Tibetan Plateau’s Climate Crisis And China’s Hydro Projects Highlighted At COP 30

BRASILIA — As global leaders converged on Belem for COP 30 with the Amazon at the center of world attention, a small delegation from the Sweden based Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo Pacific Affairs at the Institute for Security and Development Policy arrived with a reminder that another vital ecosystem is slipping through the cracks. Their mission was simple and urgent: to push the fast worsening climate emergency on the Tibetan Plateau into the global spotlight.

Led by Jagannath Panda, the head of SCSA IPA, and joined by Senior Associate Fellow Richard Ghiasy, the team attended the summit as observers and followed their work with high level discussions in Rio de Janeiro. Everywhere they went, they underscored a point that often goes missing in climate debates. The Tibetan Plateau, long described as Asia’s Third Pole, is unraveling at a pace the world can no longer afford to ignore.

In a statement, the delegation noted that while Amazon preservation, indigenous rights, and sustainable development shaped the mood of COP 30, Tibet remained largely absent. This silence is growing more dangerous by the year. The plateau is heating nearly three times faster than the global average, accelerating the retreat of glaciers, weakening permafrost, and destabilizing the great river systems that begin on its high plains.

These impacts are not contained within China’s borders. In conversations with climatologists, indigenous rights advocates, and environmental researchers in Belem, Panda stressed that the Tibetan Plateau feeds ten major rivers that sustain close to two billion people across South and Southeast Asia. Shrinking ice reserves, shifting rainfall patterns, and worsening water shortages could transform how nations secure food, plan energy futures, and prepare for disasters. It could also sharpen existing geopolitical pressures in one of the world’s most densely populated regions.

Beijing’s growing network of hydro projects has become an added point of alarm. Dams and diversion schemes on major transboundary rivers are already drawing scrutiny, and the newly proposed Medog Water Diversion Project stands out for its potential to reshape the ecological balance of the Brahmaputra basin and heighten tensions downstream.

Mining is intensifying the strain. The expansion of lithium, rare earth, copper, and other extraction sites has carved into fragile landscapes, degrading soil and disrupting habitats. Alongside this, the relocation of Tibetan nomadic communities has undercut long standing systems of environmental stewardship that once helped stabilize life at high altitude.