China plans to build world’s longest tunnel having a length of 1,000-km, for carrying water from Brahmaputra river in Tibet to the parched Xinjiang region. The proposed tunnel, which would drop down from the world’s highest plateau would provide water in China’s largest administrative division, comprising vast swathes of deserts and dry grasslands. The water would be drained from the Brahmaputra at Sangri county in southern Tibet, close to Arunachal Pradesh.
The water would be diverted from the Yarlung Tsangpo River in southern Tibet, which turns into the river Brahmaputra once it enters India, to the Taklamakan desert in Xinjiang. India, a riparian state, has already flagged its concerns to Beijing about various dams being built by it on Brahmaputra river, which is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo in China. Beijing has been assuring India and Bangladesh, which is also a recipient of the waters from the river, that its dams were of the run of river projects and not designed for storing water.
The Chinese government started building a tunnel in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau at the center of Yunnan province in August that will be more than 600-km long. In recent decades, Chinese government departments, including the Ministry of Water Resources, have come up with engineering blueprints involving huge dams, pumps and tunnels. The construction of the tunnel on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, the country’s second-highest, would make political leaders more confident about the Tibet-Xinjiang project and more likely to approve it.
Post Your Comments