Michael Zhao, a graduate of the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, is a documentary producer at the AsiaSociety's Center on U.S. -China Relations. Orville Schell, former dean of the U. C. Berkeley Graduate School ofJournalism,is currently the Arthur Ross Director of the Asia Society's Center on U.S. -China Relations and author of 14 hooks, nine ofwhich are ahout China.

Tibet: Plateau in PerilMichael Zhao and Orville Schell

Over the past six months, demonstrationsin Tibetan ethnic areas of China and the on-going negotiations between representativesof the Dalai Lama in India and Chinese gov-ernment officials in Beijing have givenTibet a higher profile than at any time overthe last decade. But beyond politics, there isanother even more important crisis brewingon the Tibetan Plateau: a looming environ-mental meltdown.

Over the next 25 years the "roof of theworld," where most of Asia's great riversfind their headwaters, could well deliveran ecological crisis to Asia's billions of peo-ple. With glaciers melting away faster thananyone predicted, the people of China,South Asia, and Southeast Asia are con-fronting the prospect of diminished waterresources. For, while irregular river flowsmay be accelerated in the near term by themelting ice, the long-term flows would bediminished.

We've already seen early signs on theTibetan Plateau of the effects of warming-glaciers retreating, permafrost thawing,grassland degradation, and desertification.There's real reason to heed these signalsas grave warnings of far more disturbingconsequences to come that will have aglobal significance over the next severaldecades.

China triumphantly capped the success-ful Beijing Olympic Games by winning themost gold medals of any country. But other-wise 2008 hasn't been an entirely lucky yearfor the rising world power. China registereda record number of earthquakes, from theheadline-making Sichuan Province monsterjolt that killed 80,000 people and triggered13,000 aftershocks, to smaller, more recenttremors in Tibet, Yunnan, and, yet again, inSichuan.

These temblors have one thing in com-mon: they struck around the edges of theTibetan Plateau, a tectonic plate that waspushed skyward millions of years ago by theupthrusting Indian subcontinent to formthe earth's highest mountain range, theHimalayas.

The Indian Plate, moving like a wedge,heaved the plateau to new heights andcontinues to slowly push the "roof of theworld" to the northeast, pressing down onthe Sichuan basin and other lower-elevationmountainous areas in China's midwest andsouthwest. It is these plate tectonics thathave caused the recent earthquakes.

Such seismological events can bedevastating. But climate change, elevatedtemperatures, melting glaciers, and chang-ing weather patterns on the Tibetan Plateaucould have much larger and more long-term

© 2008 World Policy Institute 171

ecological consequences than all potentialearthquakes combined.

Earthquakes are, of course, impossibleto predict with any accuracy. But our chang-ing climate is demonstrating its shiftingpatterns in many obvious ways. And on thisfabled miles-high plateau a clear warningbell is sounding what's in store for theplanet's future climate, if we only take thetime to listen. Melting glaciers and per-mafrost have over-fed rivers, lakes, andwetlands in some areas, producing morefrequent floods. In the northern part of theplateau, however, warmer temperatures anduneven rainfall distribution, coupled withovergrazing, have at the same time shrunkrivers and lakes, and parched dry previouslylush pastures, turning them into sand dunesor degraded lands. Moreover, scientists andenvironmentalists are increasingly concernedabout this once-isolated region's importanceto much of the rest of Asia. Yao Tandong,one of China's leading glaciologists, isconcerned that what is happening on theplateau could "ultimately bring about animmeasurable ecological crisis." Accordingto his research, glaciers in Asia's higher alti-tudes, mostly in China, have shrunk 7 per-cent in size over the last 40 years. And inthe next 25 years, they will melt even faster.

Asia's Water TowerChina and India today worry about theproblems of water pollution, but what ifthere's no water left to pollute in thedecades ahead?

