Look in most atlases today and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find the name 'Tibet'. It has been replaced with 'Xizang' or 'Tibet Autonomous Region'. Closer inspection will reveal that former Tibetan place-names such as Shigatse have been changed to more Chinese sounding Xigatse. This is no accident, Communist China has a 'Geographical Place-Names Committee' whose task is to invent Chinese place names to replace those in areas such as Tibet and East Turkestan; it is part of a deliberate attempt to present Tibet as a bona-fide part of China. Sadly, some leading western map publishers and geographical institutions are assisting this deception by publishing Sinocised maps of Tibet. Even the respected National Geographic seems willing to promote this fiction and despite several appeals appears unwilling to show Tibet as a distinct territory in its publications.
Situated between longitudes 78 degrees 24' and 104 degrees 47' East and latitudes 26 degrees 2' and 40 degrees 3' north Tibet lies within the heart of the Asian continent. It is a huge country of some 2.7 million square km with an average altitude of 4000m above sea level which forms the major part of the highest mountain ranges on earth, the Himalayan-Hindu Kush region. It is an incredibly sensitive environment providing a stunning collection of diverse habitats, wildlife and climatic regions ranging from high cold steppe; montane deserts; tropical montane forests; and alpine meadows. Tibet is also the source of several of Asia's great rivers including, the Mekong, Bramaputra, Yangstse, and Indus; all of which are fed by an average rainfall of 100 mm in the north of the country to over 1000 mm in the Southeast.
With many natural resources Tibet's unique environment has suffered the consequences of insensitive commercial exploitation by China which views Tibet as a 'treasure house' to take advantage of. Tibet is rich in minerals; including considerable reserves of gold, oil, gas, bauxite, copper, tin and lithium, all of which have, and are, being mined without consideration of the local environment. The result are reports showing alarming levels of pollution (China is well known for its appalling record on pollution control) affecting hydrography, the atmosphere and soils.
Meanwhile, once verdant coniferous forested areas such as Kongpo in Southeast Tibet have been transformed into a lunar-like landscape. In 1949 Tibet's forests covered 221,800 sq km. By 1985 that had been reduced to 134,000 sq km, almost half have disappeared. Across the valleys and gorges of south east Tibet deforestation is causing severe problems of erosion and landslides, while levels of silt in rivers such as the Yangstse have reached the highest world levels. The effects have now reached beyond Tibet's borders and are acknowledged to be a prime factor in devastating floods in China, India and Bangladesh. Such vegetation cover is also thought to influence land and surrounding atmospheric temperatures which help regulate the vital Asiatic Monsoon. Deforestation on such a massive scale is causing serious alarm among climatologists and environmentalists, who consider this pattern may be dangerously destabilised.
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Maps adapted from "Tibet the Facts" by Paul Ingram, 1990