Photo of dam on Indus (Senge Tsangpo)

A friend just sent me a link which has a photo of "The Sengye Tsangpo Hydropower Station." Upon comparing the photo with the dam on Ngari I found on Google Earth last week, it's clear that these are the same dam. According to the text on the photo, the Sengye Tsangpo Hydropower Station has an installed capacity of 6,400 Kilowatts and is now operational. Read more on this article...

The Qinghai Lake eco-environmental protection and comprehensive management project

Map source: QInghai Province website

In May 2008, the government of Qinghai Province launched the 10-year project to restore the ecological integrity of Lake Kokonor (called Tso Ngon by Tibetans, མཚོ་སྔོན་) region. Key environmental protection objectives include protection of wildlife biodiversity, wetlands and the grasslands of the region, which are believed to be threatened by global warming, desertification, human encroachment, over-grazing by yaks and sheep, and also by rodents and pests.

The project area is 30,000 square kilometers in size and comes with a promissory central government funding of $227 million. This project follows the example of a larger conservation project in the same province, the Three Rivers Headwaters Nature Reserve.

Measures to achieve project goals include planting trees and shrubs, controlling rodents and insect pests, and curtailing grazing on grasslands by fencing and "ecological migration" of nomadic herders living in the region.

Plantation of trees and shrubs sounds fine but I wonder what species of plants are being used and if these are sustainable considering local ecology.

Government measures to control rodents on the Tibetan Plateau have been controversial. The mainstream assumption of the government, supported by many local people, is that rodents, which have been found to be rapidly increasing in population, are causing grassland degradation and are competing for forage with livestock. The three main rodent species are plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae), voles (Microtus brandti), and zokors (Myospalax baileyi). The government has undertaken many poisoning campaigns to exterminate these little animals in the last few decades. The rodenticides not only killed target animals but also many other species of plants and animals.

In 1999, an important study was published in the journal of Animal Conservation by Andrew Smith and Mark Foggin that shattered the logic of this poisoning campaign. Smith and Foggin argued that the plateau pikas are a "keystone species" which provide essential ecosystem functions to the Tibetan Plateau. The animals are a major food source for wolves, brown bears and most of the large predatory birds of the plateau. The scientists also found that many nesting bird species use pika burrows as shelters for breeding. The increasing number of rodents on the Tibetan Plateau are a symptom, not a cause of environmental degradation.

Another important study by a team of scientists found that grazing is not the cause of rangeland degradation on the Tibetan Plateau but climate warming. Research experiments found that simulated grazing actually dampens loss of plant species diversity caused by climate warming. The team of scientists have also published an argument in the journal Ecological Applications.

There are a ton of studies that have looked at the implications of fencing of Tibetan rangelands. My advisor Tsering Shakya once told me that the academic/scientific consensus on the topic clearly show that the policy has been a disastrous failure. I have read reports from wildlife scientists such as the one here by noted biologist George Schaller who argue that fencing causes problems for many endangered animals such as the Tibetan Antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) and the Tibetan gazelle (Procapra przewalskii). These animals and the local people prefer their grasslands to be open without fences. This study, for example, indicates fencing actually exacerbating overgrazing and causing health problems among Tibetan pastoralist communities.

I think the most important perspective on this topic would be those of the nomads who are directly affected by the projects. My colleagues at TEAM will be interviewing some of these people. If anyone else have any information or insights to share, please let me know.

Before I end this blog, I want to mention about two earlier posts relating to the project area. One was about a government edict which admits there is a problem of illegal gold mining in the region. We also translated a news story about skirmish between nomads and fisherman near the lake.
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Accuracy of Three Rivers Headwaters Nature Reserve Map

A friend just forwarded a link to Chinese language maps of Three Rivers Headwaters (San Jiang Yuan) Nature Reserve and "Qinghai Lake eco-environmental protection and comprehensive management project". This link is from the official website of Qinghai Province. Here is its SNNR map.




I am pleased to say that the map of SNNR confirms the accuracy of the SNNR map that was released on this blog last month (February 2009). Of course, our map provides more details, including demarcation of zoning systems within the subareas of the reserve.