Let's look at the scale of the problem weface. Simply put, the Tibetan Plateau's envi-ronmental crisis is a 2-billion-person prob-lem. With a population of 4 billion, Asia ishome to 60 percent of humanity. As halfof the Asian population rely on the mightyriver systems for water-for drinking, irri-gation for agriculture, industry, and hy-dropower-the dramatic shrinking of gla-ciers and permafrost will cause a degrada-

tion of the plateau's ecosystem and disruptreliable sources of downriver water supplyfor much of the continent.

Sitting at the geographical center ofAsia, the Tibetan Plateau, though inhabitedby no more than a few million largely no-madic people, is the size of Western Europe.Home to the Himalaya, Kunlun, and otherlofty mountain ranges, the plateau is thesource of most of the continent's great riversystems: the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong,Salween, Brahmaputra, Ganges, and Indus,to name the most important. The nearly60,000 square kilometers (14.8 millionacres) of glaciers in China, mostly on theTibetan Plateau, comprise the largest icemass outside the polar regions. It is theseglaciers that feed the headwaters of thesemighty rivers, that in turn serve as a majorwater source for 2 billion people at lowerelevations.

"You can think of these glaciers as a wa-ter bank account that's been built up overthousands of years," explains Dr. LonnieThompson, a professor of glaciology at OhioState University at Columbus who has doneresearch on the Tibetan Plateau for manyyears. "During the twentieth century and inthe beginning of the twenty-first century,we have been taking more out of that bankaccount than we have put in," Thompsonobserves. "We know that, long-term.. .thatbank account will be gone."

The Quelccaya Ice Cap, on the AndesMountains in Peru where Thompson hasdrilled ice cores since 1978, has lost 25 per-cent of its size in 30 years. The melt ratehas gone up ten-fold in the past threedecades, receding from six meters per yearin the first 15 years to 60 meters a year inthe last 15, according to measurementstaken by Thompson's team.

The experience of researching and moni-toring glaciers in Tibet, Peru, and other re-gions has made Thompson feel like a doctorseeing ill patients getting sicker year after

WORLD POLICYJOURNAL * FALL 2008172

-,

*,.L• _

Bottoms up. The source of drinking water for two billion people.

year. The situation has become so severethat Peru, once 80 percent dependent onhydropower, has now had to build coal-firedplants to make up for the shortfall in itspower output during the dry season, whenits hydroelectric turbines run as low as 20percent of capacity. Everywhere Thompsongoes, he finds glaciers shrinking, retreating,and thinning at faster rates than he origi-nally imagined.

On Mt. Naimona'nyi, 6,100 metersabove sea level in the Himalayas, whereThompson's team of American and Chinesecolleagues drilled an ice core, they expectedto find two tell-tale radiation-tainted layerscreated by American and Russian nucleartests in 1951 and 1962. Instead, they dis-covered that the glaciers showed no netice-mass accumulation at all from snowfallduring the past half-century.

Yan Tandong worked in Thompson's labin Columbus, Ohio, in the late 1980s. Hewent on to found the Institute of Tibetan

Plateau Research at the Chinese Academy ofSciences. A 33-year veteran of glacial stud-ies, he is known affectionately as "UncleIceman." Thanks to mounting attention toglobal warming and increasingly generousgovernment investments in the field ofglaciology, Yan is now busy overseeing asmall army of researchers who are trying tounderstand better the full environmentalconsequences of a warming plateau. Theyare also trying to understand not only itscauses, but to figure out how to deal withthe problem over the next quarter centuryand beyond.

Yao told China's state-run Xinhua NewsAgency, "The retreat over the last 30 yearsequals the previous 200 years combined."He predicts that by 2100, half of China'sglaciers will have disappeared.

Yao and his colleagues have discoveredthat, until the first half of last century,China's glaciers were expanding. But during1950s and '60s, a large-scale retreat began.

Tibet: Plateau in Peril

4r

Ae

1.73

Then, during the late 1960s and into the'70s, research recorded a modest net accu-mulation as more glaciers expanded than re-treated. But entering the 1980s, glaciersagain started shrinking, this time withalarming rapidity. Since the 1990s, scien-tists have observed an "all out" retreat, withan overwhelming majority of glaciers begin-ning to shrink.

