First Day: 3rd Tibet Environment Conference
DAY – ONE
June 25, 2021 – FridayWelcome Address
6:00 PM -6:05PM Tenzin Lekshay, Director, Tibet Policy Institute, Central Tibetan Administration, IndiaHonorary Guest Speaker
6:05 PM – 6:15PM Hon’ble Dana Balcarova, Member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech RepublicPanel Discussion
Tibetan Plateau, Global Importance, Climate ChangeModerator
6:15 PM – 6:20 PM Asher Minns, Executive Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, UKSpeakers
6:20 PM – 6:35PM Dr. Martin Mills, Senior lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and the Director of Scottish Centre for Himalaya Research, Scotland
Climate Change on the Third Pole: Causes, Processes and Consequences6:35PM – 6:50 PM Prof. Paul Mayewski, Director and Professor of the Climate, Change Institute University of Maine, USA
The significance of glaciers in the Antarctic, Arctic and the Third Pole (Tibetan Plateau)6:50PM -7:05PM Tempa Gyaltsen Zamlha, Senior Research Fellow, Head of Environment & Development Desk, Tibet Policy Institute, India
Why climate change is more risky on the Tibetan Plateau7:05PM-7:30PM Q&A
Posted by TIBET TV on Friday, 25 June 2021
Dharamshala: The Environment & Development Desk of Tibet Policy Institute organized the 3rd Tibet Environment Conference, a 3-day international virtual conference convening prominent lawmakers, leading strategists, environmental advocates, and 15 foremost environmental experts from eight countries to examine the Tibetan Plateau’s ecological role and relationship with global climate change.
Day one of the conference set off this Friday on the overarching theme that Tibet’s ecology shares a catalytic relation vis a vis global climate change and with the warming amplification in the plateau’s cryosphere also called ‘Khawachen’ in Tibetan, the Tibetan plateau faces recurring disasters and imminent shift to wetter, warmer climate.
The speakers included Hon’ble Dana Balcarova, Member of Parliament of the Czech Republic and Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Environment, Professor Paul Mayewski, Director & Professor of the Climate Change Institute University of Maine in USA, Dr. Martin Mills, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen and Director of the Scottish Centre for Himalayan Research in Scotland, Asher Minns, Executive Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in UK), and Tempa Gyaltsen Zamlha, the Head of Environment & Development Desk as well as a Senior Fellow at the Tibet Policy Institute in India. The panel was moderated by Asher Minns.
Hon. Dana Balcarova, Member of Parliament, the Czech Republic, underscored the urgency for global environmental cooperation and solidarity in the light of the rapidly depleting ecosystem on the Tibetan plateau.
Tracing the substantially significant exchanges between the Czech Republic and Tibetans on human rights and environment to the personal friendship shared by the first Czech president Vaclav Havel and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, she hailed the legacy of the two leaders as “practical example” for such international cooperation.
In taking this cooperation forward, MP Dana offered several impactful perspectives that she called “both ways exchange and inspiration”. Such a solution would include the EU extending its political and environmental support for Tibetans in Tibet and exile and technological advances to mitigate climate change.
On the other hand, the Tibetans as custodians of the Tibetan plateau could contribute by sharing their traditional climate change approaches and its spiritual attitudes to the environment that has helped preserve and prosper the Tibetan plateau for a millennium.
She said the traditional Tibetan approaches “have a huge potential” that must be cultivated in “the so-called developed countries.”
Arguing that the Third pole is uniquely positioned from the Arctic and Antarctica, Dr. Martin Mills, the Director of Scottish Centre for Himalaya Research, Scotland, said: “unlike those two areas, the third pole has half the human race sitting on its doorstep and is directly related to it by the flow of freshwater out of the Tibetan plateau region.”
Tibet-originating rivers and their river basins cover a large slab of Asia’s landmass outside of Tibet. In terms of population, the water basin contains about 1.9 billion people.
However, in a more alarming scenario, he noted that the population depending on products of these water basins, eg. rice, industry and technology produced in Yellow or Yangtse river valley areas, cover approximately 4.1 billion people, about half of the world’s population.