I will post a separate blog about the map of Qinghai Lake eco-environmental protection and comprehensive management project" since this is the first time I am writing about it.
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Pakistan shocked at Chinese dam on Indus River

I have heard word-of-mouth stories of a Chinese dam on the Tibetan headwaters of Indus River (Senge Khabab, སེང་གེ་ཁ་འབབ་) but never saw anything published about it. A news story from Pakistan confirmed the rumour today. I tried to locate the spot where the dam could be using Tibetan Himalayan Digital Library's handy mapping tool. Unfortunately the satellite imagery is not clear on close-up and the mapping system won't show rivers. So I drew a VERY rough blue line (took me few seconds on PhotoShop) on the map to show Indus headwaters. The dam is located near Ngari (མངའ་རིས་, called "Ali" in Chinese) township, circled in black, in Gar (སྒར་) county in Western Tibet.




I then checked on Google Earth, and guess what, the dam is clearly visible there. See a screen shot of GE image below. The dam is situated at 32 degrees and 31 minutes North latitude, and 80 degrees and 10 minutes East longitude. It is built on a tributary of Indus River, which flows from East to West joining the main (Indus) river at 32 degrees and 31 minutes North latitude, and 79 degrees and 42 minutes East longitude. The "city" on the left of the image is Ngari township.

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China and the freedom of information

Tibet has been shut off from the rest of the world for about a month now. Even Tibetan language websites and blogs have been shut down "for maintenance". So the rest of the world is essentially dependent on Chinese state run news agencies such as Xinhua and People's Daily for news. The government can churn whatever information they want as "factual news" now. Independent (and all foreign) journalists have no access to Tibet. Interestingly, Chinese state media has reported several stories linking Tibetans and bombs in the last two weeks. Although these reports haven't produced any evidence or photographs, foreign media is quick to put their own spin to the stories.

How about environmental news from the rest of China? Surely, there is more freedom there. However, censorship is also widespread. Here is an interesting story from China Digital Times:


Guangdong Nansha integrated oil refinery and petrochemical project is a major inititiative, involving Kuwait National Oil Company and Guangdong Province. The project’s potential impact on the environment became a concern of not only the residents of Guangzhou, but also neighboring Hong Kong. On March 4, 2009, Hong Kong legislator Yu Ruohui raised this question, and the Director of the Environmental Protection Department in Hong Kong replied, saying, “As far as we understand, the impact assessment of the proposed project has yet to be approved.”

However, in the last few days, an internal notice from Internet supervision departments was sent to all major Chinese news websites, translated by CDT’s Japhet Weeks.

“Environmental impact report for the Guangdong Nansha integrated oil refinery and petrochemical project”: All internet sites are prohibited from reproducing, commenting on, or discussing anything relating to the content of this report. Nor should it be discussed on blogs. Furthermore, blogs should set up keyword filtering to make sure the topic isn’t discussed. All websites are requested to strictly implement these rules.

《广东南沙炼油化工一体化项目环境影响报告书》将于近日公示，公示期间，各网站对有关内容不转载、不报道、不评论，论坛、博客不讨论并设置关键词过滤。请各网站务必严格执行。
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Grasslands of Bathang County unsafe for livestock due to mining

Bathang county (Tibetan: འབའ་ཐང་; Chinese: 巴塘县) gets its name from Tibetan, meaning the vast grassland where one can hear sheep everywhere. "Ba" refers to the sound made by sheep, and "Thang" means plains or grasslands (as in "Tsa-Thang"). However, Washington Post has published a story today that says that the grasslands are not safe for the sheep anymore due to gold and copper mining in the region. Here are two quotes from the article:

Their sheep die when they drink tainted water flowing from the mine, or lick crushed ore left on the hillside, villagers say. Now there are reports that the mine will open another cave this year in the upper grassland above Dorje's home. "We are trying to think of every possible way to stop this. If we have to, we will carry stones and wood sticks to block the entrance as soon as [the miners] begin to dig again," he said.

"Last year, eight of my yaks died. They just fell down, foaming at the mouth," said Gompo Dondrup, a nomad and farmer in Bathang county in western Sichuan province, whose family has lost more than 60 percent of its herd. "At first we didn't know why. Later, the veterinarians told us it was because of the mine. We protested, but the mine continues to operate. They said they gave compensation to the government, but the government never gave us any."

Read the full Washington Post article here .
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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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Qinghai edict on the ban on mining of gold powder

While going through Tibetan language blogs, I came across a notice issued by the Qinghai Provincial Government on the ban on mining of gold powder. The blog was posted on January 30, 2009. I don't know when the edict was issued, nor have I seen the text of the original Chinese source. Some readers may still find the document of interest, so here are screen shots of the original document (only) along with an English translation of the text. This document proves that the government acknowledges there are mining problems in Qinghai, specifically in Drito and Zato counties of the Three Rivers Headwaters Nature Reserve. It is also interesting to note that mining (or collecting) gold powder is not banned completely. The ban is mainly for miners from other provinces.





