BLOG

WATER POLITICS

The Asia Society has produced a documentary about the impact of global warming on the Tibetan plateau, the rivers which originate there, and the people who depend on them to live.  From the introduction:

As the source of most of the major river systems in Asia from China to Pakistan, including the Yellow, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Salween, the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Indus, the Tibetan Plateau has become an epicenter of crisis. With the retreating of its glaciers – what glaciologist Lonnie Thompson has called the “fresh water bank account” of Asia – rivers and lakes have started running lower, pastures have become drier, deserts larger, weather patterns more unpredictable. Indeed, the whole ecosystem of the Tibetan Plateau and its hinterland are now slipping toward a catastrophic environmental disaster which will have continental implications far beyond the plateau itself.