2013 Update: Dams on the Drichu (Yangtze), Zachu (Mekong) and Gyalmo Ngulchu (Salween) rivers on the Tibetan Plateau

This post shares an updated map and three (Excel sheet) databases of hydropower projects (HPP) in the watersheds of the Drichu, Zachu and Gyalmo Ngulchu rivers (click on the highlighted river names to access the files).

The previous version of the map was posted on this blog in 2010. 

China’s government is preparing for the construction of a cascade of hydropower projects along each of the three rivers: the Salween, the Mekong and the Yangtze. Many of these projects are listed in China’s 12th Five Year Plan. In addition, the 12^th Five Year Plan gives priority to projects on the upper Machu (Yellow River, 6 projects) in Qinghai to the north, and the Nyagchu (5 projects, with others already under construction) and the Gyarong Ngulchu (Dadu River, 11 projects) in Sichuan to the east. As projects in Sichuan, Qinghai and Yunnan are completed, projects in Tibet Autonomous Region will be developed, moving generally from east to west. As these projects get developed, necessary infrastructure will be in place to develop the Brahmaputra River's the Great Bend area. Eventually, the electricity generated will be exported east to China using Ultrahigh Voltage transmission lines. Locally, the electricity generated will also be used for mining and mineral processing.

In the updated lists below, we have provided the closest identifiable Tibetan place names by studying the location and name of the projects. While majority of the Tibetan place names are accurate, many may be slightly off the mark. Two Tibetan language maps were used for identifying Tibetan place names. One of the maps is Amnye Machen Institute’s “Tibet and Adjacent Areas under Communist China’s Occupation” and the other map is published by Tibet Automomous Region (TAR) Bureau of Cartography. Readers’ assistance in improving and updating these location names and other information will be highly appreciated

Categories of Projects

The hydropower projects are grouped into five categories.

Operational/Built; black colour. A hydropower project is categorized as Operational if there has been an announcement that at least one generator is functional. This does not mean the project is completed. This may take several more years. When a project is completed it is then categorized as Built

Under Construction; red colour. Examples are: river being blocked, cement being poured, etc., that is, work on the ground. Photos are very useful evidence in this case.

Preparation for Construction; red-ochre colour. Reports of preliminary feasibility studies, Environment Impact Assessments, road construction, immigration, etc. will put a project in this category.

Under Active Consideration; ochre colour. In this category a project has been announced but no evidence has been found that it will be constructed in the immediate future. 

Preliminary Analysis; yellow colour. In this category site identification, preliminary discussions, etc. are under way. If a project is in this category it has been proposed, but there is no evidence that it will go ahead, and may not go ahead at all.

Note that the colours of the latter four categories grade one into the other, from red to yellow. This is intended to indicate the fuzziness of the categories, which parallels the fuzziness of the available information.

Hydropower projects on the Drichu, Yangtze river on the Tibetan Plateau

The Drichu flows from Qinghai, along the Sichuan-Qinghai border, the Sichuan-TAR border, and the Sichuan-Yunnan border, into Yunnan. Each of these sections has its own political arrangements. Consequently Karze Prefecture announced three groups of three, eight and two hydropower stations on the Drichu.

Along the Qinghai-Sichuan border there are: Xirong (西绒, རྩེ་མདའ་ 320 MW), Shaila (晒拉, དམར་འབྲིང་ 380 MW), and Guotong (果通, བེ་མདའ་ 140 MW). The Sichuan-TAR border: Gangtuo (岗托, སྐམ་ཐོག་ 1100 MW), Yanbi (岩比, སྤྱི་སྒང་ 300 MW), Boluo (波罗, དཔལ་ཡུལ་ 960 MW), Yebatan (叶巴滩 གླང་སྨད་ 1980 MW), Lawa (拉哇, ལྷག་བ་ 1900 MW), Batang (巴塘, འབའ་ཐང་ 740 MW), Suwalong (苏洼龙, སྭོ་བ་ནང་ 1160 MW), Changbo (昌波, འཕྲང་པོ་ 1060 MW). Along the Sichuan-Yunnan border: Xulong (旭龙, སྡེ་རང་ 2220 MW) and Benzilan (奔子栏, བཀྲིས་རང་མཁར་ 1880-2100 MW) . Yebatan, Lawa, and Suwalong are currently receiving the most attention.

