Please sign Petition! Save Tibet’s Nomads’ Land: Kokoxili Urge #UNESCO World Heritage Committee to vote for #Tibet ‘s #Nomads Homeland
Please sign Petition! Save Tibet’s Nomads’ Land: Kokoxili https://actions.tibetnetwork.org/save-tibets-nomads-land-kokoxili-tibet-society
Approving Kokoxili as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, without a detailed survey of the impacts on Tibet’s nomadic people, would be tantamount to supporting China’s detrimental policies that remove Tibetan nomads from their traditional homelands, and give greater State control over Tibetans’ movements and lifestyle.TAKEACTION: Urge UNESCO World Heritage Committee to vote for Tibet’s Nomads’ Land.
By taking Action you will be sending a urgent message to each of the 21 UNESCO World Heritage Committee Members.
Note: Kokoxili is pronounced Kock-O-Shilly
Kokoxili, a vast area of Tibet the size of Denmark and the Netherlands combined, is a unique landscape filled with beautiful lakes and freshwater wetlands that supports a distinct biodiversity and – historically – thousands of Tibetan nomads.
China, the country that has illegally occupied Tibet for over six decades, has nominated Kokoxili (Chinese: Hoh xil) for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List, calling it a “No Man’s Land”. To some it may seem like a positive step to protect this fragile area, but history tells us that this is not China’s plan.
China’s nomination of Kokoxili denies the historic evidence of Tibetan nomads and ignores the essential part Tibetans have played in sustaining this landscape.
UNESCO’s 2017 Convention will take place in Krakow, Poland from 2 to 12 July.
On the agenda of the World Heritage Committee (WHC) is a nomination by China to inscribe a large area of Tibet known as Kokoxili (Chinese: Hoh Xil) in Tibet on to the World Heritage List.
The area of Kokoxili is in the middle of three major nature reserves that increasingly exclude traditional Tibetan land use such as nomadic herding, situate the State as the sole agency of control, and encourage mass tourism and industrial development.
There is justified concern about the Chinese government’s nomination of Tibet’s Kokoxili (Chinese: Hoh xil) to the World Heritage list.
Kokoxili is a vast land of lakes, wetlands and wildlife and it is vital that this area is protected, but the protection of this unique ecosystem must have the full involvement of the Tibetan people, and Tibetan nomads in particular. Tibetan nomads have stewarded this land for over 9,000 years and have built a deep understanding that is essential to sustaining wildlife and maintaining healthy ecosystems and water resources that are relied upon across Asia.
China’s nomination has wrongly branded Kokoxili as a ‘no man’s land’ rather than a nomad’s land. A recent report by IUCN, which undertook a mission for UNESCO, reported that “there are 35 households of 156 herders within the nominated property, and 222 households of 985 herders and 250 other residents in the buffer zone.” Gabriel Lafitte has established this is a total of 1,391 humans, all Tibetan, living in the 75,000 sq kms designated area. In China’s 2000 Census, the Tibetan population of the two counties making up this area (Drito and Chumarleb) was around 47,000, suggesting that a huge swathe of Tibetan nomads were removed from the area prior to the initiation of the UNESCO World Heritage nomination process.
By denying the historic evidence of Tibetan human presence in the area China are putting forward information to the World Heritage Committee that not only ignores the essential part Tibetans have played in sustaining this unique landscape, but justifying inscription of the nominated area by wrongly claiming that human beings are not, and have not been, reliant on this area.
Tibet Society Campaign, Kokoxili ,UNESCO Nomination, UNESCO
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