Chinese walker

The document now facing me, from the Kunming City Planning Commission Office, in the south-west Chinese province of Yunnan, is certainly worth a read. It states that in project planning for residential apartments under 40 storeys in downtown Kunming, “approval in principle is no longer required except as regards urban landscape considerations, requirements for aircraft clearance and controls on land construction sites%26hellip; detailed plans for %26lsquo;urban village` remodelling will, in line with this, undertake a comprehensive reorganisation.”

Let`s stop for a moment and consider the contemporary landscape of greater Kunming. There are now 330 areas classified as “urban villages” covering 18 square kilometres in the main city construction zone. Imagine, if you will, all this “remodelling” of the urban villages as a form of “strip integration”, which draws in neighbouring localities – even those that were outside the initial demolition and remodelling plans. A recent example is the urban village renovation of Panjiawan in Kunming. Although this urban village is only 39 acres (0.16 square kilometres), the area to be demolished is 129 acres (0.5 square kilometres).

Imagine now the picture of this future city: high-rise towers; every residence over 40-storeys high; the concrete forests and steel cities interspersed, of course, with green space and plazas. Imagine the legendary “Oriental Geneva”, the “bridgehead to south-east Asia”, the “Radiant Garden City Beautiful”.

This is no isolated case, but increasingly a model of Chinese urbanisation. I call this sort of city renovation and urbanisation “urban dinosaurisation”. The dinosaurs refer the enormous bodies formed by this urban expansion; to the unsustainability of this urban development; and also to their eventual, dinosaur-like fate. It can be fairly predict%26shy;ed that the cost of these dinosaurs will not be borne by those who created them: the city leaders, planners and real-estate developers. These people will leave early – and the price will be paid by those living in these areas.

It`s not going too far to call such cities dinosaurs. While satisfying a modernist desire to gaze over the human realm from some cosmic vantage point, such high-rise communities are hollow and will extinguish the intrinsic vitality of the city. In the cities of China today, vitality comes from three types of residential areas. First, traditional neighbourhoods like the hutongs of the Xuanwu and Chongwen districts of old Beijing. These have centuries of history; the city`s life was formed in these neighbourhoods, with their mixtures of residents always in view of each other. Second are the work unit communities formed in the 1950s. While the architecture of these areas is unremarkable, they have, like the older city neighbourhoods, social capital and vitality.

Third are the urban villages: city communities formed in a village framework. These are completely stigmatised in the current urban remodelling movement. However, as serious researchers and those who have lived in these places will attest, they are the same as the first two types of urban community in terms of being places that are functionally intact and orderly (albeit not in the eyes of city leaders), and whose residents are in close contact in a liveable environment.

It is these places that extend the life of the city, and promote the vitality that the modernist dinosaur city wants to extinguish. Can communities in the dinosaur city promote urban vitality? When a host of such communities emerged in the 1990s, planners designed ideal social spaces for these places, such as democratic homeowners` committees and market-oriented property management systems. But still the most fundamental problem of these communities remains: the impossibility of the community to organise and the difficulty of forming committees of homeowners, leaving residents to skirmish with – rather than resist – the property companies.

Superficially, these areas look bright, but apart from minority groups of residents brought in from work-units that bought their housing collectively, they cannot properly solve residents` or management problems. A great deal of social scientific investigation has confirmed this view. Such modernised communities need several decades of people living among each other before enough vitality gathers to change them from being empty giants.

Urban dinosaurisation is reflected further in the city`s external expansion and its engulfing of land and other resources to sustain it. Let me stay with Kunming as a case I know well. The area of the entire Dianchi Lake watershed is 2,920 square kilometres. Counting the plains and basin alone, the area is only 590 square kilometres. According to official plans, the central city area of Kunming should have been confined to 164.25 square kilometres by 2010, but the main urban region of Kunming already reached 249 square kilometres in 2008.

The consequences of such “urban dinosaurisation” have already been expressed by experts on resources and ecosystems. Following this year`s devastating drought in the Kunming region, experts pointed out that one of its causes was the rapid advance of urbanisation in the Dianchi Lake Basin, which has brought the capacity of its supporting water resources to the limit.

A muck-rake farmer by Dianchi Lake

Another example is the insertion of the north-south Kunluo Road, which extinguished “muck-rake” farming – where crops are planted in raked, muddy flats – along the east coast of Dianchi Lake: the route of the road destroyed irrigation system built in the 1950s, so that a place that in former times maintained high yields has been turned into one of alternating droughts and floods. Such roads also intensify urban expansion: once there is a road, property-development frenzy ensues. Kunming in the pre-drought years was already one of the nation`s 14 most water-stressed cities. This may seem ridiculous, but it`s true.

My warnings about urban dinosaurisation were once based on the notion that the dinosaur-makers entertained a na%26iuml;ve, modernist aesthetic. But I see that, in fact, all the 40-storey buildings imagined by these people are nothing but heaps of silver reaching to the sky, from the huge land transfer fees arising from urban village demolitions to the astronomical prices of the buildings and the so-called political merit that results. Such are the dreams of the dinosaur creators.

So, how can we put an end to urban dinosaurisation? Let`s start by giving up on the utopia described by Jane Jacobs as the “Radiant Garden City Beautiful”. The violence of profit-driven demolition and construction finds legitimacy within the enchantment of this utopian ideal, while the world of daily life of countless people meets its end. Let us hold fast to each “decrepit” neighbourhood and compound, and firmly reject the hard and soft violence of this silvery utopia. If we take this stand, we can stop the spread of the urban dinosaurs.

Zhu Xiaoyang is associate professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Peking University.

