Transforming Yamdrok Yumtso: Development for Whom and At What Cost?

According to reports, the authorities of Shannan Prefecture in southern Tibet have ordered to stop plans to run lake cruises on sacred Yamdrok Lake.

Recently, as part of the tourism development program of the Nagarze county, a tour company had already bought and launched a tour boat on the Yamdrok Yumtso (Tibetan: ཡར་འབྲོག་གཡུ་མཚོ་, Wylie: yar-'brog g.yu-mtsho) and was planning to offer rides around the lake beginning next month. Besides, the program also included setting up over 200 beach umbrellas on the shore of the lake. On May 24, the tour company and the Langkazi county government launched a tour boat named Qomolangma, which was bought from inland districts in China and also began trial runs reports Global Times.

Contraction of Wetlands and Drying Up of Lakes

Wetlands, often referred to as earth’s kidney, has played a vital role in sustaining ecosystems that serves millions of lives. They act as an enormous sponge slowly releasing water into rivers all round year.


The fresh water wetlands on the Tibetan Plateau are distributed in an area of around 1,33,000 sq.km. With their wealth of stored carbon, these wetlands provide a potential sink for theatmospheric carbon. It was also observed that the role of wetland as a carbon sink was closely related with the water table and the amount of precipitation.

Degrading Wetlands of the Tibetan Plateau

Every year on February 2, World Wetlands Day is celebrated internationally which marks the anniversary of the signing of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Convention) in Ramsar, Iran, on 2 February 1971. The international theme for World Wetlands Day 2012 is ‘Wetlands and Tourism’.

Presently the parties of the Ramsar Convention have 160 contracting members including China who joined the Convention in 1992. The list of Wetlands of International Importance includes 1994 wetlands, with a total area of about 192 million hectares. Out of this 41 sites are located in China, covering an area of 3,709,853 hectares. 

The wetland is known as the "kidney of the earth" and is one of the three major ecosystems along with forest and ocean. The wetland plays a key role in flood control, water conservation, pollution control, environment regulation and so on. It is deemed as a warehouse with water and food for humans as well as a habitat for rare wildlife to overwinter and reproduce. 

The Significance of the Third Pole: The Tibetan Plateau

A satellite's-eye-view of the Tibetan Plateau. Image from NASA's Terra satellite. Photo credit- NASA

Tibetan Plateau referred to as ‘The Third Pole’ and ‘The Water Tower of Asia’ reflects the significance of its snow capped mountains and its alpine grasslands. Since time immemorial, the plateau holds the Hindu Kush Himalayan Ice Sheet, considered as the largest ice mass outside the two poles. Its plateau contains more than 45,000 glaciers covering an area of 105,000 km2. Encompassing an area of about 2.5 million square kilometers, or about one-third the area of the continental United States, the Tibetan Plateau is the largest and highest region on Earth. With an average elevation of 4,500 meters above sea level, the Tibetan Plateau stretches for almost 3,000 kilometers from west to east and 1,500 kilometers from south to north. The Plateau is ringed by high mountains – the Himalayas to the south, the Karakorum in the west and the Kunlun across the north. One can just learn by looking at its map to figure out how the Tibetan Plateau dominates the geography of Asia.