|A boulder-strewn creek flows near the Tabyn-Bogdo-Ola mountain range on the Russia-China border [IGOR HEITMAN]
Kauai, Hawaii - Pristine wilderness in a remote corner of Siberia and
|A boulder-strewn creek flows near the Tabyn-Bogdo-Ola mountain range on the Russia-China border [IGOR HEITMAN]
Kauai, Hawaii - Pristine wilderness in a remote corner of Siberia and a Stone Age archaeological legacy notwithstanding, Russia and China are working furiously to complete a natural gas pipeline agreement that would see the fragile Ukok Plateau in Russia's Altai Republic forced open to development, driving one more industrial stake into the heart of the earth's dwindling wild places.
The plot is familiar - giant multinational corporations want to develop a controversial gas pipeline - but the setting is anything but familiar. In a little-known border region of Russia's Altai Republic, where southern Siberia's Altai Mountains meet northwest China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and the frontiers of eastern Kazakhstan and western Mongolia, national boundaries form an enormous "X".
At the heart of this wild frontier, China's Kanas Nature Reserve and Siberia's Ukok Plateau share a 54km border and an uncertain future.
On the Russian side, the Ukok Plateau houses rare plants, animals, life-giving ecosystems and important cultural sites. Will this generation witness its demise?
The snow-covered Altai Mountains are the only crossing between Russia and China west of Inner Mongolia, some 2,500km away. The Ukok Plateau is a near-mythic land of glistening blue lakes, rivers, glaciers, waterfalls, marshes and high steppe lands where Altai argali sheep, Saker falcons and snow leopards dwell. The plateau is critical in stabilising the climate, is a key Central Asian watershed, is a home to populations of endangered species, and is spiritually important to Altai indigenous groups.
In 1998, UNESCO made the area a World Heritage site. But today, this vast region is threatened by a natural gas pipeline which, if built, would slice down the middle of the Altai Republic through the fragile Ukok Plateau, potentially destroying aeons of natural and cultural wealth.
In 2006, Russia's state-owned Gazprom - the world's largest producer of natural gas - and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed an agreement aimed at implementing construction of a proposed 2,600km natural gas pipeline running from northwest Siberia southward through Altai, over the Kanas Pass into China.
Thirty years of business - at what cost?
Gazprom indicates China's demand for natural gas could reach 400 billion cubic metres by 2020 and says it possesses "sufficient gas resources and capabilities" to add China to its already vast portfolio. According to a 2010 agreement between Gazprom and CNPC, Russia's gas giant would supply 30 billion cubic metres of gas per year for 30 years, with exports forecast to begin in late 2015.
Now, as Gazprom and CNPC work towards the endgame of pipeline negotiations, opponents to the project are accelerating their efforts. If the pipeline follows the proposed route it will bisect a region that is culturally and spiritually essential to indigenous Altai peoples, most notably the Telengit, a traditionally semi-nomadic population for whom Altai and Ukok has been a land of physical and spiritual sustenance for millennia.
|This Russian UNESCO World Heritage Site is threatened by the development of a natural gas pipeline [IGOR HEITMAN]
It is here that Telengit grazed their animals, buried their dead and paid homage to their ancestors, as evidenced by the region's many kurgan burial mounds and other important archaeological sites dating back to the Stone and Bronze ages.
Snow leopards and sacred peaks
The windswept Ukok Plateau, a literal and figurative Shambala, is home to the Five Sacred Peaks, among Siberia's highest. Both the plateau and Altai region serve as a primary watershed between central Asia and the Arctic.
The Altai Mountains are home to the Biya and Katun rivers, which converge to form the Ob river system, among the world's longest. The plateau and surrounding high-altitude wetlands and forests are vital for providing fresh water to millions.
Last October