The Questions China Won't Answer About The Tibet-Nepal Flood Disaster

This is not an attempt to politicize a tragedy. It is precisely because lives have been lost that hard questions must be asked. What role did human intervention play? Did infrastructure development alter the landscape or worsen the consequences? And, most importantly, what can be done to prevent similar tragedies?

Dismissing the floods, which video reports show crashing dramatically at Tibet's Gyirong Port, as purely a natural disaster would be a disservice both to those who lost their lives and to the fragile environment of the region. There is little doubt that China should accept some level of accountability.

For years, Beijing has pursued the so-called development and modernization of Tibet through an aggressive infrastructure buildout. Dams, highways, tunnels and railways are rising across Tibet, while similar projects are being pushed into Nepal. One particularly consequential example is the $167 billion hydropower system now under construction in Tibet.

The international community, however, has failed to respond to these developments or adequately assess their consequences. But Tibet is too fragile to be relentlessly reshaped by Chinese military and infrastructure ambitions.

The common official narrative emerging from China, as reflected in the state-run Global Times, is that“today's natural disasters are chain reactions driven by the superposition of climate change, geological vulnerability, cross-border watershed risks and infrastructure exposure.”

There is also the issue of information control. Reports say Chinese authorities are censoring videos of the floods online, and many accounts on the Chinese internet have cast calls for accountability as information warfare against China.

That is hardly a constructive response. Beijing's message after the tragedy was“people first, life first” - but such rhetoric means little without transparency and accountability.

The straightforward solution is to halt further infrastructure development in Tibet. But this is not an issue confined to Tibet - its consequences extend to every country that shares a border with it.

Treating the floods as a one-off tragedy would be a mistake; they may be only an initial warning of what lies ahead. Once again, Tibet has returned to the world's attention - a region whose religious and cultural suppression the international community has long chosen to ignore.

But can it afford to ignore the ecological damage that so-called infrastructure development may cause or worsen?