Members of Burmese dictator Than Shwe’s entourage during a 2004 trip to New D

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Source: TreeHugger

In the latest environmentally-themed release from Wikileaks, published by The Guardian but not yet on the Wikileaks Cable Viewer at the time of this writing, it's been revealed that the Dalai Lama told the US ambassador to India that the focus of the international community should be on climate change and environmental issues in Tibet for the next 5-10 years, rather than on the political situation there.

His Holiness was reported as saying "Melting glaciers, deforestation and increasingly polluted water from mining were problems that cannot wait, but the Tibetans could wait five to ten years for a political solution."

In their meeting, the ambassador reported, the Dalai Lama criticized China's energy policy, saying dam construction in Tibet had displaced thousands of people and left temples and monasteries underwater.

He recommended that the Chinese authorities compensate Tibetans for disrupting their nomadic lifestyle with vocational training, such as weaving, and said there were "three poles" in danger of melting - the north pole, the south pole, and "the glaciers at the pole of Tibet".

Read more: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/12/wikileaks-dalai-lama-tibet-environmental-problems-cannot-wait-politics-can.php