Climate Crisis in Tibet – Part III: China’s Rapacity for Mining Tibetan Resources: When Will the Greed End?

The Tibetan Plateau – Asia’s water tower and China’s major source for critical minerals like copper and lithium – is facing severe ecological degradation due to China’s extensive infrastructure projects, including mega-dam building, forced relocation of Tibetans, and mining. The increase in the so-called development projects such as the 2006 Golmud-Lhasa railway link among other such initiatives via China’s “Western Development Strategy,” or the “Go west” policy have only facilitated greater exploitation of Tibet’s natural reserves including critical minerals.  

Although, on paper China has referred to its development strategy in Tibet – which it has now renamed as “Xizang” to scuttle the region’s identity further – as a tool to provide economic reforms in the western provinces, at par to the high-quality development in other well-to-do parts. However, rather than reducing poverty, industrial development and other such activities are wreaking havoc on the already accelerated rate of climate change in the region, which is threatening not only the water security of downstream nations like India and Bangladesh but also Tibet’s own biodiversity and entire Himalayan ecosystem.  

Systematic and large-scale mining of minerals in Tibet began decades ago soon after China’s annexation of Tibet, which has significant reserves of the world’s deposits of uranium, chromite, boron, lithium, borax, iron and graphite. Due to the push for green transition and high-tech manufacturing, there is a high global and domestic demand for critical minerals such as lithium and rare earths. As a result, China – which is one of the major countries for supplying rare-earth raw materials and is also an importer of critical minerals for its dominant refining/processing industry accounting for approximately 60% of world-wide production and 85% of processing capacity – is looking to consolidate its lead by exploiting Tibet.  

Activists have also raised concerns about China’s illegal sand and gravel mining from riverbeds (e.g., in Tsaruma village, the source of the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers) for use in construction and other human activities. This impacts biodiversity, soil erosion, river flows, pollution, destruction of farmlands, and in turn, extreme events. Research has also revealed that high arsenic content in the water and soils in Tibet, in part being attributable to the mining operations.  

Unfortunately, China’s large-scale extraction is happening at fast rate and using unethical measures. The Chinese government also uses a heavy hand against any protests by the Tibetan residents, which impedes any constructive action. So although the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has called for urgent action to avoid a “sand crisis,” Tibet-specific calls-for-action are hard to find.  

In addition, for many years now, China has also been mining Tibet’s fresh water resources as a “new sustainable” economic growth pillar. This has no doubt boosted China’s bottled water industry but is disastrous for the Tibetan ecosystem, as in the longer term it help rivers to dry up faster. In tandem with the over-damming and mining of critical minerals, the ramifications are unfathomable.  

For example, it has been widely reported that the Tibetan Plateau has been warming more than three times faster than the global average, with Tibet’s permafrost thawing faster. Moreover, infrastructure activities particularly mining in sensitive regions that cause disturbance and pollution have a direct correlation with glacial retreat that has accelerated in the last decade due to human activities like mining, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation. Glacial retreat refers to the shrinking of glaciers, which is a recent phenomenon and a major marker of climate change.  

Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body for assessing the science related to climate change, has been highlighting these aspects in the high mountains of Asia in its reports, the Chinese government’s actions in Tibet have only grown in scope.

This webinar, third in series, will explore and attempt to address the following questions with some of the leading experts on the subject: 

• What is the extent and scope of the Chinese mining operations in the Tibetan Plateau? What does the latest data suggest? 
• What is the extent of extraction of critical minerals, particularly of rare earths, in Tibet? 
• What is the specific impact of such activities on the environmental degradation in the Tibetan Plateau? What are its implications for the regional and global community? 
• How can the countries concerned about climate change due to excessive human activities like mining help create awareness about the Tibetan issue? 
• Are the international climate forums, accords, and organizations like the IPCC, UNFCCC, UNEP, and ICIMOD helpful in achieving dissemination of information in relation to Tibet? If not, what more can be done? 

Speakers:

Martin A. Mills is Chair in Anthropology and Director of the Scottish Centre for Himalayan Research at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Author of Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism, his research interests lie in the history of religious and constitutional organisation in Tibetan monastic and governmental life. On the public front, Mills has acted as member, briefings officer and parliamentary secretary to the Cross-Party Group on Tibet at the Scottish Parliament since 2007 and speaks widely on Tibetan political and environmental matters.  

Gabriel Lafitte has spent years living with Tibetans, in exile and in Tibet. Based in Australia, he researches the impacts of Chinese policies on the Tibetan Plateau, and regularly trains young Tibetan professional environmentalists and advocates. Decades of immersion in Tibetan culture, and a dozen journeys around China, have given him an insider/outsider perspective on two great civilizations in conflict. He is an experienced public policy adviser with expertise in development, biodiversity and resource management policy. He has authored numerous reports, submissions and a 2006 book on the Dalai Lama’s teachings Happiness in a Material World. 

Dr. Sriparna Pathak is an Associate Professor and the founding Director of the Centre for Northeast Asian Studies in the Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA) of O.P. Jindal Global University, (JGU) Haryana, India. She also serves in the capacity of the Associate Director of the Jindal India Institute. She teaches courses on Foreign Policy of China as well as Theories of International Relations. Awarded a Doctorate degree from the Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in 2015, Dr. Pathak is fluent in English, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, Bengali and Assamese. She has been a recipient of the joint fellowship awarded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development, India and the China Scholarship Council, Government of the People’s Republic of China, and she spent two years in China, actively researching various aspects of China’s domestic economy. Her areas of interest are China’s domestic economy, trade and economic relations between India and China and China’s foreign policy and economic linkages with the world. She is currently working on a project on China’s influence operations in India.  

Dr. Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy is an Affiliated Scholar at the Department of Political Science of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Associated Research Fellow at the Institute for Security & Development Policy (ISDP Stockholm), Head of the Associates Network at 9DASHLINE and Fellow at Agora Strategy, Munich. Based in Taiwan, Zsuzsa is Assistant Professor at the National Dong Hwa University in Hualien. Between 2008 and 2020 Zsuzsa worked as a political advisor in the European Parliament. Her latest book, “Partners in Peace. Why Europe and Taiwan Matter to Each Other” was published in October 2024. Zsuzsa is a regular commentator in international media outlets. 

Dr. Lobsang Yangtso is a Senior Environmental Researcher for the International Tibet Network, India. Her research focuses on climate change in Tibet and the Himalayan regions, water security, and climate change on the major rivers like the Brahmaputra River, the Drichu River (Yangtse River), and the Upper Mekong River. She is a strong advocate and campaigner for the protection of the rights of the local and indigenous people like the Tibetan people. She participated actively in COP meetings asking for the inclusion of Tibetan people in the climate policy makings. She has also worked as a Research Associate at the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy, New Delhi. Ms. Lobsang has published articles in various journals. She has also participated in and presented various papers at international/national seminars and conferences at Dharamsala, Delhi, Bergen, Boulder, Copenhagen, Prague, Kathmandu, and Stockholm.  

Moderator:

Dr. Jagannath Panda is the Head of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA-IPA) at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), Sweden. Dr. Panda is also a Professor at the Department of Regional and Global Studies at the University of Warsaw; and a Senior Fellow at The Hague Center for Strategic Studies in the Netherlands. As a senior expert on China, East Asia, and Indo-Pacific affairs, Prof. Panda has testified to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission at the US Congress on ‘China and South Asia’. He is the Series Editor for Routledge Studies on Think Asia.