This article first appeared in Southern Weekend. It is translated and reproduced here with permission.

Homepage image by Philou.cn

In 1995, the World Bank asked John D. Liu to record the early stages of its Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project for a film called Investing in People. That film was about initiatives that were changing the bank`s focus from large infrastructural projects to ones in which poor people living in remote parts of the world would directly benefit.

Over the following decade, Liu led the Environment Education Media Project on numerous other visits to the Loess Plateau, which is considered the cradle of Chinese civilisation. Approximately the size of France, the plateau is 640,000 kilometers square, situated in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River, and stretching over parts of seven provinces. Its name comes from the powdery, mineral-rich, windborne loess soil that characterises the area – and which gave the Yellow River its name.

Settled agriculture is thought to have emerged 9,500 to 10,000 years ago on the Loess Plateau. Throughout the plateau`s long and complex history, human activity produced a great civilisation, while also ecologically destroying the region. It came to be known as the most eroded place on earth. Silt raised the riverbed, making it more prone to flooding – flooding that often preceded drought and famine. The Yellow River, which has flooded more than 1,500 times in recorded history, became known as “China`s Sorrow”. But each time it flooded, the people rebuilt.

The ecological devastation of the region took place over generations with the cutting of forests and removal of vegetation cover, leading to soil erosion, disruption of the water cycle and the disappearance of wild plants and animals. A cycle of poverty and environmental destruction ensued, a cycle that fed on itself.

In the 1990s, the Chinese government decided to restore what took 10,000 years to destroy. Thanks to a complex programme of watershed management – formulated by the World Bank in cooperation with the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources and the local people — an astounding transformation has occurred within just 10 years. Ecological improvements have shown tremendous promise, and local people`s income and quality of life have improved.

Planting on steep slopes has been banned, as has tree-cutting and grazing of goats and sheep. Farmers are responsible for maintaining tree-planting areas and terraced fields, to reduce erosion. Sand dunes have been stabilised, and grasses and bushes are taking hold again. Small dams are helping to restore productive croplands in eroded gullies, and perennial crops (such as orchard fruits) are reducing the disruption of soil cover and helping to diversify local economies.

The successful start to the ambitious rehabilitation of the Loess Plateau has significant implications for other places on earth which suffer from large-scale environmental degradation as a result of human impact, and can serve as model for those regions.

The plateau`s tale, Liu believes, provides the kind of critical knowledge the world needs now if it is to envision a sustainable future for a human race living in harmony and sharing the planet`s resources. With support from several development agencies, he has collected more than 100 hours of videotape of the region, its people and the ongoing rehabilitation effort. A fraction of those tapes will make up his latest film project, China`s Sorrow, Earth`s Hope.

The Author: Maryann Bird is a London-based journalist

Still image taken from John D. Liu’s film China`s Sorrow, Earth`s Hope

“Flooding has brought the most destruction to Fujian” over recent years, says deputy professor of ecology at Xiamen University Li Zhenji, but “the people can`t understand [why].”

There is no confusion that natural disasters can be deadly. Floods, droughts and (to a lesser extent) earthquakes cost countless lives and billions of yuan each year. Li recalls the 1998 flooding in Fujian as “the worst flood for 200 years.” The question which locals do not understand, rather, is why forests are not doing the job they were designed to do.

Ordinarily, forests shelter the earth`s soil from excess moisture, helping to avert natural disasters such as flooding and landslides and Fujian has the highest rate of forest coverage in China – more than 60%. “So why do we suffer these floods?” asks Li rhetorically.

In fact, Fujian`s status as China`s most forested province is misleading. “Since 1949 there have been three major changes in vegetation,” explains Li. “The last in the 1980s occurred when many mountain areas became orchards or bamboo forests – natural forests faced continued destruction” he continues, adding that Jian`nou City, in the north of Fujian, converted all of the natural forest which covered 10% of its land.

Bamboo forest, photo by Aaron Corey

Reforestation projects during the 1990s improved the overall situation, and by 1995 forestry reserves had increased slightly. But the replacement of older self-sustaining, native species trees with young fast-growing plantations is not like-for-like.

“The root system of a pure forest – fir, pine and eucalyptus – is much less able to retain soil than that of a natural forest and this can give rise to disasters such as landslides,” says Li, adding that “The water retention ability and biodiversity of pure forests are [also] much lower than that of natural forests [which historically covered large swathes of Fujian.]”

Research conducted by fellow colleagues at the Faculty of Ecology which studies the effect of natural forests on soil fertility, soil and water retention in the Min River Basin is unequivocal in its findings. A natural forest, research shows, can retain rainfall of up to 200mm in a single downpour and only begins to fail at 400mm. In a pure forest or orchard, floods can occur even if there is only 200mm of rain. The upshot is that the same amount of rain will produce much greater risk. Even an average downpour can result in flooded crops, it concludes.

“So why do we suffer these floods?” asks Li, repeating his earlier question – “Because of the destruction of natural forests” comes his reply.

Disaster prevention means protecting forests

Protection, however, offers salvation. “Without human interference this [ecological] weakness remains dormant,” concludes the above study. Li also claims that natural forests, if restored, would reduce the economic losses from flooding and droughts by 50% to 80%, bringing benefits worth hundreds of billions of yuan.

“The efforts spent on disaster relief would be better used for disaster prevention – and the best method of disaster prevention is to increase protection for natural forests and severely punish those who destroy them,” insists Li. Protection of natural forests that contain multiple species, he promises, would also preserve biodiversity, help to prevent disease (by diverting bugs away from local crops) and reduce local poverty, which has been hit by soil erosion associated with deforestation.

