Meltdown in Tibet - A personal take on the politics of water in Tibet
A documentary film by Michael Buckley

 

 

8pm Tues, February 16, 2010

Members: Free,Non-members: 300 Baht

 

Meltdown in Tibet is a compellingly 40-minute documentary film which eases one in a casual and personal manner, through the story of what a traveller sees and encounters, into the tension of hugely significant environmental and political issues and realities that have in many cases already begun to affect the lives of millions in Asia.

Traveller and writer Michael Buckley who has toured Tibet and been involved in book research on Tibet for several decades, has rafted down the very rivers that are discussed – and filmed in their spectacular locations. He also secretly filmed some of the dams being built on these rivers by China.

The Himalayas are often referred to as the water tower of Asia, or the third pole, because of the rivers that are sourced from it and are the lifelines of the people of much of south and southeast Asia. The Himalayan environment is at risk from global warming – and also from large-scale damming and diversion by massive Chinese engineering projects.

To make way for the hydropower projects and for mining ventures, Tibetan nomads are being forced off their traditional grassland habitat and resettled in bleak villages, where they cannot make a decent living.

Meltdown in Tibet is particularly relevant in the larger contexts of China’s growing footprint in the region and beyond in its search for natural resources, energy and strategic trade and political linkages; and with global warming looming over the glaciers.

Meltdown in Tibet which is currently on the film festival circuit, won the Vasudha Award for best film on Environmental Issues: at IFFI Awards, Goa, India, in December 2009. It won the Golden Buffalo Award for best Social Issue Movie: from audience choice at Cambofest, Cambodia, in December 2009.

Michael Buckley will take questions from the audience after the screening, on the film and the issues it deals with.

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