Today Mr. Schott reports on climigration as a globally troublesome and very real issue that has already worked it’s way into the new vocabulary of how we need to resolve some extremely difficult social, biological and cultural problems. Climate change/global warming is real, despite the loutish railings of a fringe and loud minority. What has been set in motion is neither adequately recognized nor understood, which means that it has been impossible to effectively address it.

In issues a little closer to my heart and current home, I am stunned – though not surprised – how the most sensitive part of the planet is being affected by the political interpretation of very real facts. Official actions have been aggressively implemented that support a political agenda rather than the search for acceptable solutions to some very difficult problems.

As the climate of the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau radically changes, the Chinese government has “helped” with climigration by forcing the dislocation of more than one (1) million Tibetans in Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces, removing them from their traditional grasslands into fringe, more officially controllable, areas. An indigenous nomadic ethnic group is being required to move into population centers where they live on top of each other, often with rules that disallow them their customary livestock or grazing lands, ensuring a rise in crime as job unavailability exacerbates the new social instability. While the official argument is that life on the grasslands is too difficult and educational opportunities are not available, there is no concession made for tradition, religion and human dignity.

This depopulation of a vast territory for unbridled mineral exploitation, and eco-tourism “with Chinese characteristics” is having terrible human results. No one’s making friends here, though there are plenty of people making lots of money, which always seems to be the trumping point. This is a creative use of the evolving weather/climate vocabulary to further state control! Perhaps there needs to be a new word for the oppressive displacement of a large and officially troublesome indigenous population by a predominant culture and controlling government under the pretense of ‘Saving the Planet.’

‘Planet rescue’ has become quite the buzz-concept over the last two decades. Unfortunately, global popularity of a word/term is usually a measure of the relative toothlessness of what, at first, seemed like a meaningful and good weave. (To wit: “Give peace a chance” is more of a fluff-brained, moneymaking jingle than a viable, constructive solution to war, despite the number of children who have learned the words over the past three decades. It hasn’t seemed to do much at all for stopping war, or stopping those folks who learned the words from paying their taxes, which is the life support of war-making efforts.)

I am not tossing climigration into that category, since it is obviously a very real problem that requires pointed attention that leads to creative solutions. But how it is hijacked and used to support other, more official agendas will be the bigger problem, especially for, though not restricted to, authoritarian states. (The past U.S. administration’s agenda exacerbated the problem by failing to deal with these pressing issues since they were not perceived as making the wealthy wealthier.) And especially as we watch the Tibetans as they slowly disappear before our eyes, as ‘climigration’ becomes the latest weapon in the arsenal of enforcing a political will to bend and break them into being “just like us.”

How a word is ‘activated’ will eventually determine its viability and half-life. The Chinese word for climigration is shengtai yimin, literally “ecological migration.” It’s the policy to “save the grasslands.”
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Related links from The People’s Daily:

470,000 Tibetan herds people in Sichuan to move into brick houses
Nomadic people in Qinghai to settle within five years
Nomadic Tibetans in NW China’s Gansu to settle into permanent homes

An official at the tourism office of northwestern Gansu province’s Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, home to a major monastery and large Tibetan communities, said the region was closed to foreigners and would not be open until late March. The official, who did not identify himself as is customary in China, did not say when the restrictions were put in place.

In Sichuan province, many areas open just two weeks ago are now closed to foreign tourists until April, according to officials at the Ganzi prefecture tourist bureau. Only three counties in that prefecture will remain open to foreigners. Qinghai province’s tourism bureau also said that many areas remain closed to foreigners.

No specific projected date for lifting the ban in Qinghai, though there’s that New Oriental Express blowing its whistle about leaving Beijing station on March 27, 2009, heading right through the heart of Qinghai. But I guess if you’re paying that much money you can go just about anywhere.