But “If fast-growing forests continue to replace natural ones, these natural disasters will worsen,” warns Li.

Forestry authorities are an accomplice in environmental destruction

Local forestry bureau chief Hong Shenghe confirms that forestry officials are on the frontline in protection efforts and provides reassurances that “Without our approval, nobody can touch a single tree.” But the commitment of the bureau has been directly challenged by villagers in Fuzhu Village who allege that regulations have been routinely broken to accommodate local businesses such as Fangte, a local forestry company accused of felling natural forests in cahoots with local officials.

“Fangte were employing people to fell trees before they had permission” according to villagers. Fires, they say, were lit (in contravention of bureau rules) to help clear the natural forest behind Fuzhu, bogus paperwork passed onto Fangte by forestry officials to cover the incident up. “They even said it was us villagers who did it [set the fires],” add locals.

Villagers eventually turned to forestry police, but were met by unyielding officials who denied any knowledge of the forest, which brings back vivid memories for the locals. “The trunks were that wide you couldn`t wrap your arms around them. It was dark in there, and steep. We never dared to go in, even to cut firewood,” they recall.

But academics at Xiamen University including Li Zhenji acknowledge that natural forests are indeed being secretly replaced, with forestry firms using underhand methods to obtain the necessary legal documents and that southern China now faces an eco-crisis. If the actions of these self-interested officials are not controlled, says Li, the forestry authorities will not only fail to protect these natural resources, they will actually have the opposite effect – becoming an accomplice to the destruction of the environment.

Meanwhile, Hong Shenghe reports that reforms which address the issue of forestry rights are now on trial in Fujian and meet with his own personal approval, but warns that “the principle of %26lsquo;who plants, profits` is more suited to the less fertile and less forested north, where it will encourage locals to improve the environment. In the south where natural forests are abundant, it may at times have the opposite effect.”

A better role for the forestry bureau, Hong believes, is in the provision of guidance and advice to locals, who currently hold land rights. “Forestry officials don`t just need to protect the natural resources, in the future they also need to offer good guidance to local residents,” he says, adding that “If we don`t, they [locals] will transform their natural forests to artificial pure forests, or transfer the land to commercial forestry firms, with the same dangerous consequences.” But villagers may ask: what use is such a reform when there are so many bad eggs on the inside?

The author: Yongfeng Feng is an award-winning journalist with the Guangming Daily.

Homepage photo by Matthew J. Stinson

The twelfth conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC COP 12) is being held in Kenya`s capital, Nairobi, from 6-17 November 2006. Delegates from more than 180 nations are gathering to discuss climate change – one of the biggest challenges facing the human race. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Africa will be the continent most impacted by global warming – and human activity is largely responsible. But what role will Africa play in the talks?

Almost all African countries have signed and ratified the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. But the continent is still poised to suffer worst from the impacts of climate change. Campaigners are holding world governments responsible for not taking adequate measures to reduce their levels of greenhouse-gas emissions. A failure to act on emissions is already adversely affecting many countries in Africa, resulting in water scarcity, drought, persistent floods and other terrible consequences.

This year, Kenya experienced a period of extreme drought. Thousands of people lost their property and some lost their lives. The country has barely recovered from the terrible floods of 1997, but meteorologists say that El Ni%26ntilde;o floods may hit in the New Year. The snowcaps of Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro are melting at a rate unprecedented in history, leading to local water shortages. Malaria has also increased in highland areas, where it was not prevalent before.

The Turkana region of northwest Kenya – some of the most dry and inhospitable territory on earth – has felt the brunt of climate change`s effects on Kenya. The Turkana people are pastoralists whose way of life is adapted to the harsh environment. They are constantly on the move in search of waterholes and available pasture on which to graze their animals during the dusty nine months between one rainy season and the next. The rainy season, known as the akipiro, may arrive any time between the months of March and June. But this year, the akipiro has not been sufficient to allow for the full regeneration of pasture and the replenishment of waterholes. Gzahegn Kebede, Oxfam`s chief programmes manager in Kenya, says most communities in northern Kenya do not have the capacity to cope with abnormal weather conditions. “Drought has been more damaging to households in northern parts of Kenya than any form of protracted conflict,” says Kebede. When it rains, serious flooding can be disastrous for people living on drought-parched land.

photo by Mike

A recent forum of Kenyan civil society groups argued that African countries are suffering the consequences of “luxury emissions” from industrialised countries, while they are still far from achieving industrialisation themselves. Grace Akumu, from Climate Network Africa, says: “At the [UNFCC] conference we do not want diversionary measures. When Africans are dying because of luxury emissions emanating from industrialised countries, we want serious business.” She adds: “It is a question of life and death.”

There is much to be done to make a more equitable agreement on climate change. Discussing the implementation of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to advance sustainable development and equality for poor countries, Akumu feels Africa has been let down. “Africa had only five [CDM] projects by September this year, while the remaining 500 projects are in Europe and the other developing countries in Latin America and Asia,” she says. Akumu argues that African governments should take the lead in opposing similarly inequitable development programmes.

One of the key UN Millennium Development Goals is to halve the world`s population of people living in hunger by 2015. But there are fears that this could be made impossible by climate change. Global warming`s main culprits should provide resources to help the societies that will suffer the most to adapt. But the responsibility should not just lie in the hands of rich nations. As Jesse Mugambi of the World Council of Churches argues: “Our climate is in crisis; it is our survival but also our responsibility. Despite the role that should be played by industrialised countries, it is our responsibility to deal with the problem of global warming that is with us.” Mugambi says that any agreement following 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol`s term is up, should involve special funds to help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change. He says that helping with adaptation is not a question of charity but one of equity. Since developed countries have been able to achieve growth at the expense of others, it is only fair to compensate the poorest who are suffering as a result.

Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid told me that British campaigners are putting pressure on the UK government to compensate poor countries for the damage done by greenhouse gas emissions in industrialised countries. “Tony Blair needs to put his money and policies where his mouth is,” says Pendleton. He adds that industrialised nations should support the development of clean, low-carbon technologies in poor countries.

Despite efforts made to engage Africa in climate politics, there is little in terms of implementation of climate-change measures on the continent. African countries should now take the lead in according climate change its rightful importance in the public sphere.

Rachel Odengo is a reporter for the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation

China has seen rapid economic growth since the start of the reform era in 1979. Annual GDP growth averaged 9.6% between 1979 and 2004. In 2004, GDP growth reached 10.1%, an achievement that attracted global attention. Over this period the population has grown sharply; huge quantities of resources have been consumed; environmental pollution has worsened; ecosystems have been wrecked; and vast areas of land have been lost. This has given rise to all manner of environmental problems. The economy has grown, but the environment has suffered. Over the past 27 years, China has adhered to an economic model characterised by high levels of pollution, emissions and power consumption, combined with low levels of efficiency. It has repeated the “pollute first, clean up later” model that Western nations adhered to during their early stages of capital accumulation.

The Tang-dynasty poet Du Fu once wrote: “Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure,” yet we can only reflect that while our country endures, our hills and rivers have been devastated. Environmental degradation harms public health, affects social stability and holds back China`s sustainable economic growth. It is a major problem, one which threatens not only the development but also the survival of the Chinese people.

Decreases in cultivated land

Remote-sensing surveys show that China`s cultivated land area plummeted between 1988 and 2000, from 1,307,400 square kilometres in 1991 to 1,282,400 square kilometres in 2000 – from 1.8 mu (0.0012 square kilometres) per head to 1.5 mu (0.0010 square kilometres) per head. Construction accounted for 56.6% of the decrease, 21% of land was forested, 16% was flooded and 4% became grassland.

During the 1990s, the number of cities in China`s east increased from 315 to 521. Each year, an average of 767.42 square kilometres is built on, with this figure growing at an average of 5.76% every year. The land around Beijing has borne the brunt of this, with the city expanding by about 20 square kilometres per year. Besides urban construction, the effects of industry and mining account are also significant. Statistics from the provinces of Jilin, Jiangsu, Fujian, Henan, Hubei and Hunan show that land given over to mining development increased 1.96 times between 1986 and 2000, and the land area that was damaged increased by 4.71 times.

Over this period some cultivated land was added: 24.2% of it by reclaiming woodland, 66% from grasslands and 1.9% from bodies of water. But this was all obtained at the expense of natural ecosystems. Over the last 40 years, land reclamation has lead to the loss of 11,900 square kilometres of coastal shallows, with industry taking more than 10000 square kilometres of coastal wetlands. Half of China`s coastal shallows are now completely destroyed. And despite this, the trend of overall loss of cultivated land has not been reversed.

Where the loss of cultivated land is due to a change in usage, the soil itself at least remains, though sealed below concrete and asphalt. However, soil that is swept away by wind and water is lost forever. In 1999, 3.56 million square kilometres of land were affected by erosion due to wind, water and freeze-thaw cycles. Of this land, 82.53% lies in China`s west. The country has 1.74 million square kilometres of desert spread across 30 provinces, over 90% of which is in the west. An astonishing 1.6 billion tonnes of soil is swept into the Yellow River every year, approximately 400 million tonnes of which is deposited on the riverbed downstream, causing it to rise between eight and 10 centimetres annually. During the past 40 years, the riverbed in the lower reaches of the Yellow River has risen by two metres, and on average it stands three to five metres higher than the land that it flows through. In places it is as much as 10 metres higher. The Yangtze River basin also loses 2.4 billion tonnes of soil per year.

With the loss of soil, valuable nutrients are lost. In the Yellow River basin alone, about 40 million tonnes of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are lost annually – more than the total consumption of China`s fertiliser industry in 2003 (39.9 million tonnes). A conservative estimate, factoring in soil lost to water erosion in the Yangtze River basin and wind erosion in arid and semi-arid regions, puts annual loss at five times that figure. The lost nutrition is replaced artificially, atmospherically and with ore, resulting in serious environmental pollution. China`s government should take urgent and effective measures to prevent the further loss of soil.

Photo by vailpost

The threat to China`s forests

According to State Forestry Administration figures, forestry coverage in China rose from 12.98% in 1986 to 16.55% in 1999, a growth of 33%. But we need to be clear about what went into those figures. Many areas adjusted the canopy density rate used to define a “forest” downwards from 0.3 to 0.2. Bushes and shrubs were also added to the figures. It is possible that the amount of forest did not actually increase – only the figures did. In China no old-growth forest remains, and forests over a century old are extremely rare. Even if the above figures are accurate, China`s huge population means that the per capita average is extremely low – only 21.3% of the global average. In terms of volume, China has only 12.5% of the global per capita average of 72 cubic metres.

It should be noted that although central government`s investment in forestry has been gradually increasing, forest management policy`s disregard for the environment has led to a potential threat from weak and unsustainable single-species forests. Between the 1950s and 1990s, the forested area affected by disease and pests increased six-fold. This increase was greatest in the 1990s, 196% of the increase during the 1980s. If China`s vast subtropical mountainous areas were sealed off and human interference reduced, their broadleaf evergreen forests would recover. But tragically, paper manufacturers have felled natural forests in order to plant the invasive eucalyptus tree. Intervention by the authorities has been too weak to prevent this destruction, and some local forestry authorities have even profited from collusion with interest groups.