In Qinghai the  Drichu (this stretch of the Yangtse is in Chinese called the Tongtianhe, 通天河) is under study to identify possible hydropower projects, which include Mariji (马日给, ནན་གྱིས་ 10.4 MW), Yage (牙哥, འབྲིང་དཀར་ 63.6 MW), Lumari (路马日, འུར་རི་སྤུ་བྲག་བརྒྱ་ 72 MW), Reqin (若钦, རི་བཟང་ 200 MW), Lixin (立新, མགྲོན་མདའ་ 130) , Dequkou (德曲口, ཤ་རུ་དགོན་ 276.7 MW)), Leyi (勒义, གྲོང་མོ་ཆེ་ 112.8 MW), Genzhou (跟着, སྐལ་བཟང་དགོན་ 612.5), and Cefang (侧仿, མགྲོན་མདའ་ 158 MW) . Reqin and Leyi have been mentioned recently so are under active consideration. Lixin is under preparation for construction.

In Yunnan Province, there are shown the following hydropower projects: Longpan (龙盘, ལོང་པན་ 4200 MW), Liangjiaren (两家人, ལྗང་ཡུལ་ 4000 MW), Liyuan (梨园, 2000 MW), Ahai (阿海, 2100 MW), Jinganqiao (金安桥, 465 MW), Longkaikou (龙开口, 1800 MW), and Ludila (鲁地拉, 2180 MW). Jinganqiao is operational. The others are under construction or, at minimum, under active consideration.

The 12th 5 Year Plan gives priority to the construction of Yebatan, Lawa, Suwalong, Changbo, Xulong, Liyuan, Longkaikou, and Ludila. It also indicates that Longpan is to be started. Longpan is the replacement project for Tiger Leaping Gorge project which was cancelled after local and international protest.

Table 3: Hydropower projects on the Drichu, the Yangtze River on the Tibetan Plateau

Hydropower projects on the Zachu, Mekong River on the Tibetan Plateau:

There are 24 HPPs in various stages of development on the upper reaches of the Mekong River on the Tibetan Plateau: five in Qinghai Province, 14 in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and five in Yunnan province.

North of the city of Chamdo, there are five projects: Dongzhong (冬中, ཀར་མ་ 108 MW), Guoduo (果多, ཚེར་དབད་ 165 MW), Xiangda (向达, རྡོ་མདའ་ 66 MW), Ruyi (如意, རུ་བཞི་ 114 MW), and Lichang (林场, གཡོ་རུ་ཐང་ 72).  Guoduo is under construction by Huaneng Tibet Branch. The river was blocked on December 30, 2012. The Yuelong (YULONG?) Mine is involved in the development of Guoduo, which will be providing power to it. The other four have not gone beyond the planning stage.

In TAR, south of Chamdo on the Zachu mainstream there are eight projects being developed by Huaneng Lancang River Hydropower Co., Ltd. They are: Cege (侧格, སེང་གེ་ 160 MW), Yuelong (约龙, སྐྱོ་ནུབ་ 100 MW), Kagong (卡贡, མཁར་སྒང་ 240 MW), Banda (班达, ས་ནོར་ 1000 MW), Rumei (如美, རོང་མེ་ 2400 MW), Bangduo (邦多, མུ་མདོ་སྟེང་), Guxue (古学, ཚེར་མདོ་ 2400 MW), and Baita (白塔, ཚྭ་ཁ་ལ་). Rumei and Guxue are older projects and are the most important in this area.

Jinhe (སྐྱིད་ཐང་) is an operational HPP located in a nearby tributary, Zichu.

Jiaoba dam was mentioned in various articles as located on a tributary named Dengqu of the Zachu. We found a location corresponding with the description (see the Zachu Excel sheet) but we are not totally convinced, which is why we have left it off the map but mentioned it in the Excel file. 

