomy have said the project threatens to tear the region's web of environmental and cultural inter-dependence.

"This project is definitely not meant to develop Tibet," said Tashi Tsering, a Tibetan expert on the region's natural resources at the University of British Columbia in Canada. "Tibet's water availability is actually quite limited and these rivers depend on glaciers that are receding. The consequences just haven't been thought through."