China`s water crisis

China consumed a total of 556.7 billion cubic metres of water in 2001, 13.2 billion cubic metres more than in 1998. Most of this increase came not from replenishable surface water, but from groundwater obtained by drilling – water that should be left for future generations. Water usage rates for major river basins such as the Huai River, Liao River and Yellow River have reached 60%; the rate in the Hai River is 90% and for the Hei River the rate is 110%. The internationally-recognised warning level is between 30% and 40%.

An inefficient use of water resources and a lack of water conservation awareness mean that even this massive overuse does not meet our so-called “needs.” A total of 60% of China`s 669 cities face water scarcity, and of these, 110 face serious water shortages. Around 60 areas suffer from lowered groundwater levels, with a zone measuring 30,000 to 50,000 square kilometres in the North China Plain being the world`s largest. Over-extraction of groundwater not only happens in China`s arid north, but also in the water-rich south. Subsidence affects 46 cities in 16 provinces, including Shanghai, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanxi. In south China`s Suzhou, 180 square kilometres of land has subsided over 60 centimetres since 1949. In Wuxi, 59.5 square kilometres has subsided by the same amount, and 43 square kilometres in Changzhou.

The relatively water-rich Sanjiang Plain, in northeast China, has also seen a large-scale extraction of water and soil degradation, has led to the loss of wetlands. In the past decade, the northern part of the plain lost 105 square kilometres of wetland. The Songnen Plain and Liao River delta have lost 1,820 square kilometres and 230 square kilometres hectares respectively.

But China’s water crisis is not a purely underground phenomena, it also manifests itself in the loss of glaciers on high plateaus. Glaciers are China`s “solid reservoirs” and an important source of water for arid regions. Global warming caused glaciers north of the Sichuan-Tibet highway in Nyingtri (Lingzhi) to shrink by 100 metres between 1986 and 1998. This retreat will directly impact the progress of the western branch of China`s South to North Water Transfer project.

The destruction of China’s ecosystems

There are ten main types of land ecosystem in the world, and China has nine: tropical rainforest, evergreen broadleaf forests, deciduous broadleaf forests, conifer forest, mangrove forest, grasslands, alpine meadows, desert and tundra. The only ecosystem it lacks is the African savannah, though regions such as the Hunsandake, Keerqin, Mu-us and Hunlun Buir have the same structure and function. China is therefore the only country in the world which may feature all of the world’s ecosystems.

But unfortunately, every one of these ecosystems is suffering. Aside from China`s well-documented loss of forests and expanding deserts, alpine meadows, temperate grasslands and mangrove forests are also being seriously degraded. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is one of the worlds largest, highest and most unique ecosystems. But long-standing over-grazing and misuse has caused serious degradation of its alpine meadows, mainly demonstrated by the drop in hay production from 300 kilograms per mu (667 square metres) in the 1960s, to 100 kilograms today. This destruction is also attested to in the region`s increasing mole-rat infestation: from eight to 10 mole rats per hectare in the past, to more than 30 today.

Ninety percent of China’s usable grasslands display varying degrees of damage, and this area is expanding by 20,000 square kilometres per year. Of this lost grassland, 55% is being used for cultivation, and 30% has simply become unusable. The majority of grasslands in the west of China are over-used; in Xinjiang the rate of overuse is 121%, in Ningxia is 72% and in Inner Mongolia is 66%.

Mangrove forests are globally recognised as one of the world`s most productive and diverse ecosystems. China’s mangrove forests are mostly located to the south of the Fujian coast and at one time covered 2,500 square kilometres. In the 1950s, they covered 500 square kilometres. Now they only cover 150 square kilometres. Since 1949, exploitation, felling and inefficient usage of coastal mangrove forests has brought unprecedented destruction, especially in the past 20 years.

The UN’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) lists 740 endangered species. Of these, 189 are in China, around a quarter of the total. Between 4,000 and 5,000 of China`s plant species are endangered or approaching endangerment, from 15 to 20% of the country`s total number of plant species. Environmental changes and the fragmentation of habitats are causing this loss of biodiversity. For instance, in the natural forests of Nenjiang county in northeast China`s Heilongjiang province, endangered species were distributed across 240 different locations, with an average size of 0.8 square kilometres. By 2000 this had fragmented to 343 different locations with an average size of 0.68 square kilometres.

NEXT: How can China strengthen environmental protection?

Jiang Gaoming is a chief researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences` Institute of Botany and a doctoral candidate tutor, vice secretary-general of UNESCO`s China-MAB Committee and director of the China Environmental Culture Promotion Association. He is recognized for his introduction of the concepts of “urban vegetation” and “using natural forces to restore China`s ecosystems.”

Jixi Gao is chief specialist and head of the Institute of Ecology at the ChinaAcademy of Environmental Sciences. He has long been involved in the evaluation of functional ecologies, environmental assessments of regional development strategies and research into environmental pollution testing.

On January 3, 2007, the level of the Yangtze River was seen to plummet at the point where it passes through the city of Shashi, in central China`s Hubei province, two metres below the average for this time of year. A similar story is seen repeated throughout the middle and lower reaches of the river; water levels are falling to an extent not seen in 140 years, when records first began.

