(TibetanReview.net, Feb 10) – More Tibetans are set to be displaced, losing their ancestral land, homes and way of life, as China spends 20 billion yuan during its eleventh Five-Year Plan period (2006-2010) to build a State Ecological Safe Shelter Zone. The money will be used to build a State Ecological Safe Shelter Zone on the Tibetan Plateau, reported China’s official Xinhuanet Feb 9. “Problems such as grassland degradation, land desertification, glacier meltdown, soil erosion etc. are affecting the whole ecological environment in China” because of the deterioration of the environment on the plateau, it said.
In longer terms, China plans to construct three such shelter zones from 2008 to 2030. In connection with this, the Tibet Autonomous Regional Government’s plan for 2008 to 2015 envisages carrying out constructions with the aim to harness 30 percent of the Region’s moderately and severely degraded grasslands, to control soil erosion caused by human factors in key areas and to repair damaged biodiversity.
The report said measures to meet these targets include returning grazing land to pastures, controlling rodent and pest damages, standardizing construction of five regional nature reserves and rural biogas construction, etc.