By Tenzin Monlam
DHARAMSHALA, March 16: A US based leading advocacy group for Tibetan issues warned of ‘even greater impact’ on the fragile environment of the Tibetan plateau from the planned second railway from Chengdu in Sichuan Province to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.
Beijing last month confirmed plans to accelerate construction of a new railway line in Tibet, described as ‘like the largest rollercoaster in the world’ and has its neighbor India worried due to its proximity to the border and China’s easy connectivity with Nepal through Kyirong on the Nepal border.
According to the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), the track crosses ‘some of the most culturally significant areas of Tibet’, which include areas that are still under a clampdown since the widespread protest across the plateau in 2008.
ICT also underlined that the railways would be laid across a fragile high-altitude landscape that is warming nearly three times as fast as the rest of the earth. “Traversing an area that is rich in forests and mineral resources, it will facilitate further large-scale exploitation of Tibet’s mineral resources as well as enabling greater population migration into Tibet, both seasonal in terms of tourists and migrants, and permanent settlers,” said Matteo Mecacci, President of ICT.
He also added that in terms of environmental, demographical and cultural perspective, the impact of the new railways on Tibet and Tibetans would most likely be ‘more significant’ than the earlier line from Qinghai to Lhasa.
The Chinese officials, during a session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), said that the government will continue to roll out ‘preferential financial policies to boost economic and social development in Tibet over the next five years.’
However, ICT sees the developments and huge investment in Tibet serving to facilitate ‘unprecedented tourism boom’, ‘expansion of mining Tibet’s resources’ and serving China’s strategic and military objective. “Although the Chinese authorities have stressed that the railways will enable more tourist and help to alleviate poverty, the Lhasa-Nyingtri Railways would provide convenient access for the China’s military in a region with extremely difficult terrain and very limited road access,” ICT said in a statement.
An analysis by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China also concluded that the impact of the second railways plan might ‘far surpass’ that of the Qinghai-Lhasa railways because Sichuan Province’s population is 17 times larger than Qinghai.
