We saw the floods in Nepal. But will we ever know what happened in Tibet?

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It’s been five days since the deadly Nepal-Tibet flood . For my Tibetan community in exile, including here in Australia, it has been five days of anguish and profound helplessness. Tibetans have been desperately searching for information about what is happening on our side of the border, where the disaster began.

We saw the images from Nepal, devastating as they are: torrents of water and mud sweeping away homes, bridges and communities; families searching for loved ones; rescuers saving lives; and reporters on the ground telling the stories of those affected.

But across the border, in Tibet, there is a deafening silence. This is because Chinese-occupied Tibet is one of the most tightly controlled places on earth. Closed to independent journalists and researchers, the Chinese government tightly controls information coming in and out of Tibet. During a crisis like this, censorship goes into overdrive.

For Tibetans living in exile, this is a particularly cruel form of powerlessness. When disaster strikes, you want to know what has happened to local communities, know that your loved ones are safe, and reach out to offer support. Instead, we are left searching through satellite imagery and whatever few fragments of information the Chinese state media has published in its carefully crafted narrative. China’s restrictions on access to Tibet are not new. They have been in place for decades and are key to how Beijing maintains control over Tibet.

The climate crisis unfolding on the other side of the Himalayas is now firmly entrenched. The Tibetan Plateau has been warming at least twice as fast as the global average. Its glaciers have been shrinking for decades. As glaciers melt and lakes expand and burst, the risk of deadly flash floods increases.

What happens in Tibet matters to the rest of Asia. The Brahmaputra, Ganges and Indus in the Indian subcontinent; the Mekong and Irrawaddy in South-East Asia; and the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in China all originate in Tibet, sustaining about 1.4 billion people. And as rainfall patterns shift due to climate change, the risk of both devastating floods and prolonged drought increases.

I have been trying for years to communicate the compounding impacts of climate change and colonisation in Tibet, and why this has impacts far beyond its borders. A few years ago, I travelled to a UN climate conference to highlight the importance of Tibet to the world’s response to climate change. I remember vividly the frustration of trying to explain that the climate crisis cannot be separated from the political reality of Tibet.

Tibetans have been warning about melting glaciers and ecological destruction under the Chinese government for decades. As traditional custodians of the Tibetan Plateau, they can offer much in the way of climate solutions. Yet too often, those voices are ignored by governments and civil society alike.

Today, it has become even harder to talk about the environmental and human costs of China’s policies in Tibet. Eager to draw hope from China’s renewables boom, the climate community has become wilfully blind to the darker side of China’s energy revolution, actively silencing those who question who is benefiting and who is paying the price. China’s green transition involves extracting minerals such as lithium from the Tibetan Plateau, without the consent of or benefit to Tibetans , and through enormous infrastructure projects.

Roads, railways and, most significantly, hydropower dams are transforming Tibet’s fragile ecology .

Tibet sits at the intersection of two forces: a rapidly changing climate and a political system in which Tibetans have no power over decisions affecting their land, water and livelihoods. There is climate change. And then there is climate change in a repressed, colonised land.

Independent journalists must be able to report from Tibet. Scientists, human rights NGOs and humanitarian organisations must all have meaningful access. Most importantly, Tibetans themselves must be able to speak openly about what is happening to their environment.

The floods on the Nepal-Tibet border are a tragic warning. We cannot properly understand the climate crisis in Asia when a very important part of it remains behind a mountain of political censorship and control.

Kyinzom Dhongdue is a Tibetan human rights advocate and strategy and advocacy manager at Amnesty International Australia. The views expressed are her own.

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