HANOI, Oct 30 (NNN-VNA) – Vietnam recorded an estimated trade value of 537.31 billion U.S. dollars in the first 10 months of this year, up 22.2 percent year-on-year, with a trade deficit of 1.45 billion U.S. dollars, the General Statistics Office said yesterday.
Specifically, the export revenue stood at 267.93 billion U.S. dollars, up 16.6 percent year-on-year, while the import revenue totaled 269.38 billion U.S. dollars, surging 28.2 percent.
The United States remained Vietnam’s biggest importer with turnovers of 76 billion dollars, followed by China with 44.2 billion U.S. dollars and the European Union with 31.7 billion U.S. dollars, said the office.
China is Vietnam’s largest exporter with 89.4 billion U.S. dollars of turnovers, followed by South Korea with 45.5 billion U.S. dollars and ASEAN with 33 billion U.S. dollars, according to the office.– NNN-VNA
BANGKOK — Before the pandemic effectively closed Thailand off to the rest of the world in March of last year, Bangkok’s Kin & Koff Café was perfectly placed to catch the throngs of tourists traipsing past the city’s gilded Grand Palace and its orbit of opulent temples.
In the capital of one of the world’s most popular holiday getaways, the resplendent grounds of the former royal residence were a must-see for most first-time visitors. Then came COVID-19, lockdown and a hard freeze on foreign tourists, decimating a pillar of Thailand’s economy — and the core of Kin & Koff’s client base with it.
So, like many in the business of catering to those tourists, owner Siripong Sanomaiwong welcomed the news that Thailand will start lifting lengthy quarantine mandates for some fully vaccinated foreigners on Nov. 1. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha announced the move Oct. 11 in a televised address.
“I think the government is [acting] the right way to open up because we cannot hide from the virus,” Siripong said on another slow day in his café opposite the palace walls.
“We must live together with the COVID; we must live together … in safety,” he added, reflecting the business community’s general mood of wary resolve.
Risk and reward
In his address, Prayut acknowledged the risks. He said daily COVID cases were “almost certain” to rise with new arrivals but insisted Thailand was prepared and had to cash in on the coming November-March high season having missed out on the last one.
“We will have to track the situation very carefully and see how to contain and live with that situation because I do not think that the many millions who depend on the income generated by the travel, leisure and entertainment sector can possibly afford the devastating blow of a second lost New Year holiday period,” he said.
The World Bank says tourism accounted for 20% of Thailand’s gross domestic product and more than 1 in 5 jobs in 2019, when some 40 million people visited the country. The government says Thailand will be lucky to see 100,000 visitors in 2021 and is aiming for 1 million through this high season.
The Tourism Council of Thailand, an industry body, says the lockdown has cost the country some 3 million tourist-linked jobs. Even so, most Thais may not be on board with the government’s timing.
In an online poll conducted by Thailand’s Suan Dusit Rajabhat University between Oct. 11 and Oct. 14, 60.1% of respondents said the country was not yet ready to reopen to tourists without quarantine mandates. They cited Thailand’s low vaccination rate as the main reason.
While Bangkok and the popular resort island of Phuket have fully vaccinated the large majority of locals, the fully vaccinated rate nationwide only recently topped 40%. New daily COVID cases peaked at nearly 22,000 in mid-August but have yet to dip below 7,000. Thailand has recorded about 1.88 million cases in all.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor of political science at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, said local polls can be unreliable but believed Suan Dusit’s latest effort frankly mirrored the popular mood.
“The sentiment on the ground is that the infection numbers are still high and the government’s vaccine management has been inept … [that] lives are still at risk and reopening too soon is still not optimal,” he said.
Positive thinking
The government hopes to allay those fears by opening up to only 46 countries at first, including major markets such as the United States and China, much of Europe and some Asian neighbors.
In addition to showing proof of vaccination and a negative test result before departure, visitors must have health insurance covering COVID for up to $50,000, download a tracking application and wait one night in a government-approved hotel for the results of a second test on arrival. If cleared, they will be free to roam the country. If not, they will have to spend more time in a hospital or approved hotel.
