Denmark's anticipatory sale of Tibet bears no fruit

Did you know that Denmark has 'sold' Tibet's historical status as a sovereign state and the Tibetan people's right to struggle for freedom from Chinese rule at the beginning of the COP 15 meetings (on December 9) to appease China? This, according to media sources, is done hoping that China will then behave like a responsible superpower. [Denmark is not the only country that has 'sold' Tibet's historical legal status. Last year England did something similar in a statement.]

So how did China respond during the COP 15 negotiations?

An insider at a crucial meeting of two dozen heads of states, Mark Lynas, blames China for the failure of the COP 15 summit:

"It was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative too pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point."

Accoring to Mr. Lynas, "China wants to weaken the climate regulation regime now 'in order to avoid the risk that it might be called on to be more ambitious in a few years' time'."

I have been to several international environmental conferences, including IUCN 2000, IUCN 2004 and WSSD 2002, and I have seen with my own eyes how these negotiations work, especially at the UN level. At these meetings, world politics is more influential than global or international politics. By world politics, I mean that states quickly get grouped into the politics of "developed countries" versus "developing countries" or the First World versus the Third World countries. Issues of global politics, such as human rights, poverty reduction, environmental protection and women's empowerment will get hijacked under international (between key states) and world politics.

What is interesting is the level of world politics that operates at these conferences. The developed versus developing countries politics, one would imagine, is very old and outdated. It isn't. It still dominates these meetings. While I came across deeper undercurrents of world politics, such as the aspirations of the 53-member African states and the Muslim bloc, these do not come up as forcefully in the proceedings. These undercurrents, somehow, get subsumed under the larger 'developing versus developed countries' politics. The African and Muslim blocs, for example, are generally happy to vote "No" to anything that the developed countries, usually headed by the U.S., put forward. And China, as a leader of developing countries bloc, takes advantage of this condition efficiently and effectively.

What is even more interesting is how the vastly different developing countries, from major powers like India and Brazil to climate-vulnerable states like Maldives and Bangladesh, allow China, which is far more powerful and has completely different sets of interests, take the lead in these negotiations. This raises a question: will China advocate for the interest of countries like Maldives? Read an observation by Mr. Lynas:

"With the deal gutted, the heads of state session concluded with a final battle as the Chinese delegate insisted on removing the 1.5C target so beloved of the small island states and low-lying nations who have most to lose from rising seas. President Nasheed of the Maldives, supported by Brown, fought valiantly to save this crucial number. "How can you ask my country to go extinct?" demanded Nasheed. The Chinese delegate feigned great offence – and the number stayed, but surrounded by language which makes it all but meaningless. The deed was done."
So there. Denmark has sacrificed Tibet on the altar of a global environmental issue to no avail. With the lessons learned, does Denmark have the integrity to acknowledge its mistakes and retract the statement?

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A delightful surprise to the people of Phagri

People of Phagri (ཕག་རི་), near Shigatse (གཞིས་ཀ་རྩེ་), have some wonderful visitors this year. Xinhua reports that a flock of Black-necked Cranes have chosen Phagri, instead of their usual spot in Nyalam (གཉའ་ལམ་), as their resting site this winter.

[Photo: Xinhua]

The Black-necked Cranes, also known as Tibetan Crane (scientific name: Grus nigricollis), is well known among the Tibetans. Trung Trung Kenag (ཁྲུང་ཁྲུང་སྐེ་ནག་), more popularly known as Trung Trung Karmo (ཁྲུང་ཁྲུང་དཀར་མོ་ / "White Crane"), is a bird immortalized by what is believed to be the final and the most popular poem composed by the legendary sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (ཚངས་དབྱངས་རྒྱ་མཚོ). A story goes that the poet Dalai Lama was sitting on a mountain top, looking for inspiration. Just then he saw a White Crane flying in the sky. He spontaneously broke into a song: "Oh White Crane, lend me your wings. I shall not fly far. From Lithang, I shall return."

