Tragic yarn: India-China border spat hits global cashmere production
The world is at risk of a shortage of the highly prized and super-soft cashmere wool as pashmina goats that live on the "roof of the world" become caught up in the fractious border dispute between nuclear neighbors India and China.
Wool from pashmina goats, reared by nomads found in the inhospitable high-altitude chilly desert region of Ladakh, may be the most expensive and coveted cashmere on the globe.
But the shaggy creatures that provide the yarn are being pushed out of their grazing lands in the tussle between your world's two most-populous nations, triggering the death of thousands of kids this year, locals and officials said.
"In about three years when the newborn goats would have started yielding pashmina we'll visit a significant drop in production," Sonam Tsering of the All Changtang Pashmina Growers Cooperative Marketing Society told AFP.
There were numerous face-offs and brawls around Chinese and Indian soldiers above their 3,500-kilometre (2,200-mile) frontier, which includes never been properly demarcated.
The latest is concentrated in the Ladakh region, just opposite Tibet, with Indian officials claiming Chinese troops encroached over the boundary in recent weeks.
The alleged movements came after military fisticuffs at the eastern area of the border near Sikkim in May.
Some traditional grazing land is shed to China every year, Tsering said.
But this year, possibly the key winter grazing areas around KakJung, Tum Tselay, Chumar, Damchok and Korzok are out of bounds amid the heightened tensions, he added.
"It's devastating. The PLA (China's People's Liberation Army) employed to encroach into our aspect by the metres, but this time around they have come inside several kilometres," said Jurmet, a ex - elected official who has only 1 name.
"It was breeding season for the goats. Around 85 percent of their newborns passed away this year because large herds were pushed out in to the cold from the grazing lands (in February)," he advised AFP over the telephone from Leh, the region's capital city.
Tsering said Indian soldiers were blocking the pets from entering areas deemed seeing as sensitive, even though herders told him the Chinese army was pushing Tibetan nomads into their grazing areas.
Half a dozen residents associated with goat herding who actually AFP spoke to said that until a couple of years ago, they would cross the frozen Indus river for grazing during the winter, but those areas were now appearing encroached by China.
Meanwhile, communicating with the herders -- whose satellite phones supplied by Indian officials have already been withdrawn recently -- is becoming difficult, said Jurmet.
The huge number of deaths -- in the tens of thousands according to an area Indian official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity -- could devastate the sector in the coming years.
The goats yield some 50 tonnes of the best possible & most expensive feather-light cashmere wool every year, supporting the vital handicrafts industry in Kashmir that employs a large number of people.
Almost all of the wool is woven into yarn and exquisite shawls sold the world over from luxury store Harrods found in London to the Dubai Mall found in the United Arab Emirates, and may cost up to US$800 for just one scarf.
More than 1,000 groups of nomadic Changpa herders roam the great Changtang plateau at over 5,000 metres (16,400 feet), grazing some 300,000 Pashmina goats, african american yaks and horses through the summer months.
They proceed to the slightly lower altitude grazing lands straddling Tibet and along the mighty Indus river during harsh winter season of December to February when temperatures drop up to minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit).
The military tensions are the most current blow for the herders, who already are reeling from the impact of climate change which has produced winters harsher and summers drier.
Some have even abandoned their generations-long life-style to migrate to towns in Ladakh searching for other sources of income. - AFP
Source: www.thestar.com.my
