Over at Circle of Blue WaterNews, we’re reporting today on another ingredient to consider in the context of the China-Tibet conflict. Keith Schneider and C.T. Pope write that the Tibetan Plateau’s vast reserves of glacial freshwater, which supply Asia’s most populous regions, are both at risk and are emerging as an issue in the increasingly tense political and cultural strife between China and Tibet.

“At least 500 million people in Asia and 250 million people in China are at risk from declining glacial flows on the Tibetan Plateau,” Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, told me last week. “This is one of the great concerns — a staggering number of people will be affected in the near future. There aren’t too many researchers who have looked at this water situation and its far-reaching impacts.”

As we’ve heard many times, the UN estimates that two-thirds of the world’s population will live in areas of water stress within the next 20 years. By the numbers, much of that population is in Asia.

With more than a quarter of its land classified as desert, China has long sought Tibet’s water resources. Yet the IPCC and others warn that the Himalayan glaciers are receding faster than anywhere in the world and could vanish within three decades.

Said Geoff Dabelko, director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., “Nearly two billion people are in some way dependent on water originating on the Tibetan Plateau. By definition, that makes it high politics and critically important in a politically strategic sense.”

Hear the full interview with Dr. Dabelko on Huffington Post, as well as excerpts from the latest Journal of International Affairs, which illuminates water’s role in transboundary cooperation and conflict resolution.

Let me indulge in some timely self promotion for my colleagues at Circle of Blue, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars China Environment Forum and the Pacific Institute. The Circle of Blue team, which I direct, publishes today its compelling multimedia report, “Reign of Sand,” about the water crisis in Inner Mongolia, China. The multimedia package comes as China’s spring dust storms approach. Scientists say the severity and frequency of the dust storms reflect worsening conditions, including: dryer climate, stronger winds, water shortages, over-grazing, population growth, and a clash between nomadic herders and the government over range and farmland management.

We’ve said before in this space that it will take powerful narratives and an informed public to respond to these unfolding crises. Take a look and be sure to click to suggest your story ideas, where we should send a team of reporters and why.

Shanghai’s experiencing isolated showers. But will the forecast call for pain?

China scholar Li Cheng challenged the audience’s sense of hygenic urgency yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival when he described what might happen if everyone in Shanghai took a shower even once a week.

Atlantic Monthly journalist James Fallows summarizes:

On the environment (a huge theme in discussions of China here): when a rural dweller moves to the big city, his or her demands on the water supply increase thirty-fold. This reminds me of a statistic I heard last year in China: if the average Shanghainese resident took a shower even once a week, the city’s water supply would be used up.

In the separate morning session, A Year in Shanghai, Fallows described some of his behind-the-scenes perspectives gleaned from reporting his recent Atlantic article, “Why China’s Rise is Good for Us.”
Some of the key takeaways:
- Environmental factors will be most limiting to China’s continued growth;
- Most in China don’t seem to realize how bad the situation is. For example, the Yellow River doesn’t reach the ocean;
- Seven percent of the glacial ice mass on the Tibetan Plateau is melting each year. What will happen to every river in Asia with a decline in snowmelt?
- China is undergoing the largest mass human migration in history with more than 150 million people moving from rural to urban areas;
- The new definition of foreign aid is you save yourself.