News Desk
China’s spectacular economic rise over the past forty years has brought prosperity to millions of its citizens, yet the costs to the environment have remained profound. Air, soil, and water degradation inside China continue to spill across its borders, threatening fragile ecosystems and communities in neighbouring regions. The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau serve as Asia’s great water reservoirs, feeding rivers that sustain nearly two billion people. Changes to these landscapes, whether caused by greenhouse gas emissions, industrial activity, or poor land management, have reshaped livelihoods downstream. Traditional measures such as gross domestic product (GDP), however, fail to capture these costs, as they exclude the depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation from their calculations. This gap led to the development of the international green national accounting system in the 1970s, designed to subtract such costs from GDP to provide a more accurate picture of economic welfare. The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) advanced this approach through the Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting System (SEEA), revised in 1993, 2003, and 2012, offering a framework for measuring growth in a way that reflects both prosperity and its environmental price.
China remains the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, producing about 27 per cent of global carbon dioxide in 2023. Coal has provided more than half of its energy needs, and large industrial belts release sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine particulates that are carried by winds toward the Himalayan region. These pollutants mix with dust from desertified areas of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, settling as black carbon on snowfields and glaciers. The darkened surfaces absorb more sunlight and melt faster, contributing to the retreat of ice across the Third Pole. Studies by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development have estimated that Himalayan glaciers could lose as much as one third of their volume by the end of the century, even if global temperature rise is kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Yet, the damage is not confined to atmospheric and glacial systems alone. Water pollution within China has also imposed severe costs on public health. Assessment studies highlight the human health damage caused by inaccessible clean tap water, with hazard endpoints ranging from waterborne infectious diseases such as hepatitis, dysentery, typhoid fever, and cholera, to chemically induced illnesses including cancers of the circulatory and digestive systems. While no precise dose-response relationship has yet been established, the China Environmental Cost Model (ECM/VEHR), developed by the World Bank and the former State Environmental Protection Administration, underscores the scale of harm, linking environmental degradation directly to human well-being.
Logging, infrastructure projects and intensive grazing in Tibetan areas have reduced vegetation cover, loosened soils and changed river behaviour over the past few years. Although Beijing has restricted commercial timber cutting and invested in tree planting, enforcement has often remained inconsistent in remote valleys. Hydropower construction along the upper Brahmaputra and Mekong by China, for instance, has altered sediment flows and seasonal discharge. Large reservoirs have trapped fertile silt and can potentially release water suddenly during peak monsoon, increasing the risk of floods in the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam along with downstream Bangladesh. Similar concerns have also been raised over new schemes planned on tributaries that rise in Qinghai and western Sichuan.
Mining and waste from industrial zones have created further hazards too. Copper, chromium and lithium deposits in Tibet are valuable for Chinese manufacturing but poorly monitored extraction has led to leaks of heavy metals into rivers. Sampling along the Lhasa River has revealed traces of arsenic near mine sites. Wastewater from factories in Qinghai too has often entered tributaries that feed Nepal’s Karnali basin.
Nepal, a bordering country to China, is increasingly feeling these pressures. Hydropower plants depend on predictable stream flows, yet glacial retreat and erratic snowmelt have altered river regimes. Tourism in the Everest region has also suffered as landscapes lose stability and avalanches become more frequent. The growing number of glacial lake outburst floods, such as those linked to Tsho Rolpa, have significantly endangered villages and infrastructure.
Tibet, although under Chinese control, has experienced the environmental costs of national policies as well. Overstocking of livestock and urban expansion have degraded grasslands and wetlands, forcing nomadic herders to move or reduce their flocks.
India, lying downstream of many Himalayan catchments, faces heavier floods during intense rainfall and reduced flows during the dry season. Farmers in Assam and Bihar depend on the Brahmaputra and Ganga for irrigation, and any disruption to their flow threatens food security. Air quality in the Indo-Gangetic Plain remains among the worst in the world, and pollutants from Chinese industrial belts add to the burden when winds carry haze across the mountains.
China has launched several domestic initiatives, including a “war on pollution,” pilot carbon markets and a pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Progress, however, has stayed uneven and many remote areas remain beyond strict oversight. Cross-border governance on air and water issues is still limited. Data sharing on dam operations or river flows has remained irregular, and downstream countries often receive little notice before sudden releases or flood events. There is considerable scope for building stronger mechanisms through platforms such as a trilateral dialogue between China, Nepal and India as well as commissioning joint research on glaciers, real-time monitoring of water levels and agreements to reduce black carbon emissions could benefit all sides.
Environmental degradation in China is therefore not only a domestic challenge but also a regional concern. The warming of the Tibetan Plateau, heavy-metal contamination from mines, shifts in river discharge and airborne particulates continue to threaten the ecological security of Nepal, Tibet and India. Protecting the Himalayan water towers will require better enforcement of China’s environmental standards and sustained cooperation with its neighbours. The region’s shared rivers and mountains bind its people together, and safeguarding them remains essential for long-term stability and prosperity.
