The sheer scale of the Tibetan Plateau can be hard to fathom. Its mountain peaks stretch kilometres into the sky, while canyons below sink so deep that few people have ever been able to reach them.
It’s wild and spectacular but it’s also vitally important to about a fifth of the world’s population that relies on its immense freshwater reserves.
The Yarlung Tsangpo runs almost 4,000km from Tibet through India and Bangladesh. Supplied: China National Tourist Office in Singapore
The plateau’s glaciers feed 10 of Asia’s major rivers. For centuries, they have played a crucial role in sustaining life in the region.
As China seeks to meet its targets of becoming carbon neutral by 2060, it is turning its sights to some of the wildest reaches of the Tibetan Plateau, where it plans to build a hydropower plant so ambitious that it could produce three times as much power as Three Gorges.
The Great Bend is one of the most remote river stretches on the planet. Supplied: China National Tourist Office in Singapore
“This is the world’s most riskiest project. It’s technically the most difficult to build, ever, and it’s the most expensive project ever undertaken on any river anywhere in the world.
So in that context, I have always seen announcements like this with a bit of scepticism,” said Himanshu Thakkar, a water expert from the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.
What makes the project so risky is that the Great Bend sits atop what’s known as the Indo-Tsangpo Suture Zone. A seismically active region of the Himalayas where the tectonic plates of India and Eurasia meet.
Excellent read with interactive maps and a video here ... High in the Himalayas, China is planning to build the mother of all mega dams - ABC News