Abstract: Cattle dung, firewood, and crop straw have being used as survival
necessities by farmers and herdsmen for thousands of years in Tibet. Until
recently such biotic energy source still constitutes more than 92 per cent of
total rural energy consumption due to lack of petroleum, coal and new
alternative energy sources. As a result, environmental degradation such as land
desertification, soil erosion, grassland degradation and soil fertility
reduction is increasingly aggravated, the area of desertified land has
increased 1467.5 km^2 from 1991 to 1997. Degraded area of
grassland has reached 2.60 × 10^7 hm^2,
increased by 116.1% from 1987 to 1996. To prevent further deterioration of
eco-environment in Tibet great efforts should be made to make full use of ample
solar energy, wind energy and other biotic energy of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
The solar cooking stoves and solar hothouse; expand forest area and replace
existing abiotic energy sources with firewood forest should be popularized.
This is an urgent task to protect the eco-environment of Tibet
today.
Keywords: energy sources, eco-environment, degradation, rural, Tibet
