THE PANCHEN LAMA IN AUSTRALIA #2 of two blogs on the 30TH anniversary of the Panchen Lama’s 1986 tour of Australian sheep ranches, with time for a phone call from the Dalai Lama. When the Panchen Lama arrived in Australia, as guest of the Australian Parliament, he was, on paper, just one of a large […]
GLOBAL AGREEMENT ON WHAT DO ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE: FUTURE IMPACTS ON TIBET #1 in a blog series of 3 Around the world, everyone was relieved that the negotiations in Paris in December 2015 finally produced agreement on what, as a planet sharing a common fate, we can do to mitigate rapid climate warming. After decades […]
THE GLOBAL CARBON MARKET CONTEMPLATES INVESTING IN TIBET: A GUIDE TO THE NEW JARGON #2 in a blog series of 3 If the world arrives in Tibet, announcing corporate investment in carbon capture on the Tibetan Plateau, it will arrive wrapped in jargon. We might soon find we need to learn that jargon, and […]
CHINA’S PLAN TO SAVE TIBETANS FROM TIBET #3 in a blog series of 3 The world now has a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At a UN session in September 2015, all governments, including China, formally adopted these SDGs as their target for improving the quality of all human lives. How do these […]
Tibetans live in Tibet, to state the obvious. NonTibetans struggle with the altitude and extreme cold of the Tibetan Plateau, and a diet that has little to offer beyond fatty meat, dairy products and barley, surely conducive to heart disease. Han Chinese struggle to survive in Tibet, and struggle even harder to not only […]
CHINA FIRES UP CLIMATE TALKS In the first days of the Paris global climate treaty negotiations, China had a dream run, no longer the villain obstinately undermining any agreement, as happened in 2009 in Copenhagen, the last time the world tried to agree on what to do. China has had six years to project […]
HOLDING CHINA TO ACCOUNT FOR CLIMATE CHANGE When you talk with European diplomats about China and climate change, they sigh. Not only have China’s fast rising emissions negated all of Europe’s efforts at cutting emissions; China berates Europeans who raise the issue, calling them imperialists using climate as an excuse to try to hold China […]
TIBET AS CHINA’S BARGAINING CHIP IN PARIS As the global climate negotiations get under way in Paris, the planet awaits its man-made future. The Tibetan Plateau, not a net contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, also awaits outcomes from Paris, knowing full well it is a planetary front line, warming faster than almost any inhabited region […]
At the European Parliament on 16 November, at the European Union Diplomatic Corps (EU External Action) on 19 November, at the Belgian Foreign Ministry 19 Nov and the French Foreign Ministry 20 November, I had opportunity to pitch the case for Tibet, in a new way. Europe’s diplomats and parliamentarians deserve our sympathy when they […]
A BRIEFING FOR MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, BRUSSELS, 16 NOV 2015 BY GABRIEL LAFITTE At a time when we are preoccupied with immediate dangers, it is wonderful to find an audience willing to consider the long term. All too readily the long term danger is pushed aside by the threat before us now, […]