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Tibetan Plateau: Needing An International Treaty For Its Protection

Via India’s Economic Times, a detailed article on the need for an international treaty to protect the Tibetan Plateau:

“Like Antarctica and the Arctic, the Tibetan Plateau, known as the “Third Pole,” is drawing global attention in the international and regional policy communities. The Tibetan Plateau covers an area of 2.5 million square kilometers, with an average elevation of 4,500 meters. More than 2 billion people directly depend on the water from rivers originating in the Tibetan Plateau. Retreating glaciers, melting permafrost and degrading ecosystems with monsoon variability are the consequences of ongoing regional and global climate warming.

A resurgent China has commenced construction of large and mega-sized dams on the eastern-flowing Brahmaputra and Mekong rivers to harness their energy and water potential. Beijing’s regional hegemony, and lack of transparency, has become huge concerns in South and Southeast Asian countries.

From 1911 to 1950, the Tibetan Plateau was an independent state. In 1950, China annexed the territory with the help of a People’s Liberation Army that aimed to “liberate” the roof of the world. The Chinese leadership knew that who controls the Tibetan Plateau controls the Asian water towers. The government of India, upon inheriting treaties signed by the British, should have worn the British mantle, with its advantage. Unfortunately, India failed to do this and failed to give serious thought to the consequences that would follow. The Indians were not only shocked at China’s unprovoked military takeover of Tibet, they were also much offended – the Chinese government had promised that there would be no such aggression. In a sharp note to the Chinese government, the Indian Foreign Ministry expressed deep regret and surprise at the decision to send troops into Tibet just after the Tibetans had initiated negotiations with the Chinese Ambassador in New Delhi.

The United States and British governments expressed their support for the Indian position, and the US State Department informed New Delhi of its desire to help Tibet by whatever means possible. The Americans recognized that, in view of geographic and historic factors, the main burden of the problem rested on India and that Indian cooperation was needed in any attempt to help Tibet effectively. The Indian Foreign Ministry, however, dissuaded the United States from supplying military aid to Tibet. Prime Minister Nehru even requested that Washington refrain from publicly condemning China for its actions in Tibet.

Whatever the considerations, India’s attitude and actions toward Tibet deeply hurt and humiliated the Tibetan people and put India in a permanent disadvantaged position.

The Third Pole is home to thousands of glaciers in the tropical/sub-tropical region and large permafrost in the Tibetan Plateau that exert a direct influence on social and economic development in the surrounding countries, including China, India, Nepal, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The region is subjected to influences by multiple climatic systems, complicated geomorphologies and various internal and external geological impacts. The area demonstrates considerable feedback to global environmental changes and it is sensitive to current fluctuations.

Fluctuations in the Third Pole bear special significance to environmental changes at local, regional and global scales. First, such fluctuations have a significant impact on the climate system in the Northern Hemisphere and on the entire earth at various temporal and spatial scales. The region is a key component of Asian monsoon evolution, having a direct influence on current climate changes. Second, cryospheric processes react sensitively to regional and global changes and also influences downstream hydrological systems. Third, the alpine ecosystems and their benefits are affected by human activities and negatively affected by degradation. The increase in human/industrial emissions has affected the westerly and monsoon circulation and has caused variability in liquid and solid precipitation.Glacial melt is critical before and after the rainy season (those seasons are commonly referred to as “shoulder months” in South Asian countries).

This melt supplies a major portion of flow to many rivers, from the Yangtze (which irrigates more than half of China) to the Ganges and Indus (important to the agricultural heartlands of India and Pakistan). Chinese scientists have monitored more than 680 glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and all of them are rapidly shrinking, with the heaviest losses on its southern and eastern edges. The ice cover in the southern and eastern plateaus has shrunk more than 6 percent since the 1970s, and the damage is greater still in Tajikistan and northern India, which have seen 35 percent and 20 percent declines, respectively, over the past five decades. If the current trend holds, Chinese scientists believe that 40 percent of the plateau’s glaciers could disappear by 2050. Full scale glacier shrinkage is inevitable and will lead to ecological catastrophe.

South Asia’s flashpoints are the western flowing river, the Indus, and the eastern flowing river, the Brahmaputra. The ramifications of flooding / drought due to rapid melting of glaciers will jeopardize the World Bank-brokered Indus River Treaty between India and Pakistan. Meanwhile, China and India are already in the midst of a standoff over the Brahmaputra River. China is executing plans to divert river flows by building multiple dams on the Tsangpo.

Recently, more and more scientists recognize the negative impact of black carbon on glacial melt. Black carbon exacerbates melting by contributing to atmospheric warming and by increasing the amount of heat absorption within the snow by turning it black. The sources of black carbon in the region include cement factories, diesel trucks and wood burning stoves, although the Himalayan rivers exhibit varying percentages of ice melt in their annual flows. But what makes glacial melt so critical, when it is a relatively small percentage of a river’s annual flow, is the timing at which it occurs.

The compounding impacts of regional climate warming, monsoonal rainfall variability and rising emissions of black carbon aerosols are accelerating the melt of ice and reducing the accumulations of snow on these glaciers, leading to a significant loss of ice mass over large portions of mountain regions. Continued, widespread melting of glaciers during the coming century will lead to floods/ water shortages, declining crop yields and sea level rise threatening local communities and habitats. Thus far, conclusions are being made on limited data coming from satellite imagery and field research on selected glaciers, but the extreme conditions found in the region make field research expensive, time-intensive, dangerous and physically challenging.

Nevertheless, the glaciers are thinning by up to one meter per year and retreating at rates ranging from 10 to 60 meters per year, and many small glaciers (less than 0.2 km2) have already vanished. It is apparent that the rate of glacier retreat has accelerated in comparison to the 1970s. During the last thirty years there has been shrinkage of 6 percent in the volume of glaciers in China, and similar rates are found in Nepal, India and Bhutan.

The Copenhagen Accord (CHA) in December 2009 was only a political document as it does not include binding targets for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. The 20 C barrier agreed at COP 15 translates into a 2.5 Wm-2 barrier for energy additions. However, the barrier poses a huge dilemma for policymakers because the blanket of manmade GHGs that surround the planet as of 2005 has already trapped 3 W m-2 and the barrier of 20 C has already been exceeded by 20 percent.

The most crucial climate tipping point is the changes being felt on the plateau, especially the rise of temperatures of up to 0.30 C per decade (approximately three times of global warming rate). The reduction of snow albedo by black carbon deposition will reduce reflectivity by 2.0 to 5.2 percent, thus enhancing about 70-204 mm of water equivalent runoff from a typical Tibetan glacier. Another study by a NASA scientist indicates that, as a response to radiative forcing by dust and black carbon in the Indo-Gangetic plain and Himalayan foothills, the atmosphere over the Plateau is anomalously heated and moistened via elevated heat pump (EHP) effect. The warm and moist atmosphere overlying the Tibetan Plateau land surface causes a reduction in surface sensible and latent heat fluxes from land to atmosphere, i.e., net heat gain by the land surface. The net heat gained is used for melting more snow and ice over the Tibetan Plateau.

Climate change has provided an opportunity/ platform for South Asian countries sharing the Brahmaputra, Indus, Sutlej, Karnali and Arun rivers and for Southeast Asian countries sharing the Mekong. All countries should join hands and advocate establishing a new regime: an international treaty for the protection and sharing of the Tibetan Plateau. Political leadership needs to connect the drops to bridge the science-security policy gap for a sustainable future.



This entry was posted on Saturday, January 29th, 2011 at 6:03 pm and is filed under China, India, Tibet, Tibetan Plateau.  You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.  Both comments and pings are currently closed. 

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