CTA Official Briefs Australian Parliamentarians on Tibet’s Environment[Monday, 14 February 2011, 11:34 a.m.]

From left: Mr Paul Brauke, President of Australia Tibet Council, Mr Tenzin Norbu, head of the CTA’s Environment and Development Desk and Mr Ngodup Gyaltsen, an official at the Office of Tibet in Australia, during a meeting in Canberra, Australia.

CANBERRA:
Mr Tenzin Norbu, head of Environment and Development Desk at Department
of Information and International Relations of the Central Tibetan
Administration (CTA), met with members of the Australian All-Party
Parliamentary Group for Tibet (AAPGT) and briefed two Australian
parliamentary committees on Tibet’s environmental issues in Canberra on 10 February. This
was the first time in Australian parliament to discuss Tibetan
environmental issues. The meetings were organised by Australia Tibet
Council, which works closely with the AAPGT in political lobbying in
the Australian parliament. Mr Norbu’s visit to Australia was organised
by Tibetan Information Office in Canberra as a part of His Holiness the
Dalai Lama’s 75th birthday celebration.The Australian All-Party
Parliamentary Group for Tibet has currently 28 members out of the 226
parliamentarians from both houses of the parliament, and has grown in
size and activity in the last few years. During his meeting with seven
members of the AAPGT, Mr Norbu raised environmental concerns on the
Tibetan plateau such as forced removal of nomads from their grasslands
and exploitation of natural resources by the Chinese government. He
also discussed the importance of Tibet as the third pole and as the
water tower of Asia. He was able to offer suggestions on how the
Australian government can help to protect the Tibetan environment
including providing guidance to the Chinese policy makers in making the
right choice of policies to help restore the grasslands and the nomadic
communities.

Members of the Australian All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet attend a briefing on Tibet’s environmental issues in Canberra, Australia, on 10 February 2011

He
later briefed on the same issues with members of the Human Rights
Sub-committee of the Joint Standing Committee of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade and House Committee of Climate Change, Environment
and the Arts. Apart from these three formal meetings, he met privately
with a Greens senator and the international adviser to the leader of
the Greens Party.During his visit to Canberra, Mr Norbu also
met with a social scientist who has done extensive research on the
Tibetan environment for the last six years.Mr Tenzin Norbu also
travelled to Melbourne for a presentation organised by the Australia
Tibet Council under the auspices of Victoria Naturally Alliance. Mr
Norbu provided a powerpoint briefing on the many environmental problems
facing Tibet, focusing particularly on nomad displacement, hydropower
dams and melting glaciers. The audience of 95 people, mostly members of
environmental NGOs, were shocked at the many difficulties Tibet faces,
and asked what they could do. Many of those attending the presentation
left their e-mail addresses for follow up. Several expressed the wish
that there be more such briefings and visits, since the environment
movement in Australia is quite well developed, but not well aware of
Tibet.Mr Norbu also was interviewed by the editor of the
bimonthly magazine Habitat, the flagship of the Australian Conservation
Foundation, due to feature EDD and its work in its May 2011 issue.