BANGKOK – The focus of China’s sprawling hydropower industry is increasingly shifting to Tibet, according to researchers and a Tibetan advocacy group’s study, highlighting the potential for unrest and environmental damage in a region that Chinese officials have long viewed as a source of resources for the industrialized east.
China has built an estimated 22,000 large dams – about 40% of the world’s total – to help power several decades of rapid industrialization and economic growth, maxing out the hydropower potential of many rivers. The exception has been the Tibetan plateau.
The roof-of-the-world region, invaded and annexed by China in the middle of the last century, is the headwaters of major rivers in Asia and home of Himalayan glaciers that are a source of water for hundreds of millions of people.
It has about 110 gigawatts of untapped hydropower potential that could fuel the economy of China’s east, a researcher said, citing government figures. A single gigawatt is enough power for 100 million light bulbs.
In 2013, academic Tashi Tsering catalogued a total of 114 dams either built on three major rivers in Tibet or proposed for them.
A decade later, the number of constructed and proposed dams is at least 193 and probably much higher, according to a two-year desktop research project carried out by International Campaign for Tibet, or ICT, a Washington-based group that campaigns for Tibetan self-determination.
