– The paragraph at the end of this article is the kicker. It refers to the Yangtze River which begins in the Tibetan highlands. And it says,
“The Yangtze River rises in the mountains of Qinghai Province on the Tibetan plateau and flows 6,300km to the East China Sea, opening at Shanghai. The Yangtze river basin accounts for 40% of China’s freshwater resources, more than 70% of the country’s rice production, 50% of its grain production, more than 70% of fishery production, and 40% of the China’s GDP.”
– What this article doesn’t say is that as high altitude glaciers and summer snowpacks diminish, those downsteam who depend on these sources for melt water to supply their summer needs are going to experience serious water shortages in the future. This is true in the western US, in India south of the Himalayas, in South America west of the Andes and, now we see, in some of the most populated areas of mainland China. It doesn’t bode well.
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Science Daily — “If I compare this land to what it used to be in the 1960s, it is difficult for me to recognize it,” recalls Qi Mei Duo Jie, a 71-year-old nomadic herder from Yanshiping in China’s central-western Qinghai Province. “Glaciers are melting, temperatures are rising and rainy seasons have become unpredictable.”
Yanshiping is the last town on the Qinghai-Tibet Highway before entering Tibet. At an altitude of 4700 metres, its landscape in summer is marked by shaggy yaks grazing in the green alpine pastures and the transparent blue waters of Buqu River – a tributary of the Yangtze. Winters are white and freezing, with temperatures reaching as low as -20°C.
It is no surprise that people welcome a warmer, more comfortable climate in this remote region. But there is another side to the changing climate story.
Pressure on the plateau
Nomadic groups of Tibetans have been moving around this area for time immemorial, following the natural rhythm of the seasons and availability of grassland to raise their livestock.
Qi Mei Duo Jie’s family has been raising yaks for at least three generations.
“This year has been very dry, and with less grassland it will take longer to properly feed and raise livestock,” he says. “This will mean a lower income for us.”
To compound the situation, warmer climate conditions are attracting more cattle and sheep farmers to this harsh but beautiful high-altitude area, putting additional pressure on the already fragile alpine landscape. This pressure is also starting to squeeze out local wildlife, such as Tibetan antelopes, that depend on the grasslands too. There have even been reports of brown bears wandering close to villages in search of food.
And if bears roaming around town aren’t enough to lose sleep over, the remote rural region is experiencing pollution from greenhouse gases that have been emitted from big cities as far away as Beijing and Shanghai.
These are some of the consequences of climate change on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.
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