The 6th Dalai Lama's last poem is believed to contain signs of his next life as the 7th Dalai Lama was born in Lithang. Here is a video of a man and a girl singing the song:


The Black-necked Crane is also popular among naturalists and environmentalists. According to the International Crane Foundation, Black-necked Cranes were the last species of crane discovered and described by ornithologists (1876). With a declining trend in its total population, which is only about 5,000-6000, the endangered Black-necked Crane is listed as "Vulnerable" in the IUCN Red List of endangered animals. The Black-necked grows to a height of about 4 feet (115cm) with an amazing wing span of nearly 8 feet (235 cm) and weighs about 12 pounds (5.5 kg).

Climate warming is known to drive animals and plants towards higher altitudes and latitudes (comparatively cooler regions) as temperature becomes too hot in their natural habitats. Migratory birds are worse off as these animals must travel long distances, covering different regions with very different environmental conditions. Related to the topic, BBC has produced a four-part documentary series called "Animal Migration in a Climate of Change" . As the Himalayas get warmer and the glaciers melt, the lakes and marshlands in areas around Phagri have become larger, and the surrounding meadows and shrubs have become greener. All these changes have made the area into an ideal winter hibernating site for the Black-necked Cranes, according to the Xinhua article.
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Himalaya, the "Mountains of Concrete": a review

Mountains of Concrete: Dam Building in the Himalayas. International Rivers. 2008.  

Mountains of Concrete by Shripad Dharmadhikary is a fine new report that looks at dam building trends in the Himalayan regions of Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bhutan. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first critical report of its scope and focus, definitely an important contribution to the debates over dam building issues in the region. However, the exclusion of Tibetan Himalayan rivers renders this otherwise comprehensive regional study still incomplete, especially since the Tibetan sections of these rivers are the critical headwaters. The report explains that the omission is due to lack of information and resources. This is personally very disappointing as I believe the information and resources are out there, if only the author and the publisher had dug more deeply to find them.

The report, however, does dedicate a full-page story (Box #4, page 20): “China ‘Goes Out’ to Build Himalayan Dams.” It provides a brief overview of Chinese dam-building expertise and the politico-economic context under which it is ‘going out’ to build “hundreds of dams” in South Asia, Africa, South America, Central Asia and other regions of the world. In South Asia, the report says that “Chinese companies have built or are building at least 13 projects in Nepal and nine in Pakistan.” There is a quick mention of Chinese plans to build a dam on Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra), an idea that is alarming to the downstream countries of India and Bangladesh. Since Tibet is the headwaters to many of the major rivers discussed in the report and there are innumerable dams built and planned on the Tibetan Plateau, we can only hope that International Rivers will take up this incomplete project and produce a sequel report about Chinese dam projects in Tibet. Readers interested in getting a glimpse of Chinese dam-building trends on the Tibetan Plateau are encouraged to read this paper.

That said, I want to share some of the many excellent points that are discussed in the report and point out certain important topics that could have been been included. This 48-page report is neatly divided into different topical sections. The first half of the report presents an informative country-by-country discussion of dam-building trends, funding issues and the key players. I found the discussions about Nepal and Bhutan most informative since not much is known about dam issues in these two countries. I did not realize until today, and it is not very surprising as one comes to think of it, that hydropower development represents the biggest source of income for Nepal and Bhutan. According to the report, about half of Bhutan’s national income comes from hydropower development. Bhutan has an installed capacity of 1,448 MW and plans to increase it to 15,693 MW. Nepal is more ambitious, it plans to install a total capacity of 26,324 MW from its current installed capacity of 545 MW. India’s goal is 93,615 MW from 15,208 MW. And for Pakistan, it is 33,769 MW from the existing capacity of 6,385 MW.

The drivers of hydropower in Pakistan and India are different. Pakistan wants big dams for irrigation and agriculture. In India, there is much higher demand for electricity and regional development. Needless to mention, the Indian power companies' rush to earn huge profits is also a major factor. A look at sources of funds is also interesting. The involvement of international financial institutions (IFI) such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank are common throughout the region. For Bhutan, the main source of funds is India. Nepal has a more diverse source of income, including domestic sources, private-public partnerships, India as well as China. China is also an important funder for Pakistan. Other sources of funds for Pakistan include internal government sources, foreign private banks and income from sale of power. India’s main funders are its government, domestic banks and financial institutions.

