Tibetan delegation at COP 27 raises concern over environmental degradation due to Chinese projects

The Tibet delegation pointed out that the Chinese government is responsible for the worsening climate situation in the region which is already affected by global warming.  The all-women Tibetan representative at the 27th UN Climate Change Conference (Cop 27) raised the climate crisis that is threatening Tibet and the degradation of the environment due to Chinese projects, Tibet press reported. They demanded that world leaders acknowledge Tibet’s ecological significance and adopt a rights-based strategy that gives frontline communities power.  According to the Tibet press, China imprisons and sentence the Tibetans who defend and protect their environment be it against the constant damming projects – adhering towards it so called Hydro-Hegemony, mining extensively without any recovery time, needless development of grasslands and Greenwashing – which sees large number of Tibetans relocated from the ancestral lands in the name of development and for its realization, Beijing has directed a large sum of governmental finances (taxpayers money) which instead could have been utilized consciously in preserving the environment. The Tibet delegation pointed out that the Chinese government is responsible for the worsening climate situation in the region which is already affected by global warming.  This is further accelerated by the policies implemented in Tibet by Beijing that pushes for development but neglects sustainability. Tibetan environmentalists have been sentenced without any legal justification by China. Environmental activists Nya Sengdra and Karma Samdrup are in prison to preserve and protect Tibet’s fragile and unique ecology and also that both have been sent to prison without formal legal procedures.  In 2010 Human Rights Watch submitted a report to the Chinese government requesting to rescind the accusations against the philanthropist and environmentalist Karma Samdrup and his brothers. It states “these people embody the characteristics the government says it wants in modern Tibetans – economically successful, lending support to only approved cultural and environmental pursuits, and apolitical – yet they, too, are being treated as criminals.” This illustrates what the Chinese think of Tibetans who are not only apolitical but are trying to bring upward mobility to not only Tibetans but also the Chinese residing in Tibet especially in terms of the quality of life which is intertwined with the state of the environment. Lobsang Yangsto , the programme and environment coordinator at the International Tibet Network (ITN) along with 4 other Tibetan women at the CoP27, highlighted the desecration and destruction of Tibet’s fragile and vital ecosystem under the illegal Chinese occupation.

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