Each year, glaciers in China have beenmelting away at the equivalent rate of theentire annual runoff of the Yellow River, ac-cording to Yao. The Yellow River basin isthe "cradle of Chinese civilization," and hasnourished generations of Chinese for millen-nia. Now, however, its water flow has comeunder mounting pressure due to northernChina's growth in agriculture, urbanization,and of course, the altered watershed andthe shrinking runoff from glaciers on theTibetan Plateau. Indeed, some years theriver has stopped flowing long before it getsto the sea. In 1997, sections of the down-stream riverbed dried up entirely for 220days.

Yushu Prefecture in Qinghai Province,the "source region of three great rivers" orsanjiang yuan-the Yellow, Yangtze, andMekong-contributes, respectively, 49 per-cent, 25 percent, and 15 percent of water tothe three rivers, according to statistics fromthe Qinghai Province MeteorologicalAgency. Accelerated melting of glaciers intheir watershed, along with desertificationand growing evaporation rates as a result ofrising temperatures, have significantly cutback the water supply, particularly to theYellow River. According to a 2005 Green-peace report on the Yellow River source re-gion, some glaciers have retreated as muchas 76 percent in the past 30 years. The situ-ation has prompted the Chinese governmentto create a Weather Modification Depart-ment under the auspices of the ChineseAcademy of Meteorological Sciences-which employs some 37,000 people and

174

utilizes 7,100 anti-aircraft guns, 4,991rocket launchers, and roughly 30 aircraft tofire silver-iodide shells into cloud forma-tions in an attempt to induce more rainfalland increase runoff into lakes and rivers.

Standing at the first bridge across theYellow River in Madoi County, QinghaiProvince, a vast, high grassland area of theTibetan Plateau, one would never imaginethat the quiet, steady, and crystal clearstream-fed by drop after drop of centuries-old melted ice-could become one of Asia'sgreat rivers flowing down to the ocean. Ifcurrent trends hold, Chinese scientists saythat the Tibetan Plateau will lose two-thirdsof its glacial ice cover by 2100, withouteven factoring in what many scientists be-lieve is a probable accelerated warmingtrend. Because accelerated glacial retreat isproving more commonplace than scientistshad originally predicted, this seeminglydistant-future projection could very well ar-rive much sooner. Indeed, as Greenpeace hasreported, many glaciers in the region havebeen melting ten times faster than threecenturies ago.

The Yellow River is the foremost ofthe great rivers to experience a water over-draft from its upstream "bank account."Ironically, China may have to deal with dryrivers before it has even had a chance toclean up the "rivers running black."

And, the Yellow River is not unique.Not far from its headwaters are the sourcesof the Yangtze and Mekong. The "source re-gion of three great rivers," is such an impor-tant area that, a Qinghai newspaper report-ed, a recent provincial-sponsored joint studywith People's University in Beijing put aprice tag on its ecological value at 11.3 tril-lion yuan, or $1.65 trillion.

Warmer & SandierThe backdrop of the winding streams thatcomprise the tributaries of the Yellow Riverare snowcapped mountains in the far dis-

WORLD POLICY JOURNAL * FALL 2008

I

tance. This is typical plateau country, awild, rugged, and windy, open grasslanddotted with lakes and streams. The vast,pristine pastoral landscape is, however,showing signs of drying out, a trend thatis only predicted to accelerate over the next25 years.

Further out on the plateau, lakes andponds lay scattered everywhere across a mix-ture of fragile pastures and sandy dunes.Called the "Sea of Stars," this area boastsstunning natural beauty. Gusty winds arealmost always blowing, rippling throughhilltop prayer flags silhouetted againstpearl white clouds in azure blue skies. But"a closer look reveals"a scene that isn't solovely: golden sand Desertifichas encroached onslope after slope of in this regformerly lush pas- road are ntures and formingbeaches along a webof small ponds and lakes.