Funding is the biggest challenge to the developers in this mostly rural region. Even if all the available funds are added up, the report estimates that 40% of the funds still remain unsecured. Power sector reforms to raise necessary funds are essentially geared towards privatization. The availability of funding is largely dependent on the ability of the power sector to recover investments, which to me is doubtful because of factors such as climate change, poor performance track record of big dams in general, and the South Asian context of corruption and unstable local/regional politics. However, I imagine the greatest funding problem right now is the global economic crisis as energy demands and investments in many parts of the world are declining. 

The main argument of the first section is the lack of morality in the economics of big dams in the region. Who are the ultimate winners and who are the losers? While the report does not question the role of state in hydropower development in the tradition of political ecology or post-structuralist critics, it raises issues of equity and the plight of the poor and affected people. The prospective winners are the banks and bureaucracies whose interests are directly proportional to the size of investment and prospective profits. The losers are the affected people, many of which are the many unique indigenous peoples (Adivasis, jan jatis), and the environment. In fact, the report is ultimately a warning that the Himalayas themselves and the whole region would face grave consequences if its people and decision-makers fail to act as its custodians.

The second half of the Concrete Mountains report is dedicated to the social and environmental issues. There are a lot of topics covered in this section (downstream impacts, loss of resource base, direct submergence, cultural impacts, ecological impacts, seismicity and sedimentation, climate change, etc.) that could have benefited from focus in terms of a specific target audience that ideally is also relevant to the debate. This section also provides a brief discussion on the response from affected people. I have always been most impressed with the various anti-dam movements in India. The national policy debates raised by the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and the mobilization of affected people’s resistance not only on the Narmada campaign but also other projects such as Teesta in the Northeast are inspiring examples for other dam-affected people. [TEAM has translated the Citizens’ Guide to World Commission on Dams, an activist organizational tool kit for people affected by dams, into Tibetan. We have sent a few copies to Teesta activists and are happy to send more copies for free to anyone who places an order.]

I am pleased that the report rightly situates the debate within the context of climate change. I believe climate change provides an important, pertinent and powerful critique of dam development in the region. If the glaciers and snows that feed the Himalayas are disappearing, why build such large, expensive and inhumane concrete structures? Some experts argue that big dams will be useful for storage purposes if climate change results in changes to water flow patterns. We can use the dams to store water when there is excess and release when supply is scarce. This report rejects this argument. Current dam projects, including those in the ‘pipeline,’ will not be able to deliver the designed benefits since flows are expected to decline significantly in the long run. Big dams in the Himalayas also increase other risks that are more common to the region such as glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and seismicity.

Another important point that I was delightfully surprised to see emphasized in this report is the issue of cumulative impact of these dams. What will be the long term added incremental impact of all these dams to the region’s environment and economy? No one has the answer to this question. Perhaps we will never know the answer to this question beforehand but this is an important conceptual question for people and policy makers concerned about the future of the region’s cultural and ecological heritage. A step in the right direction toward understanding cumulative impact is to include cumulative impact assessments in project environmental impact assessment measures.

While such important points are raised in the report, there is no discussion of certain other relevant and important concepts such as minimum in-stream flows, ecosystem services (of headwaters and free flowing river, for example), and human rights impact assessment. I think all of these concepts should be made relevant to any discussion of dam project planning to minimize environmental and social costs. It would have been very fitting for the report to include these concepts as a part of its recommendations to governments and funders, a section that is also missing in the report. I would have either expanded the final one-page discussion on “Alternative Approaches” or included a set of recommendations for different target audiences, such as governments, IFIs, affected local people groups such as the Affected Citizens of Teesta.

It is unfair to expect a report to cover all relevant topics under the sun. For what it has set out to do, I think the report has achieved its purpose barring the unfortunate exclusion of Tibet and China. I wish to congratulate Shripad Sharmadhikary and the International Rivers for releasing this informative critical report.

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Snuffing out the nomads?

