Meltdown in Tibet: China’s Reckless Destruction of Ecosystems from the Highlands of Tibet to the Deltas of Asia

Reports of worldwide environmental degradation rarely mention the remote Tibetan plateau, but journalist and travel writer Buckley rectifies this omission with his detailed, dismal account of the damage there. For decades after its 1950 invasion of the region, China concentrated on suppressing traditional Tibetan culture, social structure, and religion (most visibly by destroying temples). But during the country’s market revolution in the 1980s, the Chinese turned their focus to the area’s material resources. Although the sources of most great Asian waterways are found in Tibet, Chinese-built mega-dams have caused rivers to dry up and deltas to shrink, while extensive mining operations have polluted other channels. The Chinese government banned logging virgin forest around the Yangtze’s Tibetan headwaters after “massive soil erosion” produced a disastrous flood in 1998. Observers praised China for simultaneously designating an astounding 33% of the Tibetan region as nature reserves, though Buckley demonstrates that such actions have proven to be entirely for show; the creation of these nature reserves is a legal fiction that allows authorities to displace native Tibetans so that mining, logging, and dam building can proceed. Objections from the United Nations, other international organizations, and even Chinese citizens have had little effect, and Buckley’s obligatory solution in the concluding chapter will encourage only the most optimistic reader. [em](Nov.) [/em]