Meltdown In Tibet
November 30, 2009 – 10:30 pm
Meltdown In Tibet
(Michael Buckley, Canada, 40min)
Using undercover footage and stills, Meltdown in Tibet blows the lid off China’s huge and potentially catastrophic dam-building projects in Tibet. The mighty rivers sourced in Tibet are lifelines to the people of India and Southeast Asia. These rivers are at great risk from rapidly receding glaciers—a meltdown accelerated by climate change—and from large-scale damming and diversion, due to massive Chinese engineering projects. To make way for these hydropower projects and for mining ventures, Tibetan nomads are being forced off their traditional grassland habitat—and resettled in bleak villages, where they cannot make a decent living.
The film raises some disturbing questions about a looming eco-disaster. If Himalayan glaciers vanish, what will happen to the rivers of Tibet? What is the fate of people in nations downstream that depend on those rivers? Why is China building so many large dams on the Tibetan plateau? What on earth are China’s engineers getting up to? China’s plans for this pristine region could well prove disastrous not only for Tibetans, but for the whole of Asia–which relies heavily on rivers sourced in Tibet.
