Beijing, June 6 – China has claimed that the Qinghai-Tibet railway, the world’s highest, has had no adverse effects on the surrounding environment and wildlife as accused by some pro-Dalai Lama activists.
The landscape, lakes and the frozen earth are all well preserved and the wildlife’s migration also remains unchanged after trains started plying through the section last July, according to an assessment by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).
“We have set up a long-term monitoring system and emergency relief mechanism on the water, air, noise and ecology in the hope of assessing the environment at all times,” Vice Head of the Environmental Protection Bureau in southwest China’s Tibet autonomous region, Zhang Tianhua said.
“Every train running on the Qinghai-Tibet railway has special tanks for storing garbage and waste water. The waste is collected from the trains and treated in designated stations,” said Zhang.
“A total of 60,000 tonnes of waste collected from the Qinghai-Tibet railway stations has been treated so far and no pollution incidents have been reported,” he was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.
The Qinghai-Tibet railway links the remote Himalayan region with the rest of China and offers affordable tickets to many Chinese who previously shied away their journey to the Himalayan region due to expensive airfares.
The Qinghai-Tibet railway from Xining of Qinghai province to Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, a distance of 1,965 kilometres, is by far the longest plateau railway with the highest altitude in the world.
A total of 960 kilometres of the 1,135 kilometre Golmud-Lhasa section of the railway are at least 4,000 metres above sea level, which was completed in October 2005.
The frozen earth on the plateau has also been well preserved thanks to the technology of heat preservation, slope protection and roadbed ventilation in the frozen earth areas, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.
“It’s the well-preserved frozen tundra that ensures the train’s speed at 100 kilometres per hour,” he said.
The Qinghai-Tibet railway stretches 1,956 kilometres from Qinghai’s provincial capital Xining to Lhasa. Construction of the section from Golmud to Lhasa started on June 29, 2001 and was completed on July 1, 2006, at a cost of more than 33 billion Yuan (USD 4.31 billion).
According to the Tibet government, about three million tourists will visit the Himalayan region this year.
But exiled Tibetans have raised fears the rail line is being used as a tool to strengthen Beijing’s hold over Tibet by flooding the region with ethnic Han Chinese and tourists, further endangering the region’s unique Buddhist culture as well as fragile nature.
