On July 8, Tsongon Tsering, 30, a Tibetan environmental defender, was released from the Ngaba County Detention Facility in Sichuan Province. Reportedly emaciated and in poor health, he had completed an eight-month sentence on baseless charges of “inciting social unrest” and “subverting the state.”
What had actually prompted this detention? In October 2024, he posted a video documenting illegal sand and gravel mining that identified the company responsible for the environmental degradation. The video went viral, and Tsongon Tsering was arrested.
His detention prompted a January 2025 intervention by United Nations human rights experts on the environment, free speech, and human rights defenders to Chinese authorities. The authorities responded, insisting Tsongon Tsering had been arrested for an unrelated scuffle – but also asserting that the company whose illegal mining he had helped expose had been fined.
Although his formal sentence is over, Tsongon Tsering remains under close surveillance.
Just days after Tsering Tsongon’s “non-release release,” on July 19 Chinese Premier Li Qiang traveled to Nyingtri, near the Tibet-India border, to oversee the groundbreaking for the Yarlung Tsangpo mega-dam. The Chinese government identified this and other dams as priority clean energy projects in the 2021-2025 Five Year Plan, and Chinese President Xi Jinping recently reiterated his view of renewable energy as central to addressing the climate crisis. When finished, the dam is expected to be the largest in the world, generating not just power but also an economic boost.
At the opening ceremony, Li referred to the dam as “the project of the century.” But he didn’t mention what mattered most to local residents: the prospects of submerging two dozen Tibetan villages or the staggering risks to cultural heritage such as monasteries, not to mention wildlife and the environment. He had nothing to say about the project’s lack of a publicly-available environmental impact assessment. He did not respond to retired geologist and environmentalist Fan Xiao, who in early 2024 described this dam as “not feasible” given the “geological and environmental risks.”
Li’s disinterest in the consequences of the dam for the local population is consistent with the Chinese government’s general disdain for human rights. Ordinary citizens like Tsongon Tsering try to use their rights – guaranteed under international law and China’s constitution – to free speech, a healthy environment, prior consent, and participation in political life to mitigate the damage to their communities. Representatives of the state literally, figuratively, and legally respond by bulldozing those concerns.
Tibetans routinely grapple with Beijing’s pervasive repression as authorities relentlessly try to control all aspects of their identity. Tibetan Buddhism is a key target: not content to wrongfully imprison untold numbers of monks and nuns on trumped-up charges for decades, or try to control faith through “management” of religion, Beijing also seeks to control the selection of the next Dalai Lama. In a horrifying effort to break familial and linguistic ties, Tibetan children as young as four are now compelled to attend state-run boarding schools whose staff and curriculum teach almost entirely in Chinese and deny opportunities to learn Tibetan culture. For thousands of years, Tibetan herders and pastoralists have herded and survived on the plateau, adapting to its climatic demands. Authorities have now largely forced them to move to fixed settlements, ironically in the name of Beijing’s campaign of “ecological civilization.”
Tsongon Tsering isn’t alone in facing state persecution for exposing environmental damage. In June 2025, Sherab and Gonpo, senior monks at Yena monastery in a Tibetan area of Sichuan Province, were slapped with sentences of four and three years, respectively, for having publicly opposed the Gangtuo dam in 2024.
In 2023, United Nations human rights experts pressed Beijing for information about nine Tibetan environmental activists detained for exposing illegal mining and protesting harms to sacred sites in Tibetan areas of Qinghai and Sichuan, and in what the Chinese government disingenuously calls the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). The detentions took place between 2010 and 2019, leaving these people vulnerable to torture and ill-treatment for years.
At times, these environmental protests directly implicate China’s own vision of clean energy. In 2013 and 2016 Tibetans faced repression for protesting new mines tapping into vast supplies of lithium – an element essential to the production of electric vehicles.
A pillar of addressing climate change is the concept of a “just transition” to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels in which affected communities are consulted, have a say in decision-making, and share in any benefits. But those questioning projects like the Yarlung Tsangpo dam are treated as enemies or, worse, criminals. In a truly just transition, Tsongon Tsering’s concerns would have been received and acted on consistent with international and Chinese law. Premier Li Qiang would be visiting Nyingtri to listen to – and pledge to take seriously – local concerns about new hydropower projects. Critics would be released from prison, and compensation would be paid.
These cases show the inseparable relationship of human rights and climate change. If Beijing’s claims to climate success rest on rampant human rights violations, it is a long way from a “just transition.”