Dr Mills pointed the problem lies in the fact that “The Tibetan plateau has undergone a consistent warming up the process since the 1960s, in which the temperature has moved up consistently”, with the average temp. crossing 0.
“This ecosystem shift at its deepest levels in the area of the Third Pole cryosphere, what Tibetans call Khawachen, its domain of ice. Such a shift has profound implication for the rest of Asia, and ultimately in a centuries span, a catastrophic implication for Asia’s wider capacity to maintain industry, agriculture and concentrative human population.” Read more in ‘Climate Change on the Third Pole: Causes, Processes and Consequences’ report.
“The kind of climatic condition that we have on the Tibetan plateau is influenced by two basic factors: geographical landscape, geographical location and are exacerbated by two other factors, i.e. past climatic condition and existing way of life,” argues Tempa Gyaltsen Zamlha, the Head of Environment & Development Desk, TPI.
He presented 4 case examples demonstrating the catalytic effects of climate change on the Tibetan plateau. Also how in recent decades, Tibet has been the wettest than ever in the last 3500 years.
Influenced by its geographical landscape as the world’s highest and largest plateau (2.5 mill sq km covering almost 2 percent of earth’s landmass at 4000 m asl) and its proximity to the tropic of cancer, the rise in temperature on the Tibetan plateau records twice more than the global average.
“This means that climatic condition on Tibet is always extreme; when the world gets warm, Tibet gets warmer, and similarly, it gets colder at an equally accelerating rate. It was for this reason that the ice age came earlier to Tibet than the rest of the world,” he observed.
These extreme conditions are further exacerbated by Tibet’s past climatic condition ie. Extremely cold winters and moderately cold summer with min. rainfall, and lastly, the centuries-old adapted way of life to cold and dry climatic condition.
“Unfortunately, the way of life and ecosystem has suddenly been disturbed by the new climatic conditions that is wetter, warmer Tibet,” Mr Zamlha said.
Home to 46,000 glaciers and 14 great mountain ranges with glaciers, the Tibetan plateau has recorded increased number of natural disasters, eg. landslide, forest fire, floods, most notably in 2015. Most recently, on 22 May 2021, 4 magnetite earthquake hit the Matoe region in Tibet and in less than a month, floods, mudslides, and heavy storm in the same area on 18 June.
Two very different snow disasters occurred in 3 years: a twin glacier avalanche in Aru, Ngari in western Tibet on 17 July and 21 Sept 2016 caused by the rise in atmospheric, ground temp and melting of glaciers within. On 8/9 February 2019, heavy snowfall in Kham Yushu, northern Tibet, affected 120,000 people and 1 million livestock.
With all these factors and events pointing to a significant increase in climate change’s scale and speed on the plateau, senior fellow Zamlha said the way forward would be to catalyze efforts through “active adaptation” by local Tibetans and “Sincere Mitigation by the Chinese govt”.
“Necessary mechanics and infrastructure should be set up to prevent impending disasters, and keep the climate change in consideration in the urbanization policies,” he said, making an urgent call for “a sincere, transparent and educated cooperation between the Tibetan people and the Chinese govt” that currently govern them.
Further on adaptation, he said the success of the Tibetan people’s survival on the plateau is because of their active adaptation and physical endurance. In the 7th century, Tibet prospered as one of the mightiest empires thanks to its native understanding and proper adaptation.
“Tibetans now need to make a drastic socio-cultural change to adapt to a new climatic condition – wetter and warmer Tibet,” such as new housing structure, harnessing the increased ground moisture by mass afforestation that will moderate temperature, rainfall and prevent further land degradation.
If such cohesive mitigation is adequately implemented, it would combat climate change and bring positive outcomes in the form of increased vegetation cover and increased rainfall as the plateau gets warmer and wetter.
Prof. Paul Mayewski, Director and Professor of the Climate, Change the Institute University of Maine, USA presented on the significance of glaciers in the Antarctic, the Arctic and the Third Pole.
He underlined that “In the case of Hindu Kush Himalaya water tower including Tibet, there has been a rise in temp. since 2000” while the first abrupt global climate change was observed between 2007-12 with an increase of 5 degrees on annual basis.