A friend brought this Reuters article to my attention. He was baffled by the sheer number of Tibetan herders that the article says will be relocated. According to the article, there are 530,000 nomads in Western Sichuan Province, out of which 470,000 herders will be resettled in the name of environmental protection. If these numbers are true, that's the last of the nomads in Sichuan. He said this is effectively "a kind of nomad genocide.” Although I never thought of this as such, I was pleased to see that at least someone was paying attention to this issue.

As evident from my earlier postings, I have been very concerned about the many large scale ecological resettlement projects going on in Tibet. To me, this is a far more serious issue than the high profile topics such as Hillary Clinton’s China visit or the arrest of monk protestors. Precisely because the resettlement project is a low profile, politically-correct sounding policy in the context of environmental protection, I think it is one of the most far-sighted strategies of the Chinese state to deal with several serious problems on the Tibetan Plateau at the same time. As the saying goes, "Kill many birds with one stone".



China has designated many areas on the Tibetan Plateau for different environmental protection goals. Local people living in these regions are usually forced to sell their yaks and then resettled somewhere. I haven’t dug into the numbers yet, but it is clear from Xinhua and other official reports that several hundred thousand people, mostly nomads and pastoralists, are being resettled from these “protected” areas. This Science magazine article, for example, talks about government plans for the “ecological migration” of nomadic herders living around Kokonor Lake (Tso Ngon) to restore the region’s “degraded” ecology. The power of scientific and environmental discourse makes these projects sound like noble endeavors. How could anyone oppose protection of wetlands, lakes, and endangered animal species?

There are other benefits of resettling Tibetan herders. The government wants to provide access to education, health, postal system and other development schemes in every corner of the country. Promotion of economic development, especially in politically volatile regions, is an important technique for promoting state legitimacy. The Tibetan herders have been a major problem to state policy makers in this regard. Statistics reflect these people poorly on both economic and human development scales, for which the government receives a lot of criticism, but it is difficult for the government to provide them access to development due to their nomadic and subsistence lifestyle. So settling them in housing colonies is one obvious way of dealing with this problem.

The Tibetan nomadic lifestyle is the heart of the traditional Tibetan economy, which is reliant on herding of yaks, goats and sheep. The nomadic lifestyle represents the symbolic spirit of Tibet to many people. Romantic notions of Tibetan nomadic life are popular not only among Tibetans and Western sympathizers but also among Chinese people. The government could not have settled the nomads by calling their lifestyle “backward” or “primitive”, as it was done in the past. The perfect excuse to do this, thus, is within the context of environmental protection. Rallying support for environmental protection on the Tibetan Plateau is easy. Tibet is known for its “biodiversity hotspots”, pristine lakes, old growth forests, “fragile grasslands”, and for being “China’s Water Tower.” And resettling people from nature reserve parks is not a new idea but a well tested strategy. States around the world have declared many areas inhabited by troublesome indigenous peoples as nature reserves in order to control and assimilate them into the political economy.

The real issue is not about a clash between romantic notions of the Tibetan nomadic lifestyle and state development. It is about choices, whether the herders have a say in the policies that shape their lives. Do the herders have a choice whether to resettle or not? The issue is also about scientific management. Is it scientifically appropriate to remove herders and halt grazing on the Tibetan Plateau? Julia Klein, a scientist who specializes in climate change impact on grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau, says that the ecology of the region “is a system that has evolved with grazing; the removal of grazing from the system could have profound ecological consequences.”

Going back to the topic of “nomad genocide,” I wonder if anyone has actually done some research on the numbers. I can only hope the figures quoted in the Reuters article are inaccurate or exaggerated. I wonder how many people have really been resettled so far, and how many more are yet to be resettled? If any of you readers have any information, please share. Thanks for reading this, and spread the word!

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Carbon emissions and the Tibetans

The prominent scientific journal, Nature, has an article about climate change and Tibet in its July 2008 issue, entitled The Third Pole. The article highlights the significance of ‘black carbon’ as a major heat-absorbing contributor of atmospheric warming: black carbon contributes about 50% of the solar heating of earth’s atmosphere and is the second largest (carbon dioxide being the first) cause of atmospheric warming over Tibet.