In Qinghai, several small projects are under development: Angsai (昂赛, རྣམ་སྲས་ 55 MW) , Charikou (查日扣, ར་སྨེད་ 54 MW), and Dangqia (当卡, ལྕོགས་ཡུལ་མདའ་ 12 MW).  The latter two are under construction. Chalongtong (查隆通, ཚྭ་ལུང་ཐང་ 10.5 MW) and Longqingxia (གཞུང་སེ་མ་ 2.52 MW) are operational.

There are five Yunnan Zachu projects shown on the map: Gushui (古水, 1800 – 2600 mw),Wunonglong (乌弄龙, 990 MW), Lidi (里底, 420 MW), Touba (托巴, 1250 MW), and Huangdeng (黄登, 1900 MW). A fifth is not shown: Gounian (果念, 1200 MW) north of Wunonglong, which is presently cancelled.

The 12th Five Year Plan gives priority to the construction of Rumei, Guxue, Gushui, Wunonglong, Lidi, Tuoba, and Huangdeng, and indicates that Cege and Kagong projects are to be started.

Table 2: Hydropower projects on the Zachu, the Mekong River on the Tibetan Plateau

Hydropower projects on the Gyalmo Ngulchu, Salween River on the Tibetan Plateau:

The Tibetan Plateau blog has identified 28 HPP under various stages of development on the headwaters of the Salween River. Out of these 28 HPP, 22 HPP are located in the Tibet Autonomous Region (15 on the mainstream and seven on the tributary, Hodchu འོད་ཆུ་) and six HPP are located in the Yunnan Province. 26 of these HPP are current projects. Only two HPP (Chalong/སྟག་རིང་ and Jiquan/འབྲི་རུ་) are built and operational.

There are 13 current hydropower development projects, including Songta, on the mainstream of Gyalmo Ngulchu in TAR. Others in Yunnan, which were “cancelled” have come back to life. Datang International Power Generation Co., Ltd. is the lead company developing the Gyalmo Ngulchu in TAR. The 13 hydropower projects on the mainstream in TAR are, from upstream to downstream, Shading (沙丁, ས་སྟེང་ 210 MW), Reyu (热玉, ར་ཡུལ་ 1050 MW), Luohe (洛河, རྔུལ་ཤོད་ 600 MW), Xinrong (新荣, ཤིང་རོང་ 420 MW), Tongka (同卡, ཐང་དཀར་ n/a), Kaxi (卡西, སྐྱ་རི་ 950 MW), Nujiangqiao (怒江桥, གླིང་ཁ་ 800 MW), Yeba (叶巴, སྟོབས་འབངས་ n/a), Lalong (拉龙, ཀྲུང་གླི་ཁ་ n/a), Luola (罗拉, ཞྭ་གླིང་ཁ་ 1050 MW), Angqu (昂曲, སྐུ་མིག་ 1500 MW), Emi (俄米, ཚ་བ་ལུང་ n/a) , and Songta (松塔, བྲག་ངོས་ 4200 MW) .

On the Gyalmo Ngulchu’s tributary the Hodchu (འོད་ཆུ་) there are seven projects: Chengde (成德, འཕྲེངདེ་), Zhayu (扎玉, བྲག་ཡོལ་), Jideng (吉登, གྱང་དམར་), Zhongbo (中波, པ་དགེ་ 185 MW), Bitu (碧土, བུལ་ཐོག་ 367 MW), Zhala (扎拉, རྒྱ་ལམ་ 930 MW), and Hongdong (轰东, ལྦ་ཕུག་ 249 MW). The first three upstream projects are not shown on the map due to lack of space. They will be built after the latter four.

The map also shows six Yunnan projects: Bingzhongluo (丙中洛, ཡུམ་ལ་ཀོའོ་ 1600 MW), Maji (马吉, མ་ཅིག་ 4200 MW), Lumadeng (鹿马登, ལོ་མ་ཏིང་ 2000 MW), Fugong (福贡, 400 MW), Bijiang (碧江, 1500 MW), and Yabiluo (亚碧罗, 1800 MW) . Maji and Yabiluo were cancelled, but are currently preparing for construction.

