From a global environmental perspective few places are as important as the Tibetan Plateau. Encompassing an area of over 2.5 million square kilometers, the Tibetan plateau is the largest and highest plateau on earth. With a range of landscapes, from arid alpine desert and high altitude lakes to lush green valleys in the east, Tibet is home to a staggering diversity of fauna and flora.

It is the source of many of Asias great rivers - the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Ganges and Indus Rivers all originate here, and the water they provide is critical to the survival of millions of people downstream.

CLIMATE CHANGE
Tibet has an average elevation of 4,500 metres and is encircled by high mountains - the Himalaya to the south, the Karakorum in the west and the Kunlun across the north. It is often referred to as the “world’s third pole” because it contains the largest area of ice outside the polar regions.

Global warming is causing higher temperatures on the plateau and less precipitation. Tibet’s glaciers, which store water sustaining many of the great rivers of Asia, are steadily disappearing. Reduced flow in these rivers is making life tough for Tibet’s nomads and farmers and threatens millions living downstream with water shortages. There will also be much more seasonal variation in river flows, with flow dependent on rainfall as opposed to the steady inflow of melt water from glaciers.

What happens in Tibet has profound implications for hundreds of millions of people, not only in China, but in neighboring countries.

BIODIVERSITY
A number of biodiversity “hotspots” are located on the Tibetan plateau. With their distinctive species, ecological processes, and evolutionary phenomena, these areas are some of the most important areas on earth for conserving biodiversity. The region supports rare and endangered wildlife species such as the wild yak, Tibetan wild ass, Tibetan antelope, Tibetan argali and snow leopard.

Due to extensive resource extraction, poaching and unsustainable development, Tibetan ecosystems and many of their species are now endangered. Conserving these animals and their habitat is an important priority for the global community.

TIBETAN LIVELIHOODS UNDER THREAT
The Tibetan plateau is one of the earth’s important grazing ecosystems, encompassing about 1.65 million square kilometers of grazing land. It contains the highest grasslands in the world and with a severe climate, it is one of the world’s harshest grazing environments. Yet these pastures supply forage for an estimated 12 million yaks and 30 million sheep and goats and provide livelihood for about 5 million pastoralists and agro-pastoralists. More than 80% of Tibetans live in rural areas, and for centuries, the majority have sustained themselves through a nomadic herder lifestyle, uniquely adapted to the harsh conditions and fragile ecosystem of the Tibetan plateau.

The implementation of Chinese government policies to settle Tibetan nomads and to resettle Tibetans in towns is now threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people and imperilling the Tibetan landscape. These policies, based on an urban industrial model and imposed by planners in Beijing, are counterproductive: they have made nomads poorer and degraded Tibet’s vast grasslands.

Scientific research has established that the mobility of the herds keeps the grasslands healthy, that taking nomads off the land does not help conserve water resources, and that herdspeople denied their livelihood become demoralized and dependent. One of the last examples of sustainable nomadic pastoralism on the planet faces extinction unless this policy is soon changed.