At first I was struck by the author's definition of black carbon as “the soot that results when people cook with bio-fuels such as wood, crop waste or dung.” Even more surprisingly, the author identifies Himalayas as a global hotspot for black-carbon emissions. When I told this to my advisor, he was skeptical considering the sparse population and low economic activity in Tibet. So I did some research. I read the two key studies that the author had cited in the paper. I found that her description of black carbon and Himalayan region’s contribution of the soot are inaccurate.

The author had only referred to one of the two categories of black-carbon sources. The original study, “Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon” by Ramanathan and Carcimichael had defined black carbon as comprising of two categories of sources: 1) in door sources such as the use of “biofuels like wood, dung and crop residue; and 2) outdoor sources such as fossil fuel combustion (dieseland coal), open biomass burning (associated with deforestation and crop residue burning), and cooking with biofuels” (R&C, p. 21).

So there are more than just bio-fuels that make up black-carbon. Still, how could the Himalayas, a sparsely populated area, be one of the global hotspots for black-carbon emissions? The region, even in the Southern face of the Himalayas in India, is not that densely populated, nor is it economically developed. Shimla, the capital city of the state of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, may be one of the greatest contributors of black-carbon in the Indian Himalayas, but even Shimla cannot be that severe. As it turns out in Ramanathan and Carcimichael's study, the Himalayas is at the borderline between high and low black-carbon emitting regions. The Indo-Gangetic plains and the plains of “mainland China” are two of the major hotspots, not the Himalayas. The Tibetan plateau is clearly one of the lowest contributors of black-carbon, as shown in two simulated images of annual mean optical depth of black-carbon aerosols in the region (p. 225).

With these doubts clarified, I found two new (to me) noteworthy points:

1. Although CO2 and black carbon are the main contributors to atmospheric warming, water vapour actually has a even stronger greenhouse effect if measured per molecule. Water vapour is apparently not a big concern because it normally reaches no higher than 1–2 kilometres below the stratosphere, the layer of atmosphere which contains the most ozone. Research mentioned in the article says that climate warming (evaporation) and wind blowing over the plateau can transfer water vapour and pollutants (black carbon) into the stratosphere. If this is true, one can speculate that things could get pretty complicated and worrisome for the glaciers and snows on the the planet's Third Pole.

2. The article also touches on debates on the implications of the plateau's warming for the Monsoon. The obvious argument is that the increased (land) surface temperature would augment monsoon (higher temperature over land means more intense monsoon winds from the sea). However, some studies indicate that the plateau has had a weakening effect on the monsoon (see Fig. 4, R&C, p. 224). This is perhaps due to changes in land use patterns and aerosols that absorb solar radiation. So, it seems there is need for further studies before we can draw conclusions on this debate.

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"Climate Change as a Human Rights Issue for Subsistence-Based Societies"

Is it fair if the climate costs of development of industrialized economies such as US and China are borne by subsistence-based societies like those of Tibetans and the Inuits? Should the victims of climate change be compensated by its perpetrators? What if Tibetan nomads and pastoralists are being blamed and forcefully relocated for grassland degradation that is caused by global warming? Read an article by Professor Julia Klein of Colorado State University addressing some of these issues.




Climate Change as a Human Rights Issue for Subsistence-Based Societies
By Julia Klein
Source: ource: Trin-Gyi-Pho-Nya [སྤྲིན་གྱི་ཕོ་ཉ་], Tibet Justice Center, Vol. 2, No. 6, January 2005.

In December 2004, a meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in anticipation of the upcoming entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol. At the same time, the Inuit -- 155,000 seal-hunting peoples scattered around the Arctic -- announced they were preparing a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stating that the United States, by contributing substantially to global warming, is threatening their existence. The Inuit people's lives and culture depend upon the Arctic ice. Scientists have concluded that climate change caused predominantly by human influences is causing that ice to melt and causing other impacts to the Inuit way of life. In their petition, the Inuit assert that because the United States is responsible for 25% or more of the greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to climate change, the United States has an international obligation to prevent these human rights violations. The Inter-American Commission will forward the petition to the United States, which is the respondent, hold a series of hearings on the matter and determine whether this constitutes a violation of human rights.


