By Source:China Tibet Online
2015-08-27
The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, also known as the “Third Pole”, is “the source of rivers” and “the source of ecology” of China, South Asia and Southeast Asia. For more than 50 years, Tibet has made tremendous efforts for building an important national ecological security barrier.
The river valley of Lkoka and Shigatse in Tibet has the most serious sand storm. However, through a series of measures including natural forest protection, afforestation, construction of ecological public welfare forests and sand control testing demonstration zone in 2014, the forest area of Tibet has reached 16.85 million hectares, and Tibet’s forest coverage rate had increased from 12.37 percent in 2002 to 14 percent. Tibet’s forest area has increased by 1.95 million hectares over more than ten years; in the meantime, all kinds of desertificated land area has decreased by 65,700 hectares.
Nagqu is the largest pastoral area in Tibet, whose prairie had sufffered a lot from excessive grazing. Learning from these lessons, Nagqu started the implementation of grazing prohibition and increasing livestocks, increasing the proportion of the female animals in season and fine breeds, giving subsidies to grassland where the ecology is protected well for breeding balance. Tsering, head of Tibet Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau said that since 2011, the prohibited grazing grassland area has reached 3.78 hectares, with the “balanced breeding ” grassland area of 27.54 hectares.
Lhalu wetland is worthy of the name “lung” of the city with Lhasa residents all benefit from it. Puebla Tsering, head of the Lhalu Wetland National Nature Reserve Administration said: “Lhalu wetland absorbs 78,800 tons of carbon dioxide a year, while releases 60,000 tons of oxygen.”
Since the “Ninth Five-year Plan”(1996-2000) has been carried out, the Lhalu wetland has been listed as a key environmental protection project in Lhasa. In 2013, it planed to invest 700 million yuan(109 U.S. dollars) for its protection. Now the Lhalu wetland covers an area of 12.2 square kilometers. At present, the Tibet wetland area has increased to 6.53 million hectares, which ranks the first in the country.
Tibet has unique natural environment, and its ecosystem has a higher sensitivity to external influence than places of the same latitude. Losang Jamcan, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region said: “the environmental and ecological protection is the piriotiry in Tibet’s economic development no matter whether it is resource development, major construction or industrial development.”
The Tibetan antelope is first-grade animal under state protection in China. In order to ensure their smooth migration and breeding, every year at this time, the public security police and wildlife conservation staff patrol all day, and the armed police officers and soldiers carry out a “plateau sword” protection operation to develop the safest life channel for the animal.
Due to poaching occurred in the 1980s and the 1990s, nearly a hundred kinds of wildlife out of 125 species have been endangered under special state protection in Tibet. A crackdown on this crime has been carried out to save the plateau treasures by setting up nature reserves and special protection agencies and law enforcement teams. There are more than 3,700 full-time guards to protect wildlife of various types and 84,000 part-time personnel to patrol, manage and protect the area so as to build up an iron wall to protect wild animals. Mt. Qomolangma National Nature Reserve built an animal protection monitoring system by the traditional and modern scientific and technological approaches combined.
“Now with 24 hours of monitoring, once any suspicious circumstance appears, we will give photographic forensics, then send our people out to check,” said the Reserve Deputy Commissioner Phurjung.
After decades of efforts, the wildlife population of Tibet is of restorative growth. The Tibetan antelope population has increased from 50,000-70,000 in 1995 to more than 200,000. The black-necked cranes increased from 1,000-3,000 in 1995 to almost 7000. The now area plateau is becoming a animal paradise.
In 2006, the Tibet wildlife accident damage compensation project has been started, and up to 2014 the cash compensation has reached 420 million yuan, which is a win-win situation of maintaining public interests and protecting wild animals.
“In the invironmental protection work in Tibet, the most important is the ecological protection instead of pollution prevention,” said Zhuang Hongxiang, deputy director of Department of Environmental Protection of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Tibetan industrial pollution is small mainly concentrated in the mining and building materials industries.
Tibet cleaned up 12 cement enterprises and its backward technology to redevelop the cement production line. In 2014, the district cement output reached more than 3,42 million tons among them. At present, the new production technology is fully replacing the backward one.
Unlike other provinces, Tibet has rarely negated environment protection projects. The reason is very simple. If a project does not conform to the environmental protection criteria in Tibet, even it is a huge and beneficial investment, eventually they cannot even apply for the qualification, said Zhuang Hongxiang. “Tibet refuses to eliminate the highly polluting, energy intensive and highly polluting projects from the very beginning.”
This is an attitude and a kind of determination. It is the same for industrial projects and those major projects who promotes economic and social development. We adhere to the principle of preventing pollution and protecting the ecological environment facilities must be designed together with the maini part of the project, constructing and putting into use at the same time, and conducting daily audit in the county, weekly audit in the city and monthly audit in the province.
In 2013, in order to implement the spirit of the 18th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Tibet put forward that by 2030 it will build a strong ecological area with beautiful ecological environment, ecological economic development, comfortable home, and with the harmony between man and nature, for the basic realization of the goal of building a beautiful Tibet.
In 2014, Tibet officially started to carry out an environmental protection assessment in its 74 counties, while the assessment results relate to the promotion of the main officials at the county level. This measure has brought dynamic to environment protection in the county.
By 2014, Tibet has established 22 ecological reserves, nine national forest parks, 10 national wetland park, four state-level scenic spots and three state-level wetland parks. Establishing ecological reserves is not enough. In 2014, Tibet explores to establish the ecological protection “red-ine system”.
The system is the guarantee while the law is weapon. In recent years, Tibet speeds up the environmental legislation steps, has enacted the Environmental Protection Regulations of the Tibet Autonomous Region and a series of environmental protection laws and rules. The regional ecological construction and environmental protection has been going on a legislative path.
“Tibet is one of the world’s cleanest regions in the world,” said Yao Tandong, academian of Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of the Research Institute of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. “Its overall plateau ecosystem is good, and its environment quality keeps improving.”
