TRIN-GYI-PHO-NYA: TIBET’S ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT DIGEST Vol. 3, No. 2
By Tashi Tsering*
In a remarkable precedent-setting meeting of Chinese leaders last month in Wuhan (capital city of Hubei Province), provincial governors and key ministers from different sectors such as water, environment, forest, and agriculture gathered to develop a common strategy and action plan for protecting the Yangtze River (Drichu in Tibetan, “Changjiang” in Chinese) within a river basin framework of management. From an environmental policy perspective, this high level discussion of Chinese leaders – the “Yangtze Forum” – to integrate the agendas of different government agencies, in order to manage the river within its natural boundary, is indeed refreshing news.
States around the world, especially in rapidly developing countries like China, find the task of sustainable management of resources difficult because of the compartmentalized and autonomous nature of government agencies. This is exacerbated by states’ contradictory responsibilities of being both the developer and protector of the environment. As such there is often the bias toward the development agencies which usually are more far powerful and often overrun the efforts of those who are charged with the task of environmental protection. Such is the case in the management of the Yangtze River.
The headwaters of the Yangtze has been designated as a “state-level protected nature reserve,” to such a degree that the government began, in 2004, to forcibly relocate 40,000 Tibetans in an effort to make “core areas” of the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong rivers into a “non-human zone” by 2009. However, this desperate, undemocratic effort by the Chinese government to protect the river is scheduled to be shattered by the dam building agenda of some of its own agencies – powerful bureaucracies like Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Machine Building and Ministry of Construction. Work preparatory to building some of the world’s tallest dams in lands of ethnic Tibetans, who have been relocated in the name of environmental protection, is already underway. One dam is planned on the Ngagchu (Yalong River) with a height of 175 meters, another on the Thogthon Chuwo (Tongtianhe in Chinese) with a height of 302 meters, and a third on the Gyarong Ngulchu ( Daduhe in Chinese) with a height of 296 meters – with an overarching goal of diverting water into central China.
In China, the need for an integrated river basin management system, whereby the voices of all the legitimate stakeholders are balanced, is particularly pressing given the severe water shortages, pollution problems, and the increasing number of massive protests by dam relocatees and by farmers over water for irrigation. A representative system of resource management is increasingly recognized as the legitimate approach to sustainable development around the world.
The Chinese leaders of the Yangtze Forum, who are concerned with the legitimacy of their work, should include the voices of leaders of the otherwise disenfranchised communities, like upstream Tibetans, in the discussion of the issues in order to demonstrate their concern for just water governance and should not let this auspicious initiative become yet another exercise in bureaucratic greenwashing.
[*Editor: Trin-Gyi-Pho-Nya. Tashi Tsering is also the Environment and Development Program Director of Tibet Justice Center.]