Table 1: Hydropower projects on Gyalmo Ngulchu, the Salween River on the Tibetan Plateau

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Managing Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra): new article

The Third Pole website recently published an article I wrote: A new course for the Brahmaputra, pairing it with another piece by Prof. Ben Crow and Prof. Nirvikar Singh of University of California at Santa Cruz.

These two articles present elaborations on previous discussions on managing the Brahmaputra. Earlier, Crow and Singh wrote a compelling piece calling for a new multilateral regulatory authority for the river. The article was published by the East Asia Forum. In response, I wrote that a common development plan for the river should be based on human development principles. My response piece was published in the Asia Pacific Memo.

In brief, Crow and Singh argue that all the countries sharing the Brahmaputra river must come together under a common framework for development. They suggest that the Mekong River Commission and the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development offer a good starting point for discussion on possible institutional design of a new regulatory authority.

My piece highlights the fact that India and China, the two main riparian countries, are simply not interested in a common development plan for the river because of strategic or political reasons. Any discussion of joint management of the river ought to be mindful of the fact that the region is heavily militarized to maintain "social order" and border security. These factors are far more important to China and India than a common development for the river, which is also why existing models of joint management of transboundary rivers, including the Mekong River Commission, will not work. One possible and desirable way of breaking the deadlock, I suggest, is to put the needs of people and ecosystems before national strategic goals. You can read the full article here.

Thanks for your interest.

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Tibet's mineral and petroleum deposits: free databases

We are pleased to release an updated map and a set of databases on Tibet’s mineral and petroleum deposits. This set of data is the most complete and accurate information that is publicly available on this topic.

In 2011, the Tibetan Plateau blog released a preliminary map and databases of Tibet’s minerals, salt lakes and petroleum deposits. Though incomplete, we felt we should release it then because it was more accurate and complete than other maps and lists available at that time.

Today, we are releasing the updated map above (which can also be downloaded here) and four accompanying databases. The four databases are Mineral, Salt Lake, Petroleum, and Unidentified Prospects and Mines. In the current version, we have included coal mines, oil-sand deposits, and several other mineral deposit sites that failed to make onto the preliminary map and databases.

The Minerals database contains a list of 192 mineral deposit/mining sites, out of which 147 have been mapped. The Salt Lakes database contains a list of 24 sites listed with all but two mapped. The Petroleum Deposits database contains 38 sites, out of which 35 have been mapped. Readers are encouraged to check these sites on Google Earth with the help of latitude-longitude coordinates provided in the databases.

Most of the prospects and mines listed in the database are verified with Google Earth, with an additional 58 identified visually in Google Earth but are not currently confidently linked to a documented deposit. Readers’ assistance in identifying these sites would be highly appreciated.

Information provided in the databases includes latitude-longitude coordinates, status of development, products, size of project/mine, validity, county, prefecture, and references for more information. All development projects are listed with their Pinyin names. The main cities and geographical features on the map are shown with Tibetan names.

The finalized databases have two format changes from the preliminary release. First, all references are embedded within the deposit lists. Second, ownership information has been removed to a separate database which may be cross-referenced by deposit name.

In addition to the Areas of Interest mentioned in the preliminary introduction to the dataset, the following should be noted. In northeast Qinghai (A-mdo), a number of coal mines are operating that are visible in Google Earth, are currently awaiting formal identification. Coal may also be being mined in the Tsaidam Basin. Also of significance are the oil-sands deposits currently under exploration in the Tsaidam Basin, Jhangthang and the Lunpola Basin (thang nyog thang) in TAR.

Exploration in the southwest edge of the Tsaidam Basin has resulted in the discovery of a number of significant deposits of base metals (Galinge, etc.). On the basin’s southeast edge two large gold deposits, Gouli and Guloulongwa (near Panchen Shingde), are being explored. In both cases, the deposits were located by the use of modern regional geological survey techniques.