Siripong hopes that will be enough for his café to claw back by March about 40% of the business it had before the pandemic, and he’s confident the authorities can keep the virus in check.
Katenaphas Muattong is not so sanguine.
She left her catering job to help her parents run their small restaurant by the palace after the pandemic hit and their two employees had their wages cut and then quit. Tapping into online delivery services helped them survive, but business is still less than a third of what it was.
Katenaphas worries the government may apply the entry rules in what she called “Thai style,” explaining that to mean a lax attitude toward enforcement.
“On one [hand] we should open because business is going down, down,” she said. “But if we don’t have a good plan, we should wait.”
Turning the thoughts over in her mind a moment, she finally sided with the government and said Thailand should take the risk.
Vali Villa owner Val Saopayana is more of an avowed optimist.
Three years ago, the professional artist turned her childhood home into a boutique mid-range hotel a few blocks from Bangkok’s Khaosan Road, another popular tourist haunt packed with bars and clubs that once throbbed with dance music into the early morning hours. With nary a customer in sight one recent Friday afternoon, most of the strip was closed or boarded up, a microcosm of Thailand’s tourist sector writ large.
With Thailand now reopening to foreigners, Val is hopeful about reclaiming at least half of her pre-pandemic business by the end of this season.
“I have a good feeling that we’re going to be able to do it and the whole economy of Thailand is going to be better because I believe in the medical system and they try to do their best,” she said.
“We just hope that it will be back to normal very soon,” she added. “We have to believe and we have to have positive energy, and people are going to come.”
Reality check
The Association of Thai Travel Agents, another industry body, says “normal” will take a few more years, as some major markets such as China still mandate weeks of quarantine for travelers on their return.
“When you have that amount of quarantine days, it’s going to be a real limit for us. So, I think the opening, while we’re making great progress, it will very much depend on the origin countries’ levels of restrictions and quarantine days as well,” said ATTA board member Pilomrat Isvarphornchai.
She said the association was being “realistic” about the coming high season and forecast a 20% return to pre-pandemic business for inbound travel agencies, at least for those still open. The ATTA’s last member survey found that roughly half of them had closed during the past 19 months of lockdown, some for good.
“In terms of the economy, we are at that point now where we’re going to have to learn how to live with the pandemic, not just in terms of tourism but even opening up domestically, for example with restaurants, with retail stores. It needs to happen now,” Pilomrat said.
ROME — The G-20 Summit hosted by Italy kicked off Saturday in Rome, where leaders from the world’s major economies discussed issues of mutual concern, including pandemic recovery and climate change.
The red carpet was rolled out at “La Nuvola,” Rome’s convention center, as Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi welcomed U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders amid strict COVID-19 protocols.
This weekend’s summit is the leaders’ first face-to-face meeting in two years, following last year’s virtual summit hosted by Saudi Arabia. Notably absent are Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. They will join virtually, citing pandemic concerns at home.
Global minimum tax
On day one, G-20 leaders voiced their support for a global corporate minimum tax deal agreed to by finance ministers from 136 countries earlier this month after four years of negotiations led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The deal would mean a sweeping overhaul of international tax rules. Under the deal, countries will apply a minimum global corporate tax rate of 15% for companies with annual revenues of more than $870 million, while large multinational companies must pay taxes where they operate, not just where they are headquartered.
“The president emphasized the importance of this historic deal during his intervention,” a senior administration official said.
“G-20 members are right to celebrate this deal,” said Matthew Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. The question is whether and how soon G20 members can implement the agreement within their respective domestic legal frameworks.
“That’s going to be, frankly, quite challenging in the United States and several other countries,” said Goodman.
Pandemic response and prevention
On Friday, G-20 health and finance ministers released a communique committing to bringing the pandemic under control globally as soon as possible, and strengthening collective efforts to prepare for, prevent, detect, and respond to future pandemics. The communique says the G-20 will take all necessary steps needed to advance global goals of vaccinating at least 40% of the population in all countries by the end of 2021 and 70% by mid-2022, as recommended by the World Health Organization.
The ministers announced the formation of a new panel to improve the global response to future pandemics but did not specify any funding for the task force. They could not reach agreement on a separate financing mechanism proposed by the U.S. and Indonesia to prepare for future pandemics.
