Tibetan Plateau in Peril

Posted January 11, 2009

Climate change is usually discussed as tomorrow’s problem. But the world’s most elevated land, the Tibetan Plateau, is already feeling the effects of warming temperatures, melting glaciers and permafrost, and degrading pastoral ecosystems. Put simply, the Tibetan Plateau is melting, endangering much of Asia and the world's population.

Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations has recently launched China Green, a multimedia site dedicated to visually documenting China’s environmental issues. The first project, “Tibetan Plateau in Peril,” shows in stunning videos and interactive images that the roof of the world is edging toward an ecological disaster, with grave implications for about a third of humanity. Many of Asia’s mighty river systems find their headwaters from the glaciers and wetlands on the plateau; hundreds of millions depend on these waters for their very lives.

On a recent fact-finding trip to the Anyemaqen (pronounced ah-nee-MAH-chin) area and the headwaters of the Yellow Rivers on the Tibetan Plateau, I learned that while some areas have been less affected, many Tibetan nomads are finding their pastures, and their nomadic way of life, slipping toward an abysmal ecological collapse.

Mt. Anyemaqen is one of the most revered spirit mountains in the ethnically Tibetan areas of west China. The family of Cairang-Duojie, 33, has lived at the foot of Anyemaqen for generations. He and his family see the ice-capped mountains everyday when they herd their yaks and fetch their water from the streams near their home. These are the firsthand witnesses of things that are slowly but surely changing.

“My grandfather told me that the glacier used to be one large piece,” Cai-duo said, referring to the Halong Glacier that extends up the slope of Anyemaqen. “When I was little, it had already split into two thin strips.” Fingering a pair of Greenpeace photos of the glacier from 1985 and 2005 while studying the juxtaposition, he told me that the larger piece of the glacier has retreated by a third since 2005.

In Madoi County, about 70 miles to the west of Mt. Anyemaqen, things look much drier. Sand dunes have encroached on wetlands and pastures that were once dotted with lakes. I learned from my translator and his NGO group that in windy times sand could cover whole sections of the road. Herd levels in the county have continuously fallen from a peak of 650,000 head in 1980 to only 200,000 head in 2005, about the same level as the 1950s. Madoi nomads are now even finding this herd level difficult to sustain. It is the direct result of degrading grassland.

In the village of Zhajia at the border of Madoi and Qumalai Counties, where the Yellow River flows through twin lakes, people are starting to see the beginning of a crisis.

Zhajia Village used to be one of the most productive animal farms in southern Qinghai Province, largely due to its fat sheep. Nowadays, many families don’t find enough grass, or grass nutritious enough, to raise a herd of sheep. And Suodajia’s family is one of them. He lamented that one-half to two thirds of the village’s grassland has degraded.

The family put the blame on overfishing in the lakes and a foreign mining firm digging gold in nearby mountains. But there is a more fundamental problem. From an ecological perspective, a warming plateau melts away glaciers a lot faster and evaporates a lot more water from the wetlands, lakes and rivers, drying up pastures and turning some fragile areas on the grassland into sand dunes. The melting of permafrost, the layer of frozen earth underground that holds water for above ground vegetation, drains water and nutritional supplies to grass and other plants on the ground, further adding to the degradation.

Just like rivers flow off the plateau, through the gorges in central China and empty themselves into the seas, the problems on the Tibetan Plateau can export quickly to the lowlands.

The Yellow River, which gets nearly half of its water from the Tibetan Plateau, now rarely flows all the way to the sea year round. The Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and other rivers that flow off the plateau seem to be doing fine now. But with accelerated warming and faster melting of glaciers and permafrost, these great rivers will soon be under threat.

Meteorological scientists warn that the changes in heat composition and air pressure over the Tibetan Plateau may have implications beyond Asia’s river basins, as shifting dynamics of the atmospheric circulatory system over the plateau could change wind and monsoon patterns across much of the world. There is still yet no model to predict what will happen, but there’s plenty of evidence to warrant immediate action to avoid a crisis that would imperil billions of people across Asia.

Our Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society believes that to win in this climate game, the biggest two players, that is the United States and China, have to be both on board. That’s why we’re organizing a Jan. 16 conference on the effects of global warming on the Tibetan Plateau at Asia Society in New York. We’re about to publish a report, jointly with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and a few other organizations, to help bring the two nations closer together in dealing with this common challenge of our time. Only by working together will we save the Tibetan Plateau, and the many millions who rely on its headwaters for life.

Michael Zhao is multimedia producer for the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations and editor/producer of China Green.