The Songpan-Ganze Mobile Belt is an area of particular concern, with very little detailed data beyond the Dachang gold deposit documentation. In Qinghai, the belt passes through both the Hoh Xil Nature Reserve and the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve (SNNR). Hoh Xil is protected against resource extraction, yet is currently host to heavy equipment brought in by illegal miners, and exploration crews from the government geological survey.

The SNNR has already had its boundaries adjusted to accommodate mineral exploration and mining near Dachang. These territorial boundaries directly affect the controversial campaign of resettling Tibetan nomads. Tibetans who protest against or post information about these projects are often put behind bars, as demonstrated by Gangnyi, a Tibetan environmental photographer.

Mining is posed to become ever more important in Tibet, as written about by China Daily here and by Gabriel Lafitte in the China Dialogue site. The Tibetan Plateau blog has also written on this subject.

To learn more or to participate in political action, please visit Stop Mining Tibet and International Tibet Network websites.

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Designing an ideal regulatory body for international rivers

Recently I was honored to be asked by UBC's Asia Pacific Memo to write a response to an interesting article by Prof. Ben Crow and Prof. Nirvikar Singh of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

 

My response piece was published on June 19, 2012. You can read the Memo here. 

Readers may also be interested in a special series of Asia Pacific Memo that I had the privilege of co-editing earlier this year. The series is entitled "Water, Scarcity, and Tibetan Plateau Frontiers." You can read the special series  here.

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Index to the 1981 TAR map

A previous Tibetan Plateau blog post shared a downloadable link to a detailed map of Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). The map was published by the TAR Bureau of Cartography in 1981.

We have more good news: there is an exhaustive index for the 1981 TAR map available online here. This 500+ page index is compiled by Gregor Verhufen (Thank you Gregor!) in 1995.

 


The 1981 TAR map and the 1995 index to the map, together, undoubtedly constitute one of the richest and most helpful sources of information on (close to 9000!) Tibetan names of places, rivers, mountains, glaciers and lakes.

The map and the index, however, does not have names of Tibetan places outside TAR. Those interested in information on Tibetan places outside TAR are advised to refer to Steven Marshall and Susette Cooke's report, TIBET: Outside the TAR, which, hopefully, is still available for sale through the International Campaign for Tibet. Parts of the Marshall and Cooke's report are available here.

Readers are requested to share these resources with researchers and other people interested in Tibet.

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Tibetan language map of Tibet Autonomous Region

The Tibetan Plateau blog is pleased to make the most detailed Tibetan language map of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) we have seen so far available for download.
 
Although this is a relatively old map, published in 1981 by the TAR Bureau of Cartography, it is the best we have seen in terms of detail, showing settlements down to the level of villages below the township level. The map also shows roads, railway lines, hydro-dams and environmental features such as glaciers, desert, lakes and springs. Here are examples of the amazing level of detail in the map. The scale of the map is 1: 1000000.


A warning before you download the map: this is a huge (25 MB) JPEG file. If your computer has sufficient storage space and other resources, you can download the map here.

We hope that this map will be useful for students, researchers and others who are interested in Tibet.

With thanks to all the readers for their interest and support.

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Mining for gold after kicking out the pastoralists

The establishment of protected nature reserves is a time-tested method of asserting state authority over territories and peoples that were previously subject to weak control. Whether it is in the name of protecting tigers in India, forests in Central America or headwaters in Tibet, the creation of protected parks often come with coercive laws that limit the rights of people who live in and around the designated area.

Often state discourse on protecting parks portrays itself as benign environmental projects. However, on the dark side, protected parks and nature reserves frequently introduce mechanisms for social control and facilitate resource development and eco-tourism plans. It is little wonder that between 1980 and 2003, China has established 70 nature reserve parks in the Tibet Autonomous Region.


Figure 1) Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, based on a 2004 Qinghai Forestry Bureau map.


One of the most controversial nature reserve areas of the Tibetan Plateau is the San Jiang Yuan Three Rivers Headwaters Nature Reserve (SNNR), formed in 2000 to protect the sources of the Mekong (Zachu), Yangtze (Drichu) and Yellow (Machu) rivers. At the heart of the controversy is the relocation and settlement of tens of thousands of pastoral nomads into camps reminiscent of those built for First Nations people in North America.

