Tibetan Plateau to get spotlight at Glasgow climate summit

BY VISHAL GULATI

Dharamsala, Oct 27 To adapt to the effects of climate change impacting the Tibetan Plateau the world's 'third pole' a group of Tibetans in exile will explain its role in the global climate system and why it should be part of the global climate conversation at the upcoming two-week United Nations climate conference, COP26, in Glasgow in Britain.

Advocacy group International Campaign for Tibet says the COP26 will be an important chance to tell policymakers why the plateau needs to be part of the global talks.

Its interdisciplinary panel on the sidelines of the COP26 will discuss the lessons Tibet offers for designing inclusive and sustainable global climate policies, and provide practical recommendations for next steps.

Just ahead of the COP26, slated to meet between October 31 and November 12, globetrotting Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, is issuing a video message on October 29, urging the climate scientists, state heads and business leaders for the urgent need for climate action to save Mother Nature.

The Tibetan Plateau is close to two per cent of the planet's land surface, the size of Western Europe, and with as much global importance as other comparable geographies, perhaps more since the elevation of the plateau has a global impact on jetstream, monsoon dynamics, and the water cycle of the entire northern hemisphere.

Another advocacy Tibetan Centre of Human Rights and Democracy says Tibet experiences rapid climate change that damages glaciers, causes floods and lake overtopping, melts permafrost, compromises livelihoods, and dries wetlands essential to the East Asian flyway routes of seasonally migrating birds, threatening extinction.

"Warmer and wetter makes Tibet more like China, which is good from China's point of view," it says in a statement.

Tibetan nature's contribution to humanity is exceptionally big.

Although Tibet and the Tibetans have little to no role in causing the rapid rise in methane emissions, rainfall, ozone hole above Tibet, or the rising runoff from Tibetan rivers, China, immediately downstream, harvests a dividend of extra runoff at least as long as it may take for the glaciers to disappear, it says.

China plans to further intensify urbanisation, which further extracts water and resources from remote areas to feed city demand. China is officially committed to attaining equality of wealth and consumption on par with the richest nations, which is unsustainable, imposing on the whole planet a footprint that is unbearable.

China imports from Tibet enormous quantities of clean water, clean air, minerals, and electricity, yet Tibetans are marginalised, silenced, racially stigmatised, and not acknowledged as providers of ecosystem services, it adds.

Also the Central Tibetan Administration