Experts from India, China and Nepal who gathered at the Juizhaigou National Park at the edge of the eastern Tibetan Plateau to help develop a regional framework to preserve the Kailash Sacred Landscape early in September, must be encouraged.
This landscape is amongst the most ecologically diverse in the world and while there is no doubt that such an initiative being led by the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) and the Chinese academy of sciences and the Chengdu Institute of Mountain Hazard and Foreign Research must be encouraged, experts question why the MoEF and the otherwise voluble minister of environment Jairam Ramesh has not raised his voice over China’s massive integrated water resource management scheme which they have launched on all the rivers emanating from the Tibetan plateau.
China plans to build 55 reservoirs on rivers flowing from the Tibetan plateau. One of their most ambitious projects is to build a dam on the Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) before it enters Assam.
The origins of the river are from a glacier in western Tibet close to the origins of the Indus and Sutlej rivers, all of which emanate from the holy land of Lake Mansrovar and Mount Kailash
Medog, which has been selected as the site of this mega project at the river, makes a huge bend inside a giant canyon which is around 198-miles-long and 3.1-miles-long. Medog is home to a small Tibetan population and is located just 30 km north of the Indian border.
The Chinese have moved the entire team which built the Lhasa-Beijing railway line to execute this mammoth project which will involve the construction of massive tunnels and reservoirs and turbines in order to generate 40,000 MW of power.
The first hint of this scheme emanated from an official Chinese newspaper in the 1990s pointing out that the Chinese wanted to exploit the spectacular 2,000-metre-drop in the river to generate electricity.
This will be constructed before the river flows into Arunachal Pradesh and the water of the Tsangpo will be diverted, several Indian water experts who have been watching these developments claim, to green the vast, arid areas of Xingjian region and the Gansu province.
This canyon is home to 60 per cent of Tibetan’s biological resources all of which will get destroyed in the course of the construction of the dam. This area is also home to several indigenous people who are expected to be displaced.
Diversion of water of the Brahmaputra will immediately impact India and Bangladesh especially during the summer months. But external affairs minister S.M. Krishna recently informed the Rajya Sabha, “When I met my Chinese counterpart recently, the question of the hydel project over Brahmaputra river being built by it in Zangmu did come up. However, the Chinese foreign minister assured me that it is a small project which will not have any impact on the river’s downstream flow into North.”
The MoEF and the ministry of external affairs and the ministry of water resources need to recalibrate their policy on this urgent issue and start negotiations of an international treaty on the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej rivers before north-east India is subjected to major water scarcity.