The socio-cultural disruption caused by these resettlement projects is so severe that Andrew Fischer from the Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, recently raised the point that the locations of recent spate of Tibetan self-immolations correspond, “with a few exceptions”, to areas of intensive resettlement. (To digress a little: In the same issue of the journal of Cultural Anthropology, Emily Yeh and Tsering Shakya observed how the Tibetans represent homo sacers, a group of people that the state is allowed, by its unquestioning citizens, to use brute force and violence upon.)

This blog post, however, is more specific to the SNNR. It builds on the questions raised in a previous blog post in which the first publicly available map of SNNR was released. These questions concern around the strategic motives of establishing nature reserves, the problematic use of scientific discourses, and on China’s commitment to environmental protection in relation to its development goals. Specifically, this post provides new information and analysis, which show that conservation is secondary to resource development projects in the SNNR area.

CHANGING THE BOUNDARIES OF SNNR
The map of SNNR first published on this blog was mainly based on a map of SNNR published by the Qinghai Forest Bureau in 2004. The SNNR is composed of 18 subareas. Each subarea is divided into three zones: a Core Zone, a Buffer Zone, and a multiple-use Experimental Zone. What follows in the rest of this post is evidence that shows that the boundaries of at least one of the SNNR subareas have been changed. Available information indicates that the changes have been made, amongst other things, to allow gold mining in the region.

The Yuegu Zonglie (Tibetan: Yos gi slang leb chu, ཡོས་གི་སླང་ལེབ་ཆུ་) is one of the Wetland Conservation Subareas of SNNR. Located to the east of Kyaring and Ngoring lakes. This subarea covers the uppermost headwaters of the Yellow River, and is critical to the SNNR project, which aims to prevent ongoing deterioration of the sources of the Yellow River.

If we overlap the 2004 map on Google Earth image of the region, we can see trenches (marked with pins), indicating mineral prospecting, within the Buffer and Experimental Zones of Yuegu Zonglie subarea of the 2004 map. These trenches are protected environmental zones from where people were to be resettled. The policy assumption is that nomad’s herds were responsible for the deterioration of the grasslands there.


Figure 2) A Google Earth Image showing the 2004 boundaries of the SNNR and the locations of streams (turquoise) and evidence of prospecting (yellow).

The trenches in the north of Yuegu Zonglie subarea belong to Inter-Citic, a Canadian mining company. The proposed Dachang Mine, with its processing plant and tailings, would be 12 kilometers upstream from the Core Zone, and there is evidence of prospecting as close as 4 kilometers to the Core Zone. We can also see on Google Earth that the grasslands has been severely damaged by Inter-Citic’s exploration work, far beyond anything nomads’ herds could ever do. Inter-Citic’s 2004 technical report acknowledges that its Dachang prospects “appear to be within an environmentally sensitive area around the headwaters of the Yellow River.”

However, in 2009, Inter-Citic published another technical report with a map of SNNR, showing their Dachang property completely outside of SNNR. The 2009 technical report states “Dachang is located proximate to but outside of the Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve”, and “The location of the Dachang concession is north of the outermost boundary of the Sanjiangyuan EPZ as described in the Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve Environmental Protection and Development Plan approved by the State Council on January 26, 2005”. Between March 10, 2004, the date of the 2004 technical report, and January 26, 2005, the date of the approval for the SNNR plan, the SNNR boundaries that affected the Dachang gold project and nearby gold prospects were changed.


Figure 3) Inter-Citic’s map of the SNNR near the Dachang exploration site. The brown area at the top represents the Dachang property. The red dashed line represents the Core Zone, the pink dashed line represents the Buffer Zone, and the blue-black dashed line represents the Experimental Zone.

The new boundaries now exclude the sources of the Yellow River, where the gold mines are to be situated, from SNNR, and includes new rivers, which are not a part of watershed region that SNNR is supposed to protect. It appears the changes in boundaries are made in such a way that the total area under protection remains the same before and after the change.