Edict on the Ban on Mining of Gold Powder issued by the Qinghai Provincial Government

The ecological system of the Tibetan plateau is so fragile that it cannot be restored after it has been damaged. Therefore, in order to protect the natural environment around the [headwaters] of the three rivers and maintain sustainable development in the three river basins, the provincial Government of Qinghai has issued [the following] edict.

One
All the mining areas in the Dokha and Kyikha valleys of Padma county and Dzatod in the Khridu county run by prospectors from outside provinces should be closed immediately.

Two
The Forestry Department, Environmental Protection Bureau, Department of Animal Husbandry and Legal Department in different levels in the region must launch a campaign on the protection of the natural resources and promote awareness of environmental protection among the local people.

Three
All the local governments [are responsible for posting billboards about] environment protection along the highways.

Four
Town governments are responsible for preventing its people from digging gold powder and for providing advice and helping them to establish certain environmental protection regulations in accordance with their cultural tradition.

Five
Different levels of government in the region should actively engage with the protection task and not only lead the local people toward the path of economic development but also encourage them to enhance their living standard through greater agricultural and pastoral production as well as other small industries.

Six
Mining areas in Dokha and Kyikha of Padma County and Dzatod in Khritod county should be managed according to the environmental protection law designated by the regional government.

Seven
The legal branch offices responsible for natural resource management at different levels of government in the region must impose rules on the prevention of digging natural resources and those who violate the law should be punished according to the Management Regulation of Natural Resources of Qinghai Province and other regulations issued by the government.
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Dams on Tibetan areas of Brahmaputra and Mekong

[photo: wikipedia]

1. Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo), one of the last two free-flowing, undammed major rivers in Tibet, AND China, is also being dammed. Salween is the other major river that environmentalists tried to save from dam projects but to no avail. A China Daily story yesterday acknowledged that the "Zangmu Water Power Station" is on the main stream of the middle reaches of Brahmaputra, at dZam (རྫམ་) township. Sources tell me that there are five dams planned in this section of the river, and construction has been going on since 2006. This means there is no undammed major river in China and Tibet. The installed capacity of 'Zangmu Water Power Station' will be 510 MW (85 MW x 6 turbines). The project is located in Lhokha (Shannan) Prefecture of Tibet Autonomous Region, about 140 km southeast from Lhasa, between Zangs-Ri (Sangri) and rGya-Tsha (Jiacha) counties. Construction work on the first dam is likely to start soon. Huaneng, China's top power company, is backing the financing of the project and, Gezhouba, one of China's biggest dam construction companies, will build the project. This news should be particularly alarming for people living in downstream countries of India and Bangladesh. China is likely to approve more dam projects on the Brahmaputra this year.

2. In March 2007, Tibet Environment Bureau approved another five dams on the headwaters of Mekong (Zachu) in Chamdo Prefecture. China has already built several dams on the Mekong in Yunnan Province that have impacted downsteam ecology and livelihoods. The Mekong River flows into Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. This time, however, authorities have released the Environmental Impact Assessment report of the Zachu dams. As far as I know, this is the first time China has released EIA of dam projects on transboundary rivers.

The total installed capacity of the five dams will be 510 MW. The names of five dams are (all in Chinese): Dhongzhong, Guoduo, Xiangda, Ruxi and Linchang. These dams are located close to each other, around 31 degree North latitude and 97 degree East longitude. This is a low population rural area at an altitude about 4,335 meters (14,225 feet). Dhongzhong and Guoduo are located near Tsher-dBad (ཚེར་དབད་ / Cerwai' in Pinyin) township, Xiangda is located near Re-Thong (རེ་ཐོང་ / Retong in Pinyin) township. Ruxi and Linchang are located near Ru-bZhi (རུ་བཞི་ / Ruxi in Pinyin) township.
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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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Settlement vs. Resettlement

Some people responded to my last blog post with more information that I want to share with readers.

1. There are many kinds of housing projects that are being built for herders and farmers on the Tibetan Plateau. So unless someone cross-checks the numbers on the ground, it is difficult to figure out exactly how many herders have been resettled.