At the end of June last year, waterways dried up, cracks appeared in the earth and drinking water became scarce across China. As Focheng Liu stood on the banks of west China’s Minjiang River, he told me: “I’ve lived here for 65 years, but the river has never stopped flowing before. This is the first time I’ve seen it dry up like this.” Liu had never dreamed the river would become so depleted, or that the well pumps would fail to draw water. Surveys have found that the Minjiang River, already suffering a 50% drop in its water flow, has dried up in 10 kilometre stretches, exposing its bare riverbed. Over 50 days of hot, dry weather, a lack of snowfall on the plateau and the diversion of water underground are all to blame.

The fishermen of south China`s Dongting Lake usually land their best catches in October. But last year there was barely a fisherman to be seen – only their boats stranded on a dry lakebed. Figures from the local fishery authorities show that 7,600 fishermen have had to abandon their boats, with two-thirds now out of work and incomes slashed by a third. Qianming Tong, a professor at Hunan’s Geological Institute, found two reasons for the vanishing water. The main problem is simply the climate; hot, dry weather since August has affected both the lake and the local rivers that feed it. But a lowered supply of water from the Yangtze is also a factor, he said.

On November 6, south China`s Poyang Lake was at its lowest level, for the time of year, since 1949. The lake marks the boundary between the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze. It is China’s largest freshwater lake and has Asia’s largest freshwater wetlands. But the once vast lake was reduced to a few stretches of water twisting between exposed sandbanks.

The runoff that flows into the Min River has also had a calamitous effect on its fish. A survey by biologist Deng Qixiang found that only 16 of the 40 species recorded in the 1950s are to be found today. The Sichuan Taimen, a protected species, has not been seen in one stretch of river, the Wenchuan, for an entire decade. Another fish, the shad, called “the beauty of the water” by China`s early poets and known today for its economic value, has also disappeared.

“The water’s off again!” sighs Miao Juan, a housewife in southwest China`s city of Kunming. “We don’t even use two tonnes a month between the five of us,” she adds, proud that she conserves water. Despite being the capital of Yunnan province, traditionally China’s third most water-rich province, the “Spring City” of Kunming has suffered water shortages since July 2006. Experts predict that serious water shortages and problems in managing sewage will continue for the world`s 22 cities that have populations over 10 million. China is even worse off; the water supply is inadequate in 550 of its 600 largest cities. Industry`s ever increasing demand for water has led to the overexploitation of water resources and resulted in shortages for farmers and urban residents. This reduces grain production, increasing China`s reliance on imports and affecting other countries in the process, which can exacerbate international tensions.

Biyun Gao, a expert on Dongting Lake and former Yueyang city official, says falling water levels present government with a new problem. In the past, a set of response mechanisms were in place to minimise losses when high water levels led to flooding. But this is the first time in decades that low water levels have been an issue. The harm caused is just as great, but more easily overlooked. The government should put warning systems in place for low water levels, just as it has done for flooding.

This is all very well, but it is important to ask what the causes of low water levels are. They are no longer passing phenomena, but still do not get the attention they deserve. And the situation is getting worse.

A key source of the Yellow River is in northwest China`s Maqu county, known commonly as the river`s “reservoir” or “China’s water tower.” But in recent years, the water flowing into the Yellow River has decreased, with marshes and wetlands drying up and desertification increasing at a rate of 2.99 square kilometres every year. Thousands of wells are dry, and 11 of the Yellow River’s 27 main tributaries no longer flow. The water table has plummeted by 20 metres, and the water flowing into the Yellow River has decreased by 15% since 1980. The region`s marshes and wetlands have shrunk by 1.6 million mu (around 1,067 square kilometres). A lack of management means riverbank collapses and soil erosion lead to frequent changes in the course of the river, damaging the grasslands, causing dusty weather and damaging biodiversity. In the 1970s, 230 rare species were reported in the region, but today only 140 survive, many of which face extinction.

Our rivers and lakes are drying up, and it is a disaster not only for humanity but also the planet on which we live.

Water management in China is spread across many different government departments; water resources, environmental protection, fishing, forestry, shipping, urban construction and mining all involve water, but each have their own department. The Ministry of Water Resources has established seven committees that oversee major waterways, most of which are sub-ministerial administrations. These do not have enough power, especially when dealing with provincial branches of the ministries, to manage the full length of China`s rivers. So who should be in charge?

China has no laws that handle rivers specifically. Current opinion favours establishing separate laws, such as a Yangtze River law, a Yellow River law and so on. But this will not give the overall consideration that the problem needs. The management, protection and use of these large rivers are already major problems.

But we cannot simply blame the Three Gorges dam, as some media reports have done. Global warming and overexploitation of water resources are to blame. We must all play a role in the solution: we need managers to oversee the rivers, scientists to propose plans of action and the public to participate in the process. With water levels at a 140-year low, there is no more time to waste.

Yongcheng Wang is a reporter for China National Radio. Wang founded Green Earth Volunteers, a Chinese environmental NGO, in 1996. She is also a winner of the Globe Award, China’s top environmental prize.

Liu Zhenxiang, aged 48, is a typical Beijing taxi driver. But most of his worries are not about fuel prices, traffic or fares – they are about north China`s crippling drought.

Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau held a meeting on May 28 at which a number of local people were invited to put forward their ideas on improving the capital`s environment. When bureau deputy director Du Shaozhong saw Liu, he joked: “Mr Liu, you had better keep your speech short and to the point; if you read out the whole of that 28,000 character essay you sent in, no-one else will have time to speak!” Liu replied in the affirmative: “The essay might be long, but it all comes down to one point,” he said. “How do we store more water in north China?”

The bureau had begun a campaign on March 26 encouraging the public to: “Put forward suggestions for conservation in the capital and prepare for the green Olympics.” A month later, Liu stopped off at the bureau and handed in his essay, “Drought in northern China: its causes and solutions”. The essay was later identified as one of the best proposals the bureau had received.

