Third Pole FAQ |
Facts about the Third Pole
Free Tibet will be at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit this week to focus attention on Tibet as the earth's largest store of ice outside the north and south poles. Scientists know that the Plateau is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world. Instead of acting to protect Tibet's crucial ecosystems China is removing Tibet's nomads from the grasslands with potentially catastrophic consequences for climate change.
* The Tibetan Plateau is the largest repository of ice on the
planet outside the North and South Poles. In other words the Tibetan
Plateau is the Earth's Third Pole.
* The ice is stored in the form of glaciers. These glaciers feed
the great Asian rivers that have their source on the Tibetan Plateau
(Indus, Bhramaputra, Salween Mekong, Yangtse and Yellow). These rivers
are vital for the long-term sustenance and water supply of billions
downstream in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, SE Asia and China.
Responsible management of these ecosystems (rivers and glaciers) on the
Tibetan Plateau is therefore vital to these billions of people. Expert
glaciologists estimate that two thirds of Tibet's 40,000 glaciers could
be gone within 40 years - this could have disastrous consequences
downstream, including the flooding of food producing land. The Tibetan
Plateau is also the main driver of the Indian monsoon, the source of
freshwater for more than two billion people from Pakistan to eastern
China.
* Tibetan nomads have inhabited the Plateau for thousands of
years. In that time they have developed an intuitive understanding of
traditional ecological knowledge systems. Their grazing practices have
been adapted to suit environmental conditions - they knew that if they
impacted negatively on the environment then their long-term survival
would be threatened. It is this knowledge and commitment to protecting
and sustaining the vital, but fragile, ecosystems of the Plateau that
has allowed them to persist for so long in so tough a habitat.
* And now, with global temperatures rising, the expert stewardship
of the Tibetan Plateau has never mattered more in protecting these
ecosystems which are vital to the survival of billions of Asians.
* But instead of recognizing the nomads as vital in heading off a
climate change crisis on the Plateau, China is pursuing a policy to
remove all nomads -- more than a million -- from the grasslands in
Tibet, at a time when their traditional knowledge systems and capacities
for stewardship of the grasslands, developed over millennia, are needed
most. Tibet's nomads are being coercively removed by the hundreds of
thousands, despite a rising consensus of scientific and sociological
research that points to the critical importance of the nomads'
traditional knowledge and capacities for effective grasslands ecosystem
stewardship.
* China has exacerbated this climate-change and human-rights
crisis in Tibet, admitting that there is a political motivation to the
removal of the nomads. In 2007, the Tibet Autonomous Region Party
Secretary Zhang Qingli stated that the restructuring of Tibetan farming
and grazing communities was not only to promote economic development,
but to counteract the Dalai Lama's influence.
* The future of Tibet's grassland ecosystems must include Tibet's
nomads as full partners in the assessment, restoration, monitoring and
overall stewardship of the grasslands and the ecosystems. Tibet's nomads
have demonstrated for millennia their ability to persist and adapt
without endangering the very ecosystem services upon which they have
depended. The future of the Tibetan Plateau's ecosystem services, for
Tibet, China, and Asia, needs the nomad's expertise.
 Free Tibet has gathered testimony from nomads who have been forcibly resettled. Here, a nomad named Tenzin talks at length about how forced resettlement has affected her and how she longs to return to the plateau. |  Nomads are being forced off the land to make way for mining projects which are contributing to the melting of Tibet's icecap. As Tibet houses the sources of many of Asia's rivers, this could devestate the lives of billions. |
 Read more about nomads in this simple Q&A, covering how the forced resettlement of nomads is affecting the people of Tibet and the environmental condition of the Tibetan plateau. |  Help fund our nomadic campaign by buying a virtual yak for £3, which will be added to our virtual plateau. You can also decorate your yak as nomads do. |