2. A couple of friends (Thanks again!) brought to my attention that the Reuters article discussed in my previous blog post talks about 'settlement' (ding ju) of herders, which is different from 'resettlement' (yi min) of herders. Settlement likely means simply building permanent houses at the winter pastures where villagers live -- which is not in any way as serious as "resettlement" or "ecological migration" where herders are removed to new areas as in the case of the Three Rivers Headwaters Nature Reserve.

4. Speaking of 'ecological migration,' What happens to all the yaks when the nomads are forced to resettle? It seems like many sell the animals as they are suppose to do, while others leave their yaks with relatives for keeps. I don't have any credible or interesting story about the fate of these animals. Please share any information you may have on this issue.

3. Some housing projects are simply replacing traditional mud houses with houses made of bricks. This project is more prevalent in Tibet Autonomous Region, where, in total, 860,000 farmers and herders from 170,000 families have moved into the new houses by the end of 2008. According to this Xinhua article , "another 312,000 farmers and herders from 57,800 families moved from shanty homes into new solid brick houses in Tibet [Autonomous Region] this year under a government-subsidized housing project aimed at improving living conditions."

As much as I think this is a tragedy in terms of losing traditional architecture (its cheaper, locally more suitable, environmentally more sustainable, better insulation for Tibet's cold winter, aesthetically more beautiful, etc, etc.), these brick houses are popular among Tibetans. I have seen this trend among Tibetan Buddhist farmers of Ladakh and in Spiti Valley in India. While many of these farmers tend to prefer houses made of bricks with corrugated tin roof as modern and reject their traditional mud houses as pre-modern, many local leaders are clearly concerned about implication of these changes.


[Traditional Tibetan architecture in the Western Himalayas. Photo: Tashi Tsering]
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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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5.8 billion US$ to displace more Tibetans

I re-subscribed to TIN updates yesterday and this morning I saw their latest news digest in my inbox. The updates were full of grim news: more protests and arrests on the Tibetan Plateau. Yesterday I learned that one of my best friends is unable to enter Kham (Eastern Tibet) from Chengdu. He may have to return to North America and postpone his work related to hospital and school building projects in the region. Authorities have closed off (many parts of) Eastern Tibet to ensure "stability" apparently because "March 10" is around the corner.

There was a different news piece that struck me. It directly relates to the questions I raised in an earlier post. The government has allotted 5.8 billion US$ to displace even more Tibetans in the name of environmental protection. How I wish people paid more attention and probed deeper into these issues. Here's the brief update from TIN:

"Tibetan nomads, farmers may be losers in China's ecology protection plan (Xinhua) More Tibetans are set to be displaced, losing their ancestral land, homes and way of life, as China spends 20 billion yuan (UK4.1 bn; $US5.8 bn; EUR4.5) during its eleventh Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010) to build a State Ecological Safe Shelter Zone on the Tibetan Plateau, reported state-run Xinhua. "Problems such as grassland degradation, land desertification, glacier meltdown, soil erosion etc. are affecting the whole ecological environment in China" because of the deterioration of the environment on the plateau, it said. Three shelter zones will be constructed from 2008 to 2030. The report said measures will include returning grazing land to pastures, controlling rodent and pest damage, standardising construction of five regional nature reserves and rural biogas construction."

On a different note, the High Peaks Pure Earth blog has an interesting story about Angry Tibetan Netizens over continued use animal fur by Tibetans on their ceremonial dresses.

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Tibetan Language Maps of Three Rivers Headwaters region

A kind supporter of Tibetan Plateau donated some photos of Tibetan maps showing Yushu, Nangchen, Drito, Zato, Chumarleb and other areas of SNNR. The maps were published by Tibet Information Network, a reproduction of "བོད་རང་སྐྱོངས་སྲིད་འཛིན་ས་ཁུལ་གྱི་ས་བཀྲ་", a set of nine maps made by the Chinese authorities in 1981. Since Tibetan language maps are quite rare, I hope these will be of interest to many people, especially Tibetan readers.














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Update on SNNR map and related China Beat Blog article

Update: SNNR subarea #7 Zhaling-Eling Hu (མཚོ་སྐྱ་རིང་སྔོ་རིང་)་extends into Dulan County, Haixi Mongolian & Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. This news wasn't too surprising as mentioned in SNNR Map Description that SNNR subarea boundaries cross administrative borders. Map in previous blog entry has been updated. We are working on further improvements.

