Although the number of visitors heading for Tibet is expected to rise significantly their presence was unlikely to have an unfavorable impact on the local environment, a senior official of the Tibet Autonomous Region said in Lhasa on Tuesday.

Qiangba Punco, chairman of the regional government, said at a news conference that the operation of the Qinghai-Tibet railway would make tourism a cornerstone industry for Tibet.

The 1,956-km-long Qinghai-Tibet railway, which went into operation last Saturday, links Xining, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province and Lhasa, regional capital of Tibet. It’s the first railway to connect Tibet with other parts of China.

With the railway Tibet will see a daily flow of around 5,000 people entering the country which includes 3-4,000 train travelers, according to the regional tourism bureau.

"Tourism is itself a non-polluting industry," said Qiangba Punco. "It helps drive other industries and has little impact on the ecology."

People who’ll travel to Tibet by train will be mostly tourists or businessmen and few of them would be residents so they’d not change the permanent population of Tibet or put much pressure on the environment, he said.

The central government would invest 38.7 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion) in nature reserves, protect forests and prevent soil erosion, said Qiangba Punco. "The Tibetan people have been living here for generations and we will protect this land just as we take care of our eyes," he said.  

In 2005 Tibet received around 1.8 million tourists who generated revenues of nearly 2 billion yuan (US$250 million) for the country. The annual number of tourists to Tibet is expected to exceed 5 million by 2010.

(Xinhua News Agency July 5, 2006)