Hashi Tashi-Dorjie, a government offi-cial-turned environmentalist who is based inYushu Prefecture, has traveled through thesanjiang yuan for years. An orphan since ageeight, he grew up cadging meals from othernomad families living in yak hair tents onthe grassland. Hashi was smart and workedhard enough to get a decent education, ulti-mately becoming a teacher back in hishometown. Then, he and another friendjoined Jiesang Suonan-Dajie, also a teacher,to start a program to protect Tibetan an-telopes which were being hunted in the vastarea of Kekexili by poachers and illegal goldminers. Jiesang, the leader, was gunneddown by antelope poachers in early 1992,bringing the issue into the national spot-light. The incident also jolted Hashi intopursuing a political career.

After attending a Communist Partyschool, Hashi returned home to Yushu Pre-fecture and soon became the party secretary

of Suojia Township, and then a spokesmanfor the county of Zhidoi, which in Tibetanmeans the "source of the Yangtze." But sit-ting in his government offices, he couldn'tstop thinking about Jiesang, his mentor andthe environmental crusader in the wilder-ness. So in late 1990s, Hashi quit his gov-ernment job and, once again, began roamingthe Tibetan Plateau, doing environmentaleducation while working on preservationprojects.

"This is what everybody is talkingabout: desertification of the river source re-gion," Hashi says as he points to the sanddunes creeping down the hills. Ironically, he

ition has become so seriousion that whole sections ofow buried under sand.

is standing a few steps away from a bill-board swaying in the strong wind thatproudly advertises government investmentin projects to curb desertification as it takesover pasture lands. But despite these proj-ects, desertification has become so serious inthis region that in recent years Hashi's teamnow sometimes finds whole sections of roadburied under sand.

"The general trend is warmer and drier,"Hashi observes. Standing beside a barbed-wire fence put up by a pasture restorationprogram, he speaks appreciatively about thegovernment's investment and attention tothe ecological degradation of Qinghai'sgrasslands. But, he also points out that somegovernment policies are based on assump-tions that put more blame on the nomadsand their yak and sheep herds than on otherfactors-a critique he fears will only inten-sify during coming years.

In fact, Hashi believes that Tibetan no-mads who have been living on the plateau

Tibet: Plateau in Peril t75

for centuries play an integral part in main-taining the environmental health of thishighland ecosystem. Traditionally, nomadsmove their herds between different pasturesat varying altitudes during each season, thuspreventing overgrazing. But the new fences,designed to keep nomad families and theirherds within fixed perimeters can easily leadto overgrazing of a particular area, becausewithout rotation the pasture never gets achance to rest. Hashi has also witnessedmany instances where livestock, birds, andother animals have become caught in thebarbed wire fences erected by governmentprograms.

The government has also been handingout eight-year living allowances that en-courage nomads to move into towns and tomove their herds off environmentally fragilegrasslands. Such programs are based on apresumption that nomads are to blame, in alarge part at least, for the degradation ofthese grasslands. Hashi disagrees with suchan analysis. There are areas, he admits, thatused to be wilderness in the 1930s that havenow been severely damaged by overgrazing.But, he insists, it's difficult to make sweep-ing generalizations about the whole plateau.

The real problem, Hashi believes, is thathigher temperatures and changing rainfallpatterns have lead to desertification. "I don'tknow exactly what is causing the warmingand drying here," Hashi confesses, "but Ithink global climate change is the drivingforce behind all this."

Nomadic Livelihood Under ThreatThat the Tibetan Plateau-sometimes re-ferred to as the world's "third pole"-is oneof the early victims of planetary warming,is hardly news to glaciologists like Thomp-son and Yao. The plateau is extremely sensi-tive to a warming environment: elevatedtemperatures arrive five years sooner in thesehigh altitudes than at lower elevations. Overthe last few decades, the annual mean tem-

176

perature rose .33 degree centigrade perdecade on the plateau, while in central Chi-na it rose only .22 degree, according to Chi-na's national and provincial meteorologicalrecords. Some areas on the plateau, such asLhasa and Nagchu in northern Tibet, havewarmed even faster, with temperaturesrising .36 and .40 degree respectively. Theworld's average temperature, by way of com-parison, has only risen by about .13 degreeevery 10 years.