An excellent article related to SNNR on The China Beat blog by Ken Pomeranz . Here's an excerpt focusing on Tibet's water:

[The] state has chosen a massive three-pronged effort to move water from South to North China – by far the biggest construction project in history, if it is completed. Part of the Eastern section began operating this year, and the Central section is also underway (though the December 31Wall Street Journal reported a delay due to environmental concerns). The big story in the long run, however is the Western line [in SNNR], which will tap the enormous water resources of China’s far Southwest – Tibet alone has over 30 percent of China’s fresh water supply, most of it coming from the annual run-off of some water from Himalayan glaciers. (This is an aspect of the Tibet question one rarely hears about, but rest assured that all the engineers in China’s leadership, including Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, are very much aware of it. Tibetans, meanwhile, not only see a precious resource going elsewhere when their water is tapped: they regard many of the lakes and rivers to be dammed as sacred.) The engineering challenges in this mountainous region are enormous, but so are the potential rewards, both in water supply and in hydropower – the electricity water can generate is directly proportional to how far it falls into the turbines, and the Yangzi, for instance, completes 90 percent of its drop to the sea before it even enters China proper. The risks, as our two stories make clear, are social and political as well as environmental…

Call the two news stories the “double glacier shock.” On December 9, Asia Times Online reported that China was planning to go ahead with a major hydroelectric dam and water diversion scheme on the great bend of the Yarlong Tsangpo River in Tibet. The hydro project is planned to generate 40,000 megawatts – almost twice as much as Three Gorges. But the water which this dam would impound and turn northwards currently flows south into Assam to form the Brahmaputra, which in turn joins the Ganges to form the world’s largest river delta, supplying much of the water to a basin with over 300 million inhabitants. While South Asians have worried for some time that China might divert this river, the Chinese government had denied any such intentions, reportedly doing so again when Hu Jintao visited New Delhi in 2006. But when Indian Prime Minister Singh raised the issue again during his January, 2008 visit to Beijing, the tone had changed, with Wen Jiabao supposedly replying that water scarcity is a threat to the “very survival of the Chinese nation,” and providing no assurances. And so it is – not only for China, but for its neighbors. Most of Asia’s major rivers – the Yellow, the Yangzi, the Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Sutlej, and Indus – draw on the glaciers of the Himalayas, and all of these except the Ganges have their source on the Chinese side of the border. Forty-seven percent of the world’s people, from Karachi to Tianjin, draw on those rivers.
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Mapping Three Rivers Headwaters Nature Reserve (Updated)

In May 2000, China declared the establishment of its largest nature reserve on the Tibetan Plateau: the San Jiang Yuan (Three Rivers Headwaters) National Nature Reserve (SNNR). Since then, China’s plans to protect the headwaters of the Yangtze (Drichu), Yellow (Machu) and Mekong (Zachu) rivers have received a lot of media attention. This recent BBC story, for example, highlights the relocation of '100,000 nomadic Tibetans.' However, there is very little information about the specifics of the plan in all of the published sources that I have come across. There isn't a single definitive map of SNNR. So I collaborated with some colleagues, who wish to remain anonymous, and prepared a new map of SNNR area using information compiled over the last few months. I am pleased to release the map here.

[Click on the image to view/download this (updated: Feb 20, 09) copyright free map]

This map is the most accurate and informative publicly available document of its kind on SNNR to date. It throws new light to the debates about SNNR and other nature reserves on the Tibetan Plateau. We have taken every possible step to ensure its accuracy, including crosschecks between different maps, reviews by experts who work in the region, and consultations with people from this region. Information we are currently doubtful are mentioned in a detailed description that should be used alongside with the map. There are no copyrights to the map, so please feel free to use it for educational purposes. We hope to produce better maps and reports on SNNR both in English and Tibetan languages in the future.

[Counties covered under the Three Rivers Headwaters Region. Maps are copyright free.]

To me, the establishment of SNNR and other nature reserve parks in Tibet raises many questions. According to a Chinese white paper on the environment of Tibet [Autonomous Region (TAR)], the government has established 70 nature reserve parks in the region between 1980 and 2003. The white paper states that 33.4% of TAR’s total land area is covered by nature reserves and that the government will increase the number and size of nature reserves in the region. So the first set of questions, leaving aside the rhetoric of conservation, pertains to the underlying economic and strategic purpose of establishing nature reserves in Tibet. What are the political and economic goals of establishing so many parks in Tibet?

The second set of questions concerns the politics behind scientific discourses of conservation and the relevance of "protected" parks in Tibet. Protection of mountains and grasslands from the nomads and their yaks? The ideas behind nature reserve parks that are applied in Tibet are based on Western ideas and approaches. How appropriate are these in Tibet? Why do governments and scientists continue to treat indigenous perspectives as irrelevant and unsophisticated into the 21st century? After all, these nomads and pastoralists have a proven capacity in maintaining the integrity of their local ecosystem. Their livelihoods depend on it and they have been living there for thousands of years!

