{"id":6478,"date":"2015-04-01T09:12:21","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T03:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/?p=6478"},"modified":"2015-04-01T09:12:21","modified_gmt":"2015-04-01T03:42:21","slug":"ticking-time-bomb-the-price-of-damming-tibets-rivers-%e0%a4%95%e0%a5%8d%e0%a4%af%e0%a4%be-%e0%a4%9a%e0%a5%80%e0%a4%a8-%e0%a4%95%e0%a5%80-%e0%a4%a4%e0%a4%bf%e0%a4%ac%e0%a5%8d%e0%a4%ac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/?p=6478","title":{"rendered":"Ticking Time Bomb The Price of Damming Tibet\u2019s Rivers : \u0915\u094d\u092f\u093e \u091a\u0940\u0928 \u0915\u0940 \u0924\u093f\u092c\u094d\u092c\u0924 \u0915\u0940 \u0928\u0926\u093f\u092f\u094b\u0902 \u0915\u094b \u0905\u092a\u0928\u0947 \u0932\u093f\u090f \u0909\u092a\u092f\u094b\u0917 \u0915\u0930\u0928\u093e \u090f\u0936\u093f\u092f\u093e \u0915\u0947 \u0932\u093f\u090f \u0959\u0924\u0930\u093e \u0939\u0948"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ticking Time Bomb The Price of Damming Tibet\u2019s Rivers : \u0915\u094d\u092f\u093e \u091a\u0940\u0928 \u0915\u0940 \u0924\u093f\u092c\u094d\u092c\u0924 \u0915\u0940 \u0928\u0926\u093f\u092f\u094b\u0902 \u0915\u094b \u0905\u092a\u0928\u0947 \u0932\u093f\u090f \u0909\u092a\u092f\u094b\u0917 \u0915\u0930\u0928\u093e \u090f\u0936\u093f\u092f\u093e \u0915\u0947 \u0932\u093f\u090f \u0959\u0924\u0930\u093e \u0939\u0948\"origin<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

CHINA has more than 26,000 large dams, more than the rest of\u00a0 the world combined. They feed its insatiable demand for energy and\u00a0 supply water for mining, manufacturing and agriculture.<\/p>\n

In 2011, when China was already generating more than a fifth of the total\u00a0 hydropower in the world, the leadership announced that it would aim to\u00a0 double the country\u2019s hydropower capacity within a decade, so as to\u00a0 reduce its heavy dependency on coal-fired power plants. Since the\u00a0 waterways of mainland China are already packed with dams, this new\u00a0 hydropower output could come from only one place: the rivers of Tibet.\"brahmputra<\/a><\/p>\n

Rivers gushing through deep canyons at the edges of the Tibetan plateau hold\u00a0 the highest hydropower potential in the world. The headwaters of seven\u00a0 major rivers are in Tibet: They flow into the world\u2019s largest deltas and spread in an arc across Asia.<\/p>\n

Two of the continent\u2019s wildest rivers have their sources in Tibet: the\u00a0 Salween and the Brahmaputra. Though they are under threat from\u00a0 retreating glaciers, a more immediate concern is Chinese engineering\u00a0 plans. A cascade of five large dams is planned for both the Salween,\u00a0 which now flows freely, and the Brahmaputra, where one dam is already\u00a0 operational.<\/p>\n

The damming does not benefit those who live in Tibet. The energy generated\u00a0 is transferred to power-hungry industrial cities farther east. Tibetans\u00a0 are forcibly deprived of their land; protests against hydropower\u00a0 projects are prohibited or violently dispersed.<\/p>\n

Even more alarming are projects to divert the waters of Tibet\u2019s rivers for\u00a0 use in mines, factories and other industries. At the eastern edge of\u00a0 Tibet, a planned mega-diversion from south to north would move water\u00a0 from the Yangtze to the Yellow, China\u2019s two greatest rivers. Other plans call for diversion of water from the Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong \u2014\u00a0 all rivers that cross national boundaries. Including China itself, up to two billion people downstream from Tibet depend on these rivers.\u00a0 Damming and diverting them will have a severe impact on their lives and\u00a0 environment, especially when you consider that rice and wheat require\u00a0 water-intensive cultivation.<\/p>\n

Rivers support entire ecosystems. They carry tons of nutrient-rich silt\u00a0 downstream, a cocktail of elements needed for growing plants: nitrogen,\u00a0 phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and calcium. Silt is essential for\u00a0 agriculture and for bolstering the deltas against rising sea levels.\u00a0 Dams block silt, and they block fish migration. The Yangtze is China\u2019s\u00a0 biggest freshwater fishery, but since the Three Gorges Dam that spans it was completed in 2012, the downstream population of carp has fallen by\u00a0 90 percent, according to Guo Qiaoyu of the Nature Conservancy in\u00a0 Beijing.<\/p>\n

Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh heavily depend on rivers sourced in Tibet. More than 60 percent of Cambodia\u2019s annual fish catch derives from Tonle Sap, a lake that is replenished by the annual flooding of the Mekong. Over\u00a0 the last decade, as new Chinese dams have come online on the Mekong, the fish catch has plummeted. The waters rise and fall at the whim of\u00a0 Chinese engineers.<\/p>\n

Then there are the direct human costs of damming and diverting: Whole\u00a0 communities must be relocated from areas flooded by a reservoir. They\u00a0 are often shifted to degraded land, where they live in poverty or have\u00a0 to relocate once again. By some estimates, hydropower projects have\u00a0 forced some 22 million Chinese to migrate since the 1950s.<\/p>\n

In Tibet, since the 1990s, at least a million nomads and farmers \u2014 a sixth of the population \u2014 have been relocated from grasslands to make way for mining ventures and hydropower projects. These \u201cecological refugees\u201d\u00a0 are shunted into ghettos. Moreover, China claims complete sovereignty\u00a0 over Tibet\u2019s rivers, oblivious to protest from Tibetans and from the\u00a0 people downstream.<\/p>\n

The United Nations has done too little, too late. In 2014, the Watercourses Convention came into effect, spelling out guidelines for transboundary\u00a0 water sharing, but it is nonbinding. More to the point, China is not a\u00a0 signatory \u2014 and neither are most nations of South Asia.<\/p>\n

This will end badly for the nations downstream from Tibet, which are\u00a0 competing for scarce water. Damming and water diversion could also end\u00a0 badly for China, by destroying the sources of the Yangtze and Yellow\u00a0 Rivers.<\/p>\n

The solution to these complex problems is simple: Since these enormous\u00a0 projects are state-run and state-financed, China\u2019s leaders can cancel\u00a0 them at will. Though campaigns by Chinese environmentalists have stopped some dam projects, the pro-dam lobby, backed by Chinese consortiums, is powerful. There are alternatives to disrupting the rivers: China has\u00a0 made great investments in solar and wind power, but has not\u00a0 significantly deployed them in Tibet.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s leaders need to consider the costs of forging ahead with these\u00a0 projects. The health of these rivers is of vital concern to all of Asia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ticking Time Bomb The Price of Damming Tibet\u2019s Rivers : \u0915\u094d\u092f\u093e \u091a\u0940\u0928 \u0915\u0940 \u0924\u093f\u092c\u094d\u092c\u0924 \u0915\u0940… more »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-2","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6481,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6478\/revisions\/6481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}