“We’re looking for not the ultimate final product of a financing mechanism or the ultimate final product of a taskforce or a board that would operate as kind of a global coordinating body going forward,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told VOA aboard Air Force One on Thursday. “So the hope is to have in the communiqué a statement of intent that we will work towards these two outcomes.”
Climate change
On Sunday, G-20 leaders will shift their focus to climate change. From Rome, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the summit an opportunity to “put things on track” ahead of the UN COP26 climate conference in Glasgow that G-20 leaders will participate in following their Italy meeting.
“There is a serious risk that Glasgow will not deliver,” Guterres said. “The current nationally determined contributions — formal commitments by governments — still condemn the world to a calamitous 2.7-degree increase,” he said referring to the pledge made at the 2015 Paris Climate Accord to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, ideally to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Countries are expected to announce more emissions reduction pledges to reach the target of net-zero emissions by around mid-century. But some analysts are skeptical of these voluntary commitments that come without enforcement mechanisms.
“There’ll be pledges, the best-case scenario something along the lines of what we saw in Paris,” said Dalibor Rohac, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Rohac added that to make progress on climate change, the world needs tangible actions. “Rather than to proceed with this habit of looking for a Big Bang multilateral solution, to pursue sound domestic policies that accelerate decarbonization.”
A key issue to watch is whether G-20 members can agree on coal. The U.N. has called for wealthy countries to phase out coal by 2030, but G20 environment ministers have failed to agree on a timeline.
Guterres also called on wealthy nations to uphold commitments to provide funding to help developing nations mitigate the impacts of climate change. Under the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, wealthy nations pledged a minimum of $100 billion per year in climate funding to lower-income countries. Much of that money has not been delivered. enario something along the lines of what we saw in Paris,” said Dalibor Rohac, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Rohac added that to make progress on climate change, the world needs tangible actions.
“Rather than to proceed with this habit of looking for a big-bang multilateral solution, to pursue sound domestic policies that that accelerate decarbonization,” he said.
A key issue to watch is whether G-20 members can agree on coal actions. The U.N. has called for wealthy countries to phase out coal by 2030, but G-20 environment ministers have failed to agree on a timeline.
Guterres also called on wealthy nations to uphold commitments to provide funding to help developing nations mitigate the impacts of climate change. Under the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, wealthy nations pledged a minimum of $100 billion per year in climate funding to lower-income countries. Much of that money has not been delivered.
Cambodia’s unusually firm rebuke of the Myanmar military regime this week, ahead of assuming leadership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for 2022 raises pressure on Phnom Penh to maintain the firm stance the bloc has taken against the junta in recent months, analysts say.
With Brunei the rotating leader for 2021 as host, ASEAN leaders opened the regional bloc’s annual summit online on Tuesday without Myanmar, which stayed away to protest its junta chief Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing being barred from the meeting.
In an unprecedented move earlier this month, ASEAN foreign ministers barred the coup leader from the summit, saying he backtracked on agreements on accepting a special envoy and talking with opponents during an emergency meeting of ASEAN leaders about Myanmar’s political crisis in Jakarta in April.
During the summit on Tuesday, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen spoke critically of Myanmar, according to Reuters news agency, saying that ASEAN had not expelled the country from the gathering, but that the Naypyidaw junta had “abandoned its right.”
“Now we are in the situation of ASEAN minus one,” he said. “It is not because of ASEAN, but because of Myanmar,” said the strongman who has ruled Cambodia since 1985 and led it into the bloc in 1999.
Hun Sen was handed the ceremonial gavel from Brunei appointing Cambodia on Thursday, the same day his office shared a twitter commentary that pointed to a softer line toward Myanmar by ASEAN, a 10-nation group with a reputation for placing internal comity and unity over discussing the internal affairs even of errant member states.
“Cambodia should set up an ad hoc taskforce to work with Myanmar’s conflicting parties quietly or through back-door diplomacy to share lessons and experiences of peacebuilding and win-win policy implementation for Myanmar,” said the commentary by the government affiliated Agence Kampuchea Presse (AKP).