The figure below shows the Inter-Citic SNNR map overlay showing the relation between Dachang, other prospecting projects, streams and rivers, and the 2004 and 2005 boundaries of the SNNR. The dashed lines are from the Inter-Citic map (2005), the solid lines are from the 2004 map. The Core Zone remained the same, but the Buffer Zone was reduced in the north and extended in the southwest, and the Experimental Zone was reduced in the north and extended in the west.



An examination of the extension of the Experimental Zone to the west of the Core Zone reveals that the river (drawn in turquoise in the figure above) to the west of the Core Zone flows north into the Tsaidam (Qaidam) basin. It does not flow into the Yellow River, the Yangtze or Mekong, the rivers protected by the SNNR. Extending the Experimental Zone in this direction has no bearing on protecting the headwaters of the Yellow River.

In contrast to the rivers that flow outside the protected watershed area, the rivers near Dachang and other gold prospects taken out of the SNNR flow directly into the Core Zone. The 2004 Buffer and Experimental Zones would have protected the Core Area from the inflow of industrial waste from the North, where Inter-Citic and the Qinghai No. 5 Geological and Mineral Exploration Institute plan to create an open pit mine and build an ore processing plant. These will require hundreds of workers and extensive supporting infrastructure, resulting in, needless to say, severe pollution of the Yellow River at its uppermost sources.

THE OTHER REALITY OF NATURE RESERVES IN TIBET
The documentation and analysis provided above demonstrates what happens in the name of protected nature reserves in Tibet in general and what is likely to happen more frequently in these protected areas in the future. For example, government reports announce discovery of major gold deposits in the area, and that there will be further changes to SNNR Experimental Zones to boost incomes in the region. The Songpan-Garze gold belt, within which Dachang is found, runs through another nature reserve in Qinghai Province, the Hoh Xil reserve, which was created to protect the Tibetan Antelope and other endangered wildlife. Recent reports also mention that geologists are currently carrying out exploration in the Hoh Xil reserve area, just to the west of the Dachang region.




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READ ON:

➢ To find out what you can do to help with the situation, visit Nomad Rights and Stop Mining Tibet websites.

➢ The most extensive discussion of the plight of the Tibetan nomads are on the Rukor blog.

➢ Readers may also contact the International Tibet Network and the Canada Tibet Committee for more information.

➢ In addition to the links provided above, you can read past Tibetan Plateau blog posts on topics concerning resettlement of Tibetan nomads here and here. Those interested in mining issues in Tibet must check out our database of mines in Tibet.

➢ All the data incorporated in this report is available online and for free. The Inter-Citic website has a lot of useful information. As well as numerous maps and reports it has a useful downloadable Google Earth .kml file. Once locating Dachang in Google Earth, closely checking the area, particularly to the southeast, will reveal numerous exploration trenches and placer mining sites, along with a few camps, etc. Additional data and technical reports can be found at SEDAR.


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REFERENCES

Cargill, D.G. (2004). DACHANG GOLD PROPERTY IN QUMALAI COUNTY, QINGHAI PROVINCE, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA. Source: Inter-Citic website.

Gorman, P.W. et al. (2009). A TECHNICAL REPORT ON AN UPDATED MINERAL RESOURCE ESTIMATE, AND A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS FOR THE DACHANG GOLD PROJECT, QINGHAI PROVINCE, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, VOLUME 1 REPORT. Micron International Ltd. Source: Inter-Citic website.

Fischer, A. (2012). The Geopolitics of Politico-Religious Protest in Eastern Tibet. In Mcgranahan, C. and Litzinger, R. (Eds), Self-immolation as Protest in Tibet. Special issue, Cultural Anthropology. Accessed online on April 14, 2012.

Shakya, T. (2012). Transforming the Language of Protest. In Mcgranahan, C. and Litzinger, R. (Eds) Self-immolation as Protest in Tibet. Special issue, Cultural Anthropology. Accessed online on April 14, 2012.

Yeh, E. (2012). "Terrorism” and the Politics of Naming. In Mcgranahan, C. and Litzinger, R. (Eds) Self-immolation as Protest in Tibet. Special issue, Cultural Anthropology. Accessed online on April 14, 2012.


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