The difference between this so-called"third pole" and the Arctic and Antarctica isthat, while it may take decades for the melt-ing ice in the polar regions to raise sea levelsto heights that can threaten coastal commu-nities elsewhere, the disrupted weather pat-terns on the plateau have already begun toaffect the traditional way of life for millionsof Tibetans, and are on the precipice ofthreatening the lives of hundreds of millionsmore downstream users.

The quality of summer pastures is ofenormous importance to animal husbandryon the Tibetan Plateau, because during thewinter when the grass is covered by snow,livestock must survive by burning fat storedduring the short months when the pasture islush. However, if this cycle of feast andfamine (to which animals on the plateauhave uniquely adapted) is disrupted, it af-fects not only the animals, but the lives ofthe nomads themselves, whose subsistence isentirely dependent on their herds.

"In the past there was usually still snowon the ground when the rainy season came,says Suonan-Norbu, a former nomad whonow works for a state-owned herding farmin Suojia Township. During the summersolstice rainy season, or monsoon, the grasswould grow very rapidly. "At this time, nomatter how many yaks and sheep you had,"Suonan-Norbu explained, "there was endlessgrass for feed."

In the past, these rains came in the formof light sustained showers. Now, however,

WORLD POLICY JOURNAL * FALL 2008

It looks refreshing now, but for how long?

they come in the form of intermittent heavythunderstorms. When these downpours end,Suonan-Norbu says, the grass, which needsto be irrigated by slow steady rains, dries upand stops growing. "Now we have an un-even distribution of rainfall," he observes."The pattern doesn't follow the rules as weknew it."

Nomads' deep knowledge about rainfallpatterns and the grassland ecology on whichthey depend is born of experience. "Nomadsdon't look at the calendar," Hashi tells me."They look at the sun, moon, stars, andplants in making decisions about theirherding and lives." But in recent years,these regular seasonal events have started tobe upset. "Our knowledge about rain pat-terns and our common sense about how tolead our lives has become invalid," Hashiobserves sadly.

As a result, many nomads are giving upnomadic life and are moving into towns."As far as I can see, 30-40 percent of nomad

families around here no longer keep yaksand sheep," he says. "Some don't have ahorse either, because motorcycles have re-placed horses." With commercialization andurbanization, nomads are slowly abandoningtheir old pastoral way of life. If that aban-donment accelerates and millions more mo-torcycles, followed by cars and four-wheel-drive vehicles arrive on the grasslands, con-suming vastly more oil and other non-renewable resources, one can only imaginethe pressure on the environment over thenext quarter century.

"Should I choose to migrate to a townor city, I could get a government subsidy,"Suonan-Norbu says. "But if I leave nomadiclife, I can't do business. I'm illiterate anddon't have other skills." His lament isshared by many.

In Jeigu Prefecture, high on the TibetanPlateau, a visitor would have a hard timedetecting any traces of traditional pollution.The air is fresh and clear, the roads are rela-

Tibet: Plateau in Peril 177

tively well-maintained, and the sky is al-ways a crisp blue with clouds scuddingoverhead. But for how long? Local residentshave begun to notice a growing amount ofgarbage, sewage, and some occasional indus-trial waste around town. And they are farmore disturbed and perplexed by the factthat the mountains that surround the townof 23,000 are now rarely capped by snow.One teacher recalls that during his child-hood there used to be snow all year roundon the mountaintops.

Deserts, Permafrost, and MonsoonsJiegu residents have also started to experi-ence occasional dust storms. When onesmall storm hit in late September last yearthe sky didn't become fully brown as it of-ten does in the spring in Beijing and othernorthern cities. But given the town's dis-tance from and elevation above China's ma-jor deserts-Qaidam, Taklamakan, and longstretches of Inner Mongolia's Gobi-suchdust and winds were still bizarre, if notshocking. Indeed, even as far inland asLhasa, there have been reports of duststorms, which, last year, enveloped the cityas early as January. And as many weatherstations record ever higher temperatures,and as desertification spreads southwardover the next 25 years and beyond, thesedust events look destined to be more andmore commonplace.

