A First-Hand Narrative Account on Tibet’s Paper Parks: How China’s Greenwashing in Tibet Flies Under the Radar

Abstract

This first-hand narrative reports on some protected area concepts and widely unknown details in a Hindu Kush-Himalaya region. In Western China, the vast grasslands of Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), Qinghai Province, and the highland parts of Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces have been utilized by Tibetan nomads grazing their yaks, goats and sheep for thousands of years, leaving water resources widely in a sustainable state. But modern developments have brought wider changes to the ecosystem, the landscapes and watersheds, its sophisticated cultures and governance of that region, with most herders being fully removed from the land to make space for protected parks and industrial operations. Many of these ‘parks’ perform poorly though, when looked at in good detail. They appear to exist just on paper, resulting into human right violations while the water resource has lost its taboo and is further used and exploited for dam development and similar industrial support activities that prey on downstream populations.

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