Liu believes that the direct cause of the drought is north China`s ever-decreasing rainfall. He looked at rainfall data and found 700-800 millimetres fell every year in some parts of the north China plain. But between 1997 and 2005, the average annual rainfall in Beijing was only 466 millimetres. He wanted to know why it was so much lower.

Australian farmers always know someone else who is doing it tougher. They pride themselves on their resilience. They take pleasure in living in “a sunburnt country %26hellip; of droughts and flooding rains”. Conservative and deeply sceptical, many dismiss global warming as hogwash. But with unprecedented water scarcity and the Murray, the country’s greatest river system, on the verge of collapse, warning bells are ringing around the globe.

Financially, the drought is pinching as far away as the United Kingdom, pushing up the cost of bread in British supermarkets as wheat prices reach a 10-year high. Symbolically, it cuts much deeper. Commentators are looking on, nervously, wondering if what is becoming the norm in Sydney, could be the future for Sydenham in London.

Professor Tim Flannery, an Australian environmental scientist and an international leader on climate change, has no doubts. “Australia is a harbinger of what is going to happen in other places in the world,” he says. “This can happen anywhere. China may be next, or parts of western USA. There will be emerging water crises all over the world.” In Kenya, the herdsmen of the Mandera region have been dubbed the “climate canaries” — the people most likely to be wiped out first by global warming. In Australia, the earth’s driest inhabited continent, it is the farmers who are on the frontline.

This extended dry spell began in 1998. Four years later came the once-in-100-years drought. Last year was declared a once-in-a-millennium event. Every city, except Darwin in the “top end” of Australia, is facing water restrictions. Rivers are reduced to a trickle that a child can jump across. Old Adaminaby, a town drowned by a reservoir 50 years ago, has resurfaced from its watery grave. Distressed koalas have been drinking from swimming pools. The list goes on.

The extent of the crisis was illustrated in January 2007, when the prime minister, John Howard, announced a 10-billion-Australian-dollar (US$8.5 billion) package to seize control of the Murray-Darling basin, the nation’s food bowl, accounting for 41% of Australia’s agriculture and A$22 billion worth of agricultural exports. The region covers an area the size of France and Spain combined and is home to almost three million people; its famed waterway, the River Murray, no longer holds sufficient water to flow out into the sea. Despite Howard’s massive rescue plan to overhaul the water system, six months later the irrigation taps to the region’s farmers were turned off.

Malcolm Holm knows just how bad things can get. A dairy farmer with a bullish smile, Holm, 39, is a respected pillar in his local community of Finley, on the flat plains of southwest New South Wales (NSW). He depends, as do more than 50,000 other farmers, on the River Murray. I first meet Malcolm and his wife, Jenny Wheeler, 47, in Sydney in mid-July. As we sit down for coffee, it’s hard not to notice his strapped left arm, with angry red weals seared along the forearm, resting inert on the table.

Last October, with no water flowing into the major dams, the NSW government faced an unparalleled situation. Following last year’s lowest inflows into the Murray on record, they miscalculated how much water was available across the board. “Carryover water” worth millions of dollars, which had been saved and paid for by farmers for irrigation, was slashed by 20% without consultation. Three weeks later, farmers were hit with another 32% cut. Today, they are on zero allocation.

Aside from running his own 1,000 acres (404 hectares) and 500 dairy cows, Holm works tirelessly on a raft of community committees. The day after the second water cut — which had “blown out” his drought strategy and would cost him A$1.5 million from the loss of water, fodder and milk production — he was back at work in the dairy. The grain auger — a cylindrical barrel that moves the grain from one massive silo to the other — was jammed. After fiddling with the machine he flicked a switch. “I wasn’t concentrating.” He pauses, frowning. “I was thinking about water.” It was the wrong switch. In the blink of an eye, Malcolm Holm had sliced off his hand.

In March 2006, Flannery’s The Weather Makers was published in the UK, spelling out in incisive detail what awaits us unless we decarbonise our world by 2050. Described by naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough as “in the league of the all-time great explorers” — and the 2007 Australian of the Year — Flannery combines a Gaian approach with hard science. The result: Australia’s answer to Silent Spring. When I speak to Flannery, he’s recovering from the flu after a particularly cold, damp July. Floods and violent storms have caused havoc along Australia’s eastern seaboard, beaching one 40,000-tonne tanker like an aluminum dinghy. I put it to Flannery that the difficulty with global warming is that many areas are facing freak flooding. “General modelling suggests that every degree Celsius of warming leads to a 1% increase in rainfall globally,” he explains. “But these downpours are not uniform, causing intense bursts and downpours of rain in some places and not in others. We are learning about this 1% effect as we go.”

In his book, Flannery describes the dramatic decline in winter precipitation in southwestern Australia since the 1960s. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has forecast that on the east coast, rainfall could drop by 40% by 2070, along with a seven-degree rise in temperature and an increased chance of bush fires. Last November, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report added to the predicted misery, stating that “the annual flow in the Murray-Darling basin is likely to fall by 10 to 25% by 2050″, resulting in a decline in production from agriculture and forestry.

Five years ago, during the last major drought, I travelled through western Queensland, across a fragile, red-baked landscape that was obviously not suited to the hooves of millions of cattle and sheep — there are no Australian native animals with cleft hooves — and met farmers whose dreams were crumbling to dust. Back then, there was virtually no mention of global warming. The problem was attributed to the dry, cyclical conditions caused by El Ni%26ntilde;o, a powerful climatic phenomenon linked to the Pacific Ocean, which drives rain-bearing clouds away from the continent.