In Madoi, desertification has alreadyaffected 13,000 square km (3.2 millionacres), or more than half of the county.According to satellite imaging, desertifica-tion was getting increasingly serious: from1987 to 2000, sand coverage grew by 300square km per year, eventually covering16,330 square km, or 65 percent of thecounty. The good news, though, is thatfrom 2000 to 2006, the total acreage ofdesertified areas in the region fell back tothe 1987 level, largely due to a governmentpolicy that caps total herd sizes based on

the health of the grassland and precipitationlevels.

But, Dr. Xue Xian, a visiting fellow atthe University of Oklahoma's glaciology de-partment and a researcher with the LanzhouInstitute of Cold and Arid Regions Environ-mental and Engineering Research of theChinese Academy of Sciences, has studiedthe causes of desertification in the YellowRiver headwater region. In a paper to bepublished by Geomorphology journal, sheand her colleagues argue, like Hashi,that climate change and permafrost thaw,not overgrazing, are the main causes of thearea's desertification.

Although herd control has helped re-store the pasture ecosystem a bit since 2000,the herd levels have continuously fallenfrom a peak of 650,000 head in 1980 toonly 200,000 head in 2005, about the samelevel as during the 1950s. But, even whenherd levels were plummeting from 1980-2000, desertified areas kept expanding. Acrucial factor seems to be the area's averagetemperature, which increased 1.5 degreescentigrade from 1953-2005, and con-tributed to the sinking and thinning of per-mafrost, a key to maintaining grasslandecology. If yak herd levels continue on thesame downward trajectory over the nextquarter century, barely 60,000 of theseunique creatures would be left in the area.

At high elevations, water that becomestabled above the permanently frozen layerof earth (permafrost) in the spring and sum-mer is a major irrigation source for above-ground vegetation. This accumulation ofwater also helps form the wetlands thathave long characterized the plateau. Ifthe top levels of permafrost layers melt,the frost layer gets thinner and lower,which results in the dropping of themoisture-rich layer-thus reducing thesub-soil water supply, triggering sinkingwater levels in lakes, wetlands, and a com-mensurate degradation of grass and other

WORLD POLICY JOURNAL - FALL 2008178

vegetation. This is precisely what's occur-ring on the plateau.

Xue finds that warming trends not onlythaw permafrost, reducing the water retain-ing capacity of grassland soil, but also expe-dites evaporation of water above ground,decreasing overall moisture. Thus the melt-ing of permafrost spells a drying trend, evenwithout dwindling precipitation.

Melting permafrost also destroys roadsand other kinds of infrastructure. Indeed,many sections of the roads on the plateauare now riddled withcracks and bumps.The Qinghai-Tibetrail line was also par-tially built on lands

reversed this trend and grew back to 4,318square km. The cause-whether meltingpermafrost and glaciers, grassland restora-tion, nomad relocation programs, or man-made rains-is difficult to know. But overthe next 25 years, we can scarcely count onthis overall trend reversing. The rivers thatflow into the lake, the largest inland waterbody in China, have themselves been disap-pearing and have been fed by decliningrunoffs. Half a century ago, People's Daily re-ported, there were 108 rivers feeding the

Scientists are worried that a warm-ing Tibetan Plateau will change the

that sit on top of per- aynamnic,mafrost, and its melt-ing could significantly damage the railbed.

In the southern plateau, melting per-mafrost has sometimes raised the watertable. China News Magazine reported that inNaqchu Prefecture in central Tibet, manynomad families who live near big lakes haverecently witnessed gushing spring watercoming out of the grassland, a phenomenonconnected with thawing of permafrost. Thelakes in some areas have been expandingyear after year, flooding old pastures andforcing families and their herds to relocateto higher ground.