“Helping to resolve the political crisis in Myanmar is not an interference in the internal affairs of the country, but an expression of ASEAN solidarity and mutual assistance based on mutual respect for sovereignty,” it said.
When asked by RFA’s Khmer Service about why the Office of the Cambodian Prime Minister had linked to the AKP commentary, government spokesman Phay Siphan said the piece was “purely the personal view” of an official from the Royal Academy of Cambodia and does not reflect the government’s position.
It is “too early to say anything,” the spokesman said, adding: “Hun Sen will try his best to resolve Myanmar’s crisis.”
Phay Siphan’s comments followed a Reuters report that Cambodian Foreign Affairs Minister Prak Sokhonn said that Cambodia would keep up pressure on Myanmar’s junta to open dialogue with its opponents.
Nine months after the military’s Feb. 1 coup, security forces have killed 1,220 civilians and arrested at least 7,049, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners—mostly during crackdowns on anti-junta protests.
Myanmar’s military ruler Min Aung Hlaing presides over an army parade on Armed Forces Day in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, March 27, 2021. Reuters
‘Constructive engagement’
ASEAN’s principle of non-interference in the affairs of its members allows the bloc to turn a blind eye to abuses committed by its member states, who can act with relative impunity, critics have long held.
The group is no stranger to troubled dealings with Myanmar’s military, or with coups among members, including in Cambodia.
Myanmar was admitted to ASEAN along with Laos in an expansion of the group in 1997 that was supposed to include Cambodia, but Phnom Penh’s accession was derailed by Hun Sen’s coup against his partner in the country’s shaky coalition government formed after decades of war.
ASEAN’s approach to the military regime in Myanmar in the 1990s and the first decade of this century — a period of overturned elections, atrocities, and economic mismanagement — was known as “constructive engagement” and was widely criticized as enabling the generals to prolong their destructive rule.
Some analysts are confident that Cambodia can maintain the uncharacteristically strong stance ASEAN took in barring Min Aung Hlaing from the 2021 summit.
Sihasak Phuangketkeow, the former permanent secretary of Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a webinar on “Thailand and the Myanmar Crisis” on Wednesday that he is “very optimistic that Cambodia will continue, what … ASEAN has been doing … and I’m sure that we’ll see more activism on the part of Cambodia.”
“[I]f Myanmar decides to turn their back on ASEAN, and we’ll have a situation like we had at the summit, where … we will be missing a very important member of the ASEAN family,” Sihasak, who is also the former Thai ambassador to Japan, told the gathering, hosted by the ISEAS Yushof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
“In the end, there’s only so much that we can help with Myanmar unless Myanmar decides to help itself first.”
Sihasak said he believes that ASEAN was too complacent about developments in Myanmar, and even “defended” the country “for quite a long time.”
“And I think it’s difficult for us to continue defending Myanmar at all costs, really,” he said.
Cambodian political analyst Seng Sary told RFA that Cambodia must ensure that it has the backing of all ASEAN members as it seeks a resolution to the situation in Myanmar.
“ASEAN members think of different benefits [to membership] and have different political agendas. The bloc must resolve the issues through mutual respect,” he said.
Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service with contributions by Subel Rai Bhandari and Shailaja Neelakantan for BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Taiwan’s foreign minister Friday called on the European Union to strengthen business ties with the democratic island through a bilateral investment agreement.
Joseph Wu made the remarks while calling in to an Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) conference in Rome, meant to be a demonstration on the sidelines of the G20 summit held there.
He said that while the EU invests heavily in Taiwan, not much investment goes the other way
“And therefore we think we need to make a balance, We need to have a mechanism to encourage the Taiwanese businessmen to look at Europe as a potential market for them,” Wu said in response to a question about how to improve relations between the EU and Taipei.
“And I think the best way to do it is through a bilateral investment agreement, or BIA,” he said.
Wu is currently on a tour of Europe that took him to Slovakia and the Czech Republic. He could not be present for the IPAC event in Italy because he was in Brussels for undisclosed reasons.
Wu recounted how in 2015 both sides held discussions of a bilateral investment agreement (BIA), but the EU decided to shelve the agreement because many countries in Europe favored inking a BIA with mainland China first.
