This would not only help to alleviate poverty, but also generate more funds available for other projects aimed at preserving Tibetan culture and the environment.

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For a start, says Robbie Barnett, a prominent scholar and defender of Tibetan culture at Columbia University, most archaeologists agree that the plateau has been settled for much longer than that.

ECONOMIST: Banyan: Splittism on the roof of the world | The

Tibetan sources in Dharamsala say the Karmapa pleaded to be allowed to stay in India, birthplace of Buddhism, because Beijing's repression in Tibet was making it difficult for him to pursue religious studies and maintain Tibetan culture.

CNN: The Great Escape

While the U.S. accepts that Tibet is part of the People's Republic of China, for decades our country has supported Tibetan autonomy, especially in culture and religion.

WSJ: Paula J. Dobrianksy: The Realist Case Tibetan Autonomy

Tawang is a centre of Tibet's Buddhist culture, with one of the biggest Tibetan monasteries outside Lhasa.

ECONOMIST: India and China

Tibetan health-care traditions and their links to landscape and culture are central to the medicinal plants conservation programme supported in Shey Phoksundo National Park in the alpine meadows of the Eastern Himalaya, Nepal.

UNESCO: Communication and Information