I have pointed out elsewhere that the current top-down management approach of exclusion is unfit for nature reserve management in Tibet and developing countries in general. As Dr. Andreas Schild, the Director General of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development has said in a recent interview that “Mountains without mountain people will be not sustainable.” Surely enough, Tibetan nomads and pastoralists who have been uprooted from their ancestral lands and made to live in concrete houses (see photos below) are facing serious economic and social problems that many have chosen to return to their traditional lifestyle.

[San Jiang Yuan resettlement housing blocks]

My final set of questions is about China’s commitment to environmental protection in relation to its development goals. Does the creation of nature reserves with new laws and regulations lead to environmental protection? How strong are China’s environmental laws? It appears that these laws exist mostly on paper and very little in practice. 

The Government has allowed several mining companies to operate in the "protected" area, including a Canadian company in one of the SNNR wetland conservation subarea of Chumarleb (Chu dMar Leb) county. The Three Rivers Headwaters area is also the site for a major river diversion project which involves construction of least three large dams (wall height of the dams are 175 meters, 295m, and 305m!) on the headwaters of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, connected by a series of several hundred kilometres long tunnels through a mountain range that separate the two rivers.

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A Call for Help to Stop Logging in Khyung mChu

Here is an English translation of another Tibetan language blog post related to Tibet's environment. This post is a letter providing news and calling for help to stop the deforestation, which, according to the letter, has been secretly going on for over a decade in Khyung mChu township area of Hongyuan county in North-Western Sichuan's Ngawa Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (see map below). Although posted on the blog of Tibetan writer and singer Jamyang Kyi, the letter is written by a person named Mindruk. Jamyang Kyi says she is merely posting it on her blog as per the author's request.




[begin translation]

Dear Readers:

As everybody knows, protecting the environment is protecting one's own life and prolonging the future livelihood base for humanity. Therefore, we ask how can we protect the earth and how can we ensure future security and benefit existing livelihoods.

However, at the present time, in some places, pristine areas with beautiful hills and forest are being extensively destroyed and harmed for economic benefits. Major environmental pollution and destruction are taking place in the name of regional development and construction of suburbs. For example, in Zangkar [Zangs dKar] area of Kyungchu [Khyung mChu] (Hongyuan) county, tremendous destruction is being done to the land by gold mining activities. The residents of the area repeatedly complained to the government and made every effort to stop the mining. Some local monks even left the area in protest. Their efforts were able to stop the mining activities but only for a brief time.

I wanted to write about this issue for a long time, but I was unable to do so for some time due to other reasons. Zangs dKar is a beautiful region, blessed with ten natural qualities of soil, pristine natural forest with streams flowing down from the rocky mountain, with all kinds of life forms making the place their habitat. One third of the region used to be covered by forests. However, today, mining and logging activities have inflicted irrecoverable environmental damage upon the region. In this region there is a place called Thang Lung, which is rich in natural forests. Though some of the forests are under national level protection, the majority of the forests are under regional level protection. However, local authorities and offices do not have the power to independently cut down the forests.

According to the State Forest Protection Law, logging and other activities in the forests are not allowed unless one obtains necessary permits from the provincial, prefectural and city (local) level offices of the Department of Forest. The law also clearly outlines that consumption of forest resources must be lower than the natural growth rate of the forest. The State Forest Protection Law of the People's Republic of China clearly states that one must undertake verification with concerned local authorities and obtain the permit from the State authority for any kind of activities in the forests. In the last twelve years, large scale deforestation and widespread grassland degradation have taken place. Today, this area is so barren and horrific that people do not dare to catch a glimpse of the site.

According to the testimony of local people, these irrecoverable environmental damages are caused by the local and regional Forest Department offices. Every year, between Spring and Summer seasons, the local forest department undertakes extensive logging activities. They undertake these activities deep in the forest so that the public will not notice their actions. During the festive seasons when many people travel through the area, they halt the logging activities so that public will not know. Moreover, to fool the public, they have intentionally kept the forests near highway and bridges in its natural form. It is clear from their actions they are not in accordance with the law.

The local people and their representatives have repeatedly lodged complaints about the destruction of forests, and requested the authorities to stop these activities. However, authorities have never heeded these calls. This area is rich in old growth forest, it has all kinds of trees like pine, Juniper, fir and so on. Some of the old growth are believed to be over one thousand years old.

