Home
Development
China Plans To Divert Water From Tibet.
August 01, 2006
A senior official at the Yellow River Water Conservancy Committee (YRWCC) has
announced that a controversial scheme to divert water from Tibet to the parched
Yellow River in Qinghai will go ahead. The director of the YRWCC, Li Guoying,
said that the project was essential because the Yellow River's current flow is
being exhausted by development demands in the PRC’s western regions. "When the
economic and social development of the northwest reaches a certain level and the
potential of water-saving measures is exhausted, this project will be launched",
he told a news briefing. The long-discussed plan to harness Tibetan rivers to
quench water-scarce regions of the PRC has growing official momentum, with
construction possibly starting as early as 2010, Liu Changming, a hydrologist at
the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Reuters. The so-called Western Route of
China's South-North Water Transfer Project will join the Central and Eastern
Routes, already under construction, that are intended to draw water from the
much larger Yangtze River for China's dry north and for the capital, Beijing.
The plan has received the general backing of China's leaders, including
President Hu Jintao, a hydro-engineer who worked in western China for decades,
Liu said. But it promises to be the most controversial of Beijing's efforts to
yolk Tibet's "under-used" rivers to nourish national development. "This project
is definitely not meant to develop Tibet", said Tashi Tsering, a Tibetan expert
on the region's natural resources at the University of British Columbia in
Canada. "Tibet's water availability is actually quite limited and these rivers
depend on glaciers that are receding. The consequences just haven't been thought
through".
Back to Development List