(TibetanReview.net, Mar23’25) – As the threat of global climate collapse grows, increasingly raising dangers of a catastrophic food crisis across the world, alarmed China is considering a plan to turn the increasingly wetting up and warming Tibetan Plateau into an agricultural stronghold, with the establishment of new agricultural settlements, reported the scmp.com Mar 23, citing Chinese government scientists.
Cascading climate breakdown – including the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, Atlantic Ocean currents and polar ice sheets – could destabilise global food systems within decades, the report cited the scientists as saying.
And the solution they have proposed in their report is to rapidly scale up high-altitude farming on the Tibetan Plateau, which could enable China to survive the global disaster.
“Several climate tipping elements are approaching critical thresholds. It will have profound and extensive impacts on the Earth and its inhabitants – ranging from unprecedented sea-level rises to extreme weather events that render regions uninhabitable and overwhelm existing adaptive capacities,” Ma Lijuan, senior National Climate Centre (NCC) engineer and lead author of the study, has written.
“The Tibetan Plateau, recognised as the engine of environmental change in Asia, plays vital roles in water conservation, soil retention, wind breaking and sand fixation, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity preservation. Serving as a critical ecological security barrier for China and Asia, it is also a globally significant hotspot for biodiversity conservation.
“By rigorously protecting its ecological environment and leveraging its unique natural and socio-economic conditions to develop plateau-specific agriculture, it is entirely feasible to turn the Tibetan Plateau into China’s future granary,” Ma and her colleagues are stated to have written.
The NCC, operating under the China Meteorological Administration, is stated to serve as China’s premier institution for climate monitoring, research and policy advice.
What worries the agency most is stated to be the polar meltdown. With Greenland now shedding around 30 million tonnes of ice each hour, while Antarctica’s ice shelves fracture like shattered glass.
With the sudden increase of fresh water in the oceans predicted to lead to current collapse, Ma’s team has warned: The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – the ocean mechanism responsible for moving heat energy around the planet and thus regulating Earth’s climate – had weakened to an alarming low, with estimates that it could collapse.
The problem is compounded by drought and fires in Amazon, methane geyser eruptions in Siberia, the catastrophic bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and the monsoon mayhem having already arrived at China’s doorstep.
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The NCC’s plan is said to be to lean into paradoxical climate shifts: while rising temperatures scorch tropical farmlands, Tibet’s once-frigid plains are wetting up and warming twice as fast as the global average. Glacial meltwater now irrigates valleys where frost once ruled year-round. Growing seasons have expanded by 34 days since 1980, some studies are stated to show.
Meanwhile, scientists are stated to have created new cold-resistant barley strains that yield crops at an altitude of 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) – a feat previously thought impossible.
China is also stated to have achieved a milestone in potato cultivation, with yields surpassing per hectare on the plateau, or twice the productivity of lower lands, thanks to superb sun conditions at the high altitude.
This feat, driven by resistant hybrid varieties and advanced agricultural techniques including optimised soil management, greenhouse adaptations and precision irrigation, is stated to address historical limitations of low productivity in extreme environments, the report cited state media reports as saying.
According to Ma’s team, the challenges facing this vision include rampant mining and other human activities that threaten ecological sustainability on the plateau, with the melting ice having the potential of causing lakes and dams to collapse, which in turn would put new settlers at risk.
But Beijing is doubling down, including with plans to use artificial intelligence to monitor real-time data from vast numbers of sensors planted across the plateau to predict glacial floods and optimise crop rotations, the report cited the researchers as saying.