[Photo by Raul Gutierrez]

Just as the Inuit rely on the arctic ice for their subsistence, Tibetan pastoralists depend on the alpine rangelands of the Tibetan Plateau for their survival. The pastoralists rely on the rangeland vegetation to convert the sun's energy into products - via domestic herbivores - that form the basis of their culture and subsistence. These products include food, clothing, housing, fuel, stored wealth, and transportation. The Tibetans also directly rely on vegetation for goods such as medicinal plants and other products.

Scientists, range managers and development personnell working on the Tibetan Plateau have primarily ignored issues of climate warming effects on the Tibetan rangelands. Rather, they have focused on the Tibetan rangelands with respect to grazing issues. The Tibetan rangeland debate is often couched in terms of whether the Tibetans are "rational" or "irrational" land managers, whether animal densities are increasing or decreasing on the Tibetan Plateau, the merits and drawbacks of fencing and sedentarization, and the effects of small mammal grazing on the rangelands. While most of these issues are very important, they should be studied in the context of a changing underlying climatic condition. These topics also highlight the propensity for scientists, range managers and development personnell working on the Tibetan Plateau to observe rangeland degradation, observe grazing animals (or fences or small mammals), and make a causal connection between the two based on observation rather than a valid scientific analysis of cause and effect.

While very little research has been conducted on how climate warming may affect ecosystem goods and services on the Tibetan Plateau, work has recently been published in the scientific literature (Klein et al. 2004) that shows climate warming could cause as much as a 36% decline in plant species diversity on the northeastern region of the Tibetan Plateau. This includes declines in medicinal plant species and palatable forage species richness. This work also indicates warming could reduce overall vegetative productivity and increase shrub encroachment in this region of the Tibetan Plateau (Klein 2003).

There is a consensus among the scientific community that much of the present climate warming on Earth is due to human activities (IPCC 2001). According to the New York Times, the United States was the only country at the climate meetings in Buenos Aires which continues to question the climate change science. There is also evidence that climate warming is occurring on the Tibetan Plateau (Thompson et al. 2000). China, which ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 1992, is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, but per capita emissions of global warming pollutants in China are just 15 percent of U.S. levels. China accepted no mandatory greenhouse gas emissions target under the Protocol -- only developed countries are subject to binding emission targets in the Kyoto Protocol's first emission control period, 2008 to 2012.

Climate warming is an unusual environmental problem because the primary actors driving the changes can be far removed from the most vulnerable recipients of the climate change effects. This large spatial disconnect between drivers and recipients is due to the nature of greenhouse gases, which mix relatively rapidly in the atmosphere across the globe. The Inuit people can assert their rights in the international arena because there has been careful documentation of climate change in the arctic, because the ecological and social impacts of climate change on the Inuit people have been rigorously studied for over a decade, and because supporters of the Inuit people recognize the links between politics, human rights and climate change. The Tibetan pastoralists, who are potentially highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, will also need to rely on rigorous science and an interested community to assert their rights to a resource base that is being affected by anthropogenic climate changes and to bring this issue to the attention of the international community.

References cited:
1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2001. Climate change 2001: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ed. Houghton, J.T., Griggs, D.J., Noguer, M., van der Linden, P.J., Dai, X., Maskell, K., & Johnson, C.A.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
2. Klein, J.A., J. Harte & X.Q. Zhao. 2004. Experimental warming causes large and rapid species loss, dampened by simulated grazing, on the Tibetan Plateau. Ecology Letters 7(12) 1170-1179.
3. Klein, Julia A. 2003. Climate warming and pastoral land use change: implications for carbon cycling, biodiversity and rangeland quality on the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau, PhD Thesis, University of California, Berkeley.
4. Thompson L.G., Yao T., Mosley-Thompson E., Davis M.E., Henderson K.A. & Lin P.-N. (2000) A high-resolution millennial record of the South Asian monsoon from Himalayan ice cores. Science, 289, 1916-1919.

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