Just like scavenging vultures driven by an insatiable desire to eat flesh, they have been destroying the region's ancient forests without the slightest concern for many years. This is a very tragic scene. The place looks like a man without any clothes, standing naked to be humiliated. People believe it is because of this destruction and the resultant imbalance of the four elements that there were disasters like earthquake and landslides in the region. In order to protect Zangs dKar from this kind of continued disaster, I request my kind brothers and sisters, officials and journalists to help save the region from destruction.

Thank you.

From Mindruk, 2009/01/16.

Note: As requested by the writer of the article, I have put it as blog on this site.

[end translation]

Translated by Thinley Norbu of www.ecotibet.org
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Village headman's home attacked

Following is translation of a Tibetan language blog entry about "An incident near Kokonor Lake (News)" that was posted on January 22, 2009. Lake Kokonor is called མཚོ་སྔོན་ (Tso Ngon) in Tibetan. Tso Ngon means Blue Lake. The Chinese also has the same name in their language, which is Qinghai for Blue Lake. Lake Kokonor is the largest lake on the Tibetan Plateau (and in China). Reports indicate that the lake is shrinking due to climate warming, desertification and human encroachment.

[Photo courtesy of Wikipedia]

"An incident near Kokonor Lake (news)"
by Samten la



In recent years, an increasing number of fishermen around Amdo's Lake Kokonor have been catching a lot of fish and occupying pastures around the lake which belong to the region's nomads. So recently, the headman of Mogra village told the fishermen that they cannot fish here anymore and must immediately go away from the region. That night around seven to eight men, carrying different weapons with their faces covered in black cloth, came to the headman's house. Luckily the headman was not home that night. But the masked men severely assaulted the whole family and damaged their motorcycle and car and ran away. Next day on hearing the news, more than a thousand local people gathered and called for the fishing activity to stop immediately and asked them to go back. When a fight was about to break, the police came and arrested the suspects who came to kill the headman and the local nomads went home.

[end]
Translated by Yungdung Nyima of www.ecotibet.org
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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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Commercialization of Tibetan medicine in China

Below are two brief articles that were published in Trin-Gyi-Pho-Nya [སྤྲིན་གྱི་ཕོ་ཉ་]. The first article by Tashi Tsering expresses concerns for the social, environmental and the long-term sustainability implications of the Tibetan medical system due to its commercialization. In response, Tsultrim Gyaltsen provides some thoughtful suggestions on dealing with the situation, including payment of royalty fees for using plants from the Tibetan environment and the necessity of regulation being in the hands of people who possess the knowledge system.

Designing Modernization To Promote Traditional Tibetan Medicine
By Tashi Tsering
Source: Trin-Gyi-Pho-Nya [སྤྲིན་གྱི་ཕོ་ཉ་], Tibet Justice Center, Vol. 2, No. 6, January 2005.

Tibetan medicine has become a lucrative business yielding million-dollar profits to large pharmaceutical companies in China. Various new policies have been instituted to standardize the production and distribution of Tibetan medicinal products, mainly for commercial and bureaucratic reasons. These new policies are proving to be a debilitating legal framework for the persevering practitioners of the unique Buddhist healing tradition.

According to a study, there are 75 pharmaceutical companies dealing with Tibetan medicine in various corners of the Tibetan Plateau, out of which 30 are run by Tibetans. While the spiritual guidelines of making medicine according to the Buddhist medical texts – Gyushi – are increasingly compromised with the onslaught of industrial production of Tibetan medicine, an interesting issue that comes to point is regarding the efficacy of the healing powers of these medicine. “Amchi (Tibetan doctor) makes medicine to heal the patient but the pharmaceutical companies make medicine to reap profits,” explained a concerned Tibetan doctor from Amdo (now incorporated in Qinghai Province).

New government regulations require all Tibetan doctors to go through a cumbersome registration process. When approved, they are allowed to sell medicine, but only to their private patients. Rinchen-Tsotru-Dashel, a pill that normally costs 20 yuan, is now being sold for 50 yuan by pharmaceutical companies.

“Soon, we will be barred from producing these medicines as Chinese companies are gaining patents over different Tibetan medicines,” said the doctor. To the Tibetan people, the long-term issues involve the survival of this centuries-old healing tradition, as well as the access members of the community have to the tradition. Surely the ultimate subversion of the Tibetan medical tradition would be if the Tibetan people themselves were forced to purchase medicine invented by their own culture and made from their own land, at a higher cost, and from a Chinese company because of a contrived patent system set-up to benefit large industries to the exclusion of local practitioners.

