To mitigate Himalayan disasters, Beijing must abandon its narrow, fear-based controls

The latest death toll of the Tibet-Nepal flood on Aug. 26 is now reported to be 1,453, with 5,200 still missing. But this reflects exclusively on the Nepali side. Under Chinese control, the Tibetan people are deprived not only of basic human rights in life, but the right to have their deaths openly recognized is denied by Beijing’s impulse to restrict information. 

On the day the flood struck, the Kyirong County administration in Tibet launched a WeChat alert system for residents to report missing family members. But after the registered missing reached 219 people, the authorities suddenly shut the system down, according to a reliable source in Kathmandu. Social media posts are blocked and citizens who contradict official death tolls, which stands at just 43, face fines of up to $150 or ten days in detention. 

Critics contend that these information controls are designed to shield the root causes of such disasters from scrutiny.

Himalayan communities and civil societies have called for an immediate halt to mega-dam construction. 

Critics and Chinese researchers alike have long tied regional disasters to Beijing’s aggressive dam-building across Tibetan rivers. But China continues to expand onto the Himalayas’ southern slopes, funding over a quarter of Nepal’s 570 hydropower projects.

This expansion is a clear geopolitical strategy. By financing Nepal’s power plants and supplying Chinese electric vehicles, Beijing aims to break Nepal’s traditional energy reliance on Indian oil and gas.

However, building massive reservoirs beneath fragile Himalayan glaciers where temperatures are already rising twice as fast as the global average, creates a serious environmental threat. Reservoirs pool immense volumes of surface water under........

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