To the south of the Tianshan Mountainin Xinjiang Province, melting glaciers arenow feeding 5.5 percent more water thanthe historical average into rivers, refreshingoasis towns and dried-up pastures. But thereare also more floods than before, and moreirregularity of flow. So, while some areas areenjoying more than plentiful water, otherregions are experiencing less. The ThreeRivers source region is one such place. Fur-ther north in Qinghai Province, the QinghaiLake has shrunk 700 square km over acentury, with its water level dropping by13 meters. Then, in recent years, the lake

; of the Asian monsoons.lake. Now there are only 40, and many of-ten flow only intermittently.

A changing plateau, with immediateimplications for local people and wildlife,is also a key research interest of concernedscientists, who are worried that a warmingplateau will change the dynamics of theAsian monsoon's circulatory patterns andthus cause broader disruptions not only overAsia but also the whole northern hemi-sphere. The changing heat patterns in theatmosphere over the plateau is likely a keyfactor in bringing more moisture in on thesummer monsoons from the Indian Ocean,explains Ding Yihui, a climate expert withChina's Meteorological Administration. Butthese monsoons aren't powerful enough topush across a warmed plateau to bringmuch needed rainfalls to the northern partof China. Instead, increased moisture in thesouthern plateau could add ever more pre-cipitation and flooding to the already wetsouthern summer.

A Wake-up CallIt's becoming increasingly clear that there isa lack of solid, comprehensive understand-

Tibet: Plateau in Peril 179

ing of all the varied environmental conse-quences that could be caused by further cli-mactic warming on the Tibetan Plateau overthe next quarter century. Scientists, fromThompson to Yao, are at the forefront of ef-forts to find out more. It is urgent that theworld puts more of its brightest minds to-gether to seriously deal with the impacts ofclimate change in this fragile region. If wefail to learn more and then to act soon, wewill likely see "an ecological crisis" spreadoff the plateau and radiate downstream-with enormous consequences for the twobillion people who inhabit the rest ofAsia, and even other parts of the northernhemisphere.

The nomads of this region may havebeen among the first to notice the changesin the land and the weather around them,and then to sound the alarm. But it wouldbe folly to assume that they alone can fullyplumb the complexity of the new dynamicsnow in play in this critical region, much

less assess the long-term impact on much ofAsia.

In the next quarter century, scientistsand environmentalists like Hashi are surelygoing to encounter more of the conse-quences of a warmed plateau. Nomads likeSuonan-Norbu, who has stayed with hisherds and continued his traditional nomadicpractices, may soon find his lifestyle un-sustainable. But as sad as it would be to seethis nomadic life largely, or even partially,extinguished, its consequences would palebefore the harm done to downstream usersof water from the great river systems thatrise on the Tibetan Plateau.

Alarms are sounding all around theworld as growing carbon emissions exacer-bate global warming. But one alarm whichbegs our close futurev attention is the healthof the glaciers and grasslands, and the no-madic life on the Tibetan Plateau, a verydelicately balanced ecology.*

innovatio ..ns.TECHNOLOGY I GOVERNANCE GLOBALIZATION

Recent Highlights

Lead Essays:Leadership and Innovation in a Networked World

Diego Rodriguez and Doug Solomon

Harnessing Collective Intelligence to Address GlobalClimate Change

Thomas W. Malone and Mark Klein

Cases Authored by InnovatorsSecond Life: Collapsing Geography Cory OndrejkaCommentaries by Philip Evans, Paul R. Verkuil and

Thomas M. Malaby

Analysis and Policy Articles

The Principles of Distributed Innovation

Karim R. Lakhani and Jill A. Panetta

Innovation Without Borders

Bhaskar Chakravort!

http://mitpressjournals.org/innovations

111e111 : w rPri-n53-e8 I ,amMai,ad,r, 1.-we. 12 7 iiTi 617 253 anon 1 US/Ca,ada: no8a. 207854 1 F-n 617 577 1%54

WORLD POLICY JOURNAL - FALL 2008180

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Tibet: Plateau in PerilSOURCE: World Policy J 25 no3 Fall 2008

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and itis reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article inviolation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:http://www.worldpolicy.org