Tibetan rivers the most endangered: World Wildlife Fund
Friday, 30 March 2007, 4:16 p.m.
 Drichu |
Dharamshala: In March 2007, the global environmental NGO World Wildlife Fund released a report on the ten rivers worldwide in greatest danger.
Four of those ten rivers are Tibetan: the Yangtze (Dri Chu in Tibetan), the Salween (Ngulchu in Tibetan), the Mekong (Za Chu in Tibetan) and the Indus (Sengye Khabab in Tibetan).
Nowhere else on earth is there such a concentrated of endangered rivers, and, as the WWF report says, the threats are many: innumerable plans for hydropower dams, pollution, overfishing, and climate change.
The most dam projects are in China, and those portions of the Mekong and Salween immediately below the Tibetan Plateau, before the Salween flows on into Burma, and the Mekong into Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The UNESCO World Heritage Commitee is keenly awaiting promised responses from China to its urgent request for clarification of China’s hydropower dam plans on these rivers, immediately next to the Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Protected Areas.