Fast-forward to July 2007 and few scientists doubt the “big dry” is caused, in part, by climate change. Some refer to it as a climate shift; others, like Flannery, who matches Al Gore in his Armageddon-like predictions, are unequivocal that it is a foretaste of what’s to come. As Australia is the first developed nation to experience such a prolonged dry spell, it’s no wonder that the rest of the world is looking on to see how the country copes — and what lessons can be learned.

This time I chose not to trek to the burnished outback. I wanted to see the effect of the drought a day’s drive from Sydney or Melbourne. This wouldn’t be a story of skeletal cows and cracked earth, but rather the more complex tale of water mismanagement and a pounding assault by humans on a delicate ecosystem.

What is remarkable is the seismic swing among ordinary Australians over the past 12 months. The synergy of Gore`s An Inconvenient Truth (although John Howard, until recently a climate sceptic, snubbed Gore on his Australian tour), the release of the Stern Review by British economist Nicholas Stern and a rise in food prices have combined as a loud wake-up call. Now, as the stress of trying to squeeze every drop out of an over-stretched waterway threatens to tear communities apart, fierce public debate has forced the environment to the forefront of this year’s general election. Two massive desalination plants will be built in the Australian states of Victoria and NSW, following the construction, in Western Australia, of Perth’s successful desalinisation plant; the government also announced it would ban incandescent light bulbs, which contribute to greenhouse gases.

For Flannery, these are baby steps. “We could be the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy. We’ve got solar potential; we’ve got a geo-thermal province in central Australia and the best potential for wind power off the east coast.” For Anne Jensen, an academic who’s been studying the ecology of the lower Murray in South Australia for 25 years, it’s a question of priority. “Everyone is fighting to keep what they’ve got in a situation where people are going to need to give something up,” she says. “While everyone is on rations, we have to make sure that the river is healthy enough to support us all.”

It was Mark Twain who compared the River Murray to America’s Mississippi. During the 19th century, paddle steamers were a familiar sight along its lazy green-grey currents, ferrying goods from town to town. Covering an area of more than one million square kilometres, the basin carries water from the tropical north in Queensland to the Darling River, and from the Murray’s source in the Snowy Mountains to the outskirts of Adelaide, 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometres) downstream.

Nearly 60 years ago, the Snowy Hydro scheme was opened, harnessing the headwaters of three rivers to generate hydroelectricity and capture melting winter snows in two large lakes, Eucumbene and Jindabyne. With the creation of 16 dams and countless weirs, the scheme promised to “drought proof” the nation by creating a reliable supply of water to the Murray. In the long term, the environment lost out, but the dry, fertile country, like Finley, to the west, was transformed into dairy pastures, orchards and lush rice fields.

When it comes to the River Murray, nothing is straightforward. Despite the commission in charge of the river being set up in 1917, it is only this year that the federal government is wresting control from the four states which, until now, have had their own rules and conflicting regulations. While Queensland, NSW and South Australia were quick to cede power to the central government, Victoria has raised the possibility of bringing a case to the High Court to protect its water rights.

The accumulation of years of over-allocation and drought has resulted in a pitifully low stream level. In June 2006, the catchment received an inflow of 700 gigalitres. A year later, it had plummeted to 300 gigalitres. (One gigalitre is 1,000 million litres.) What is keeping the region functioning is the depleted water storage in dams like Hume, just outside Albury, a bustling centre on the border between NSW and Victoria. And it is from Albury that I set off, the day after meeting Malcolm Holm.

NEXT: The farmers` uncertain futures

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/

Copyright Guardian News %26amp; Media Ltd 2007

Homepage photo by suburbanbloke via Flickr

Ironically, it’s raining. To an untrained eye, the green verges near the border between the states of New South Wales and Victoria look promising. To Neville and Ruth Kydd, the grass in their paddocks is too sparse for their herd of dairy cows, which they have been hand-feeding since late last December. This salt-of-the-earth couple, in grubby jeans and Wellington boots, were particularly hard hit by last year’s water cuts. They had bought A$500,000 (US$425,000) worth of water early in the season, but the government took back almost half, Neville tells me, grim-faced. “How could they get it so wrong? It’s mind-boggling.”

Australia’s water system is, indeed, mind-boggling. There are 24 different sorts of water licences in the Murray-Darling river basin alone, which provide irrigators with varying degrees of security. Almonds and oranges are on the more costly high-security licences because without regular sprinkling the trees will die. As Neville Kydd says, “If this season there is no water in the dam, virtually no dairy farmers will survive. It will return to sheep country. You can’t sustain those sorts of losses year in, year out.”

From their spartan bungalow, it is 15 miles (24 kilometres) down the road to Prairie Home, the generous homestead of Louise and Andrew Burge. A log fire burns; tea and cake are laid out on a wooden kitchen table, alongside a wad of typed notes. Louise, 49, has written a summary of the state of their sheep and crop farm. She refutes evidence that the current drought is driven by climate change, providing a series of old photographs showing the Murray in drier conditions than it is in now.

‘”Global warming represents a herd mentality with a herd mentality for the solutions,” she begins. “Australia has developed mass plantations in the upper catchments, so in the next drought we will have less run-off because the trees are going to take water. This will exacerbate the drought.” She pauses for breath. “My solution is to encourage new technologies and address emission reductions at the source.”

Even though Australia is one of only two western countries (the other is the United States) not to ratify the Kyoto treaty, it still adheres to international obligations to offset its emissions. According to a UN report, per capita, Australia’s emissions of greenhouse gases are among the highest in the world. While planting vast forests attempts to fix one problem, it creates