“And they [wouldn’t] discuss with Taiwan before their agreement with China is concluded. In a sense, Taiwan [was] being held hostage,” Wu said.
As the European Parliament has decided to table discussion on the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), now would be a good time to assess the possibility of an agreement with Taipei, he said.
Talks on a BIA are in their infancy, so the exact form a potential deal would take could resemble a free trade agreement according to some Taiwanese officials, while others like Wu see it more like an investment deal.
Wu also thanked the EU for adopting its first EU-Taiwan political relations and cooperation report earlier in October.
The report suggested it would be beneficial for the EU to strengthen ties with Taiwan and encourage the island’s cooperation in the international sphere. It also envisioned the EU as actively promoting stability and peace between Beijing and Taipei.
“The rise of the People’s Republic of China as led by the Chinese Communist Party is the defining challenge for the world’s democratic space. This warrants us working more closely together,” Wu said.
Wu also urged the international community to not allow Beijing to act aggressively to enforce its territorial claims in the South China Sea when asked about increased Chinese militarism there.
“The freedom of navigation operations by certain countries through the South China Sea is a way to reinforce that the area should be free from the Chinese control or excessive maritime claim,” Wu said.
“And I would argue that if we can continue these freedom of navigation operations more often and in higher intensity, I think the countries in that region will notice that the Chinese way of excessive maritime claim is going to be disputed.”
Taiwan’s foreign ministry has not revealed Wu’s itinerary in Brussels. An EU spokesperson told the Taipei-based CNA news service that he might have informal meetings “at a non-political level,” but did not comment further.
Taiwan’s diplomatic interactions in Europe during Wu’s tour angered Beijing.
“China firmly opposes official interactions of any form or nature between the Taiwan region and countries having diplomatic ties with China. China’s position on this issue is clear,” the Chinese mission to the EU said in a statement.
China’s relentless exploitation of natural resources in Tibet – logging, mining and dam-building – has undermined Tibetan traditions and devastated an ecosystem that supports a third of humanity as the source of Asia’s major rivers, Tibetans and environmentalists said on the eve of a United Nations climate summit.
As world leaders converged on Glasgow, Scotland for the 26th U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26), the Dalai Lama emphasized the stakes for the most populous continent in an appeal to “pay more attention” to the role of Tibet’s ecology and the global climate crisis.
“At least in Asia, Tibet is the ultimate source of water,” the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said in a videotaped message ahead of the Glasgow meeting, which opens Sunday for two weeks.
“All major rivers from Pakistan’s Indus River, India’s Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, China’s Yellow River, Vietnam’s Mekong River flow from Tibet,” noted the 86-year-old Buddhist monk.
The Dalai Lama won the Nobel Peace Prize for embodying Tibetans’ quest for self-determination, human rights, and preservation of their faith and culture under decades of rule from Beijing – problems that have mostly gotten worse since he won the award in 1989.
His message to Glasgow urged the world to look at the bigger picture.
“We should pay more attention to preservation of Tibet’s ecology. This is not only in the interest of 6 – 7 million Tibetans, but of [all] people in the area,” added the Dalai Lama.
Many of China’s 1.4 billion people, India’s slightly smaller but faster growing population of 1.3 billion, 175 million Southeast Asians, and hundreds of millions of residents of Pakistan and Bangladesh depend on waters from rivers that originate in the Himalayas.
A woman walks in a purpose-built village for Tibetans who have been relocated from high-altitude locations as part of what the authorities call a poverty alleviation program during a government organized tour in Gongga County, Lhoka City, near Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region, China, October 14, 2020. (Reuters)
Third Pole
The Himalayas, a sparsely populated mountain range that separates the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau, is described by travel writers as the “Roof of the World.”
Scientists call the vast, mountainous region the “Third Pole” because of the global significance of its glacial ice pack – a quarter of which has been lost since 1970, with more glaciers threatened to disappear by 2100.
The global impact of these changes makes it “even more important to discuss Tibet’s ecology at the Glasgow summit,” says Mirza Rahman, a PhD candidate in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati.
