Tibet’s Climate Crisis: The Japanese Perspective
Astha Chadha
Japan has increasingly advocated for Tibetan human rights, often linking environmental vulnerability to cultural preservation. While Japan maintains a robust environmental diplomacy and has regularly engaged China on broader climate issues, Tokyo’s Tibet policy remains traditionally constrained due to the political sensitivity of Beijing’s sovereignty claims in the region.
This issue brief examines Japan’s nuanced approach to the escalating climate issues in Tibet, considering the region’s critical ecological role as the “roof of the world” and source of major Asian rivers. It outlines how extensive Chinese infrastructure development in the region, in conjunction with increasing militarization, has severely impacted Tibet’s fragile environment, threatened the downstream nations, and raised global climate security concerns. The research argues that Japan’s cautiously crafted Tibet policy seeks to balance the region’s environmental and human rights concerns with the complex strategic realities of the Sino-Japanese relationship, while favoring multilateral avenues for future engagement over Tibet’s climate crisis.
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