Tibetans Meet Climate-Change Negotiators to Discuss Tibet’s Environmental IssuesTuesday, 15 December 2009, 11:19 a.m.Updated: 15 December 2009, 2:54 p.m.

Tibetan delegates attending the crucial climate-change talks in Copenhagen, meet  representatives from Australian Greens Party on 14 December 2009/Photo:Tenzin Norbu

Dharamshala: The
Tibetan delegation at the UN’s climate-change conference in Copenhagen
met with negotiation teams from different countries, strongly appealing
to them to raise the crucial environmental issues of Tibet.  The
Tibetan delegates spoke to climate-change negotiators from the
Netherlands, Australia and Canada. So far we have contacted few only
but we have made appointments with them through e-mails, Mr. Tenzin
Norbu, an environmental researcher at the Dharamsala-based Environment
and Development Desk, who is heading the delegation told Tibet.net. Mr.
Tenzin Norbu presented to Mr. Li. Ganjie, vice minister of ministry of
environment protection of China, a scarf and a copy of the report on ‘The Impacts of Climate Change on the Tibetan Plateau: A Synthesis of Recent Science And Tibetan Research’, published by the Environment and Development Desk of the Central Tibetan Administration.The
misguided Chinese government’s land-use policies, which are
contributing to the acceleration of global warming and environmental
destruction, including degradation of the grasslands, on the fragile
high-altitude Tibetan plateau. These land-use policies include the
forced relocation of Tibetan nomads, construction of infrastructure, an
emphasis on urbanisation despite a predominantly rural population.
Tibetans are being deprived of the stewardship of their land at a time
of environmental crisis.Climate-change induced rapid retreating
of glaciers on the Tibetan plateau – considered as the world’s third
pole, which replenishes many of Asia’s major rivers, including the
Indus, Ganges, Yellow, and Brahmaputra – could imperil the lives of
billion people who rely on the rivers for fresh water.Meanwhile,
a new research by scientists from NASA and the Chinese Academy of
Sciences said black soot deposited on Tibetan glaciers has contributed
significantly to the retreat of the world’s largest non-polar ice
masses. Soot absorbs incoming solar radiation and can speed glacial
melting when deposited on snow in sufficient quantities.Temperatures
on the Tibetan Plateau — sometimes called Earth’s “third pole” — have
warmed by 0.3°C (0.5°F) per decade over the past 30 years, about twice
the rate of observed global temperature increases. New field research
and ongoing quantitative modeling suggests that soot’s warming
influence on Tibetan glaciers could rival that of greenhouse gases.

The Chinese government has been implementing policies of settling Tibetan nomads, confiscating their land, and fencing pastoral areas. The involvement of Tibetan nomads is essential to sustaining the long-term health of the ecosystems and water resources that China depends upon. (Photo: ICT)

“Tibet’s
glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate,” said James Hansen,
coauthor of the study and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for
Space Studies (GISS) in New York City. “Black soot is probably
responsible for as much as half of the glacial melt, and greenhouse
gases are responsible for the rest.””During the last 20 years,
the black soot concentration has increased two- to three-fold relative
to its concentration in 1975,” said Junji Cao, a researcher from the
Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and a coauthor of the paper. The study was published 7 December in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Fifty
percent of the glaciers were retreating from 1950 to 1980 in the
Tibetan region; that rose to 95 percent in the early 21st century,”
said Tandong Yao, director of the Chinese Academy’s Institute of
Tibetan Plateau Research. Some glaciers are retreating so quickly that
they could disappear by mid-century if current trends continue, the
researchers suggest. Most soot in the region comes from diesel
engines, coal-fired power plants, and outdoor cooking stoves. Many
industrial processes produce both black carbon and organic carbon, but
often in different proportions. Burning diesel fuel produces mainly black carbon, for example, while burning wood produces mainly organic carbon. Since black carbon is darker and absorbs more radiation, it’s thought to have a stronger warming effect than organic carbon.