Commercialization of Tibetan medicine also has environmental consequences. Most of Tibetan medicine’s plant ingredients are rare herbs that are endemic to Tibet’s high mountains. Currently, there are no mechanisms in place to check indiscriminate harvesting of these species. The commercialization of Tibetan medicine has dramatically increased demands for these ingredients, resulting in the widespread, unsustainable removal of certain plant species. Utpal Ngonpo (Blue poppy, meconopsis sp.), marketed as a cure for Hepatitis B by Chinese companies, is one such rare plant species that the Tibetan doctor fears might not survive if the current rate of harvesting continues.

The challenge for policy makers in China is not just the integration Tibetan medicine into the mainstream economy and modes of production, but also the preservation and promotion of a unique tradition of medical knowledge and expertise. While greater access to, and availability of, Tibetan medicine is a worthwhile goal, it will mean very little if the tradition which produced it is swallowed up and destroyed in the process.
===================================

Response from Tsultrim Tsering Gyaltsen
Source: Trin-Gyi-Pho-Nya [སྤྲིན་གྱི་ཕོ་ཉ་], Tibet Justice Center, Vol. 3, No. 1, March 2005.

Regarding your last editorial, "Designing Modernization To Promote Traditional Tibetan Medicine," there are some issues that should be given consideration for all parties involved at the practice or production level in "traditional" Tibetan medicine.

The plants and substances used in Tibetan medicine are also part of the fabric of life particular to Tibet and therefore a part of the heritage of the Tibetan people. The fact is that companies selling Tibetan medicines are not only profiting from the knowledge of Tibetan medicine but are also using the actual plants integral to the wholeness of the land. In consequence, I suggest the following two conditions.

1) There should be strict limits established regarding the sustainable harvest of these plants and that all companies, in some fair way, should share in that supply and those restrictions.
2) Non-Tibetan owned companies should pay a royalty fee for using plants from the Tibetan environment. When companies substitute foreign plants for native Tibetan plants then the resultant production should not be called Tibetan medicine.

Such measures could insure benefit for future generations in three ways.

1) The integrity of the environment would be assured by mitigating potential environmental damage from overuse.
2) They would create an economic basis for the enforcement of those regulations.
3) There would be an ongoing source of funds to support further research and training in all aspects of the tradition of Tibetan medicine.

Furthermore regarding the production of medicines the traditional texts often specify many conditions under which the ingredients for the medicines were to be collected, handled, and prepared. The texts may state, for example, that certain plants are to be collected only in certain months because their medicinal properties are then active, or that some medicines were only collected from north facing slopes, or in a certain season, or at night, or during a certain phase of the moon. These are some of the many subtleties that, in combination, make Tibetan medicine effective. It does not suffice for a manufacturer to have a list of ingredients that can be haphazardly combined to hopefully produce a positive result.

If what is called a "Tibetan medicine" is in the sole judgment of physicians, fully qualified in the Tibetan medical tradition, to be found to be of diminished quality, efficacy, or that it has a negative consequence for the environment as a result of its production, that product and its producer should be made to conform to traditional practice or the production should be discontinued.

Furthermore if the Tibetan medical system is to be regulated it should be done from the bottom up, not the top down. It must be put under the supervision of those who are intimately familiar with the traditional training and all of the prerequisites for the qualification of doctors and the production of the medicines. In such case, there should be assembled a congress of knowledgeable and qualified Tibetan doctors to establish the requirements for the formulation of the compounds used and the practice of the traditional medicine.

Regulation should come only from within the ranks of those who have an intimate understanding of the tradition and not by governmental officials or profit driven companies who know little or nothing of its nuances. The members of that congress should provide certification for a qualifying product that the product has been produced in accord with tradition and is an "authentic Tibetan medicine." This is the only way to insure the continued efficacy of the medicines and to prevent the bastardization of the Tibetan medical tradition for profit.

With this approach the twin goals of establishing standards of practice and production would be accomplished along with the guarantee of the preservation of all of the many nuances of understanding that are critical to the authentic continuation of the tradition.

A final point is that all names traditionally used for medicines should be part of the public domain. They should be available for use to anyone who produces medicines in accord with the above standards. They must not belong to any single company who could disenfranchise other legitimate producers of traditional medicines simply by controlling the rights to the names.
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