"Based on the available information and those satellite images, it is obvious that the accident is related to mining activities, rather than a pure 'natural disaster' as claimed by so-called experts," said Yang, a geologist specializing in the west China region.

China faces serious environmental challenges nationwide, and Tibet is no exception. As announced in the country's 12th five year plan, Tibet was slated to become a mining center and a hydropower engine. While the environmental impacts of mining are well-known, those of hydropower are less so.

"By 2020, the focus of hydropower development would be gradually shifted to Tibet's rivers," said Zhiyong Yan, the General Manager of the China Hydroelectricity Engineering Consulting Group in a 2011 interview for Newenergy.org. "Most of Tibet's hydropower is to be sent out for the whole country's energy needs," he added, noting that 20 percent of hydropower produced in China could eventually come from Tibet.

Hydropower is being developed in part to meet China's goal of ensuring that non-fossil fuel accounts for 15 percent of the energy supply by 2020. However, this not only poses geological risks, especially in southwest China, but also involves environmental degradation around project sites, population migration issues, and other less obvious environmental challenges.

"Hydropower is sometimes accompanied by and becomes a cheap energy supply for heavily polluting industries such as the mining industry," said Jun Ma, the director of the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs in Beijing, in his 2009 article, "Hydropower's Over-expansion Will Not Help Reduce Carbon Emissions." Indeed, the environment has been greatly impacted in both the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and the greater Tibetan region.

"We joked that the mountains in Tibet are becoming the bald heads of lamas, and cows are getting skinnier and skinnier," said Nyima*, a Tibetan who used to work in the TAR for an international NGO but now lives in New York. He recalled logs floating in the Ganzi River; massive logging operations in Tibet eventually brought about the flooding of the Yangtze River in 1998.

Tenzin visited his hometown in east TAR about one year ago and was shocked by the numerous hydropower projects on the river and the desertification near the projects. "I am not an expert on hydropower, but I do not need to become an expert to know it is wrong when you see hydropower stations just several or ten kilometers away from each other," he remarked.

When the Miga Tso hydropower project was delayed because Phuntsok Wangyal, the founder of the Tibet Communist Party, wrote to then-Premier Zhu Rongji, the head of local government blamed him for obstructing the development of his hometown. Indeed, the environmental problem in Tibet is often framed as a choice between environmental protection and economic development.