Give Tibetans Right to Conserve Tibet’s Environment: American Scholar[Wednesday, 17 March 2010, 3:26 p.m.]
Dharamshala: The
Tibetan people should be given the right to protect the environment of
Tibet, which is becoming very fragile, an American expert on Tibetan
studies said.Tibet, known as world’s ‘Third Pole’, is the prime source of Asia’s great rivers.’Tibet
should be made into something like an international environmental park.
Many rivers in Asia originate in the Tibetan plateau and support
hundreds of millions of people downstream, but its environment is now
becoming very fragile thanks to major deforestation,’ IANS quoted Thurman as saying in a talk titled ‘Why Tibet Matters’ late Tuesday in New Delhi.’Tibet should be handed back to its people because they will know how to conserve their land and the environment,’ he added. Thurman,
who has authored, edited and translated several books on Tibetan
Buddhism, is the professor of Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia
university.’There is a lot of mismanagement in Tibet – mass
scale deforestation and desertification of grasslands – by China. It
should be conserved and eco-tourism should be given a boost. The world
will then see Tibet as the Switzerland of Asia and give a boost to the
economy as well,’ he said. The Tibetan people’s traditional
respect for all forms of life, which prohibits the harming of all
sentient beings, would enable them to serve the conservation of natural
environment.