“Tibet’s ecology is very important to climate security,” she told RFA.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is not joining his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden and other world leaders in Glasgow, and Beijing’s submission to COP26 has been described by analysts as a repackaging of previous year’s targets for reducing carbon emissions – driven by Xi’s concern about a slowing economy.
But environmental watchdogs and rights groups say Xi and China cannot be left off the hook at Glasgow, and Beijing’s efforts to present itself as a leader in the fight to address climate change must be viewed in light of its status as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and the policies it has pursued in Tibet.
“When China is actually saying ‘we will take a leadership role in global climate management,’ we have to also basically ask ‘what are the interventions they are making in Tibet?’” the researcher Rahman said.
Gap between rhetoric and action
China’s policies “need serious reconsideration” and a recognition of the links between environmental conservation, sustainable livelihoods, and human rights, said the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD).
“China’s policy responses for climate change mitigation and adaptation undermine sustainable development and traditional livelihood sources on the Tibetan Plateau,” the advocacy group said a recent report.
“Relocating and resettling nomadic pastoralists from highlands to heavily surveilled urban fringes means an end to collective ownership of upper pastures as common pool resources managed by customary decision making,” it said.
The report, “Unsustainable Futures,” calls on COP26 delegates to focus on “the great gap between China’s rhetoric and its actual plans to build many more coal-fired power stations” and other development programs.
Days before Glasgow, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) advocacy group reminded delegates that Tibet is warming two-to-four times faster than the global average, accelerating glacial and permafrost melt and exacerbating desertification, which results in the loss of a major world carbon sink.
China typically ignores or rejects reports from Tibetan groups, which Beijing views as separatists funded by foreign foes to destabilize the region, but activists say recent U.N. reports must be heeded.
In August, a key report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), found that greenhouse gas emissions must be slashed by at least half this decade to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, such as extreme weather, irreversible ecosystem shifts, loss of life and economic hardship.
Tibetans point to the 2019 version of the IPPC report, issued at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, which carried a litany of apocalyptic projections about Tibet.
Lakes west of the Tanggula Mountains on the central part of the Tibetan Plateau reflect changes caused, in part, by retreating glaciers. The two largest lakes – Chibzhang Co and Dorsoidong Co – have grown larger as the glaciers have shrunk. (Some differences between the images are due to changes in snow cover). The two lakes have different colors in the 1987 photo because they were separated by a strip of land and had two sources of meltwater. The lakes merged in the mid-2000s when rising waters inundated the strip of land. According to one team of researchers, the area of the lakes grew by 23 percent between 1976 and 2017. (NASA)
‘Pay more attention’
The 2019 report identified the Tibetan Plateau is among the high-altitude regions on Earth warming at triple the rate of the rest of the planet, with regional temperature increases of between 3.5 and 6 degrees Celsius by 2100.
The melting of glaciers is likely to accelerate as a result of warming, bringing a more extreme precipitation across the Himalayas and Tibet, and worse flooding downstream in populous China, India and other neighbors, the IPCC report said.
The warming will also thaw and degrade the permafrost of Tibet, threatening plants and animals key to the ecosystem, and destroying traditional livelihoods.
“Despite the fragility of the high-altitude ecosystem and the stark threats spelled out by the IPCC, China has intensified infrastructure construction across Tibet to further open up the landscape and extract Tibet’s natural resources. Such projects include a network of strategic rail routes and major damming and hydropower projects, the effects of which are likely to be irreversible,” the ICT said after the 2019 report.
For Palmo Tenzin, advocacy and research staffer at the ICT in Germany who will attend the Glasgow meeting, the daily struggles of Tibetans under China’s rule can be closely linked to the major climate threats, and their traditional stewardship of the land should be studied.
“Tibetans speak not only as people struggling against occupation and environmental devastation, but also as people with unique and valuable insights into what a sustainable relationship between humankind and the environment can look like,” he told RFA.
“As more and more people wake up to the need to preserve our planet, we hope to find a receptive audience at COP26.,” added Tenzin.
Or, as the Dalai Lama put it: “Global warming, that is quite serious. We should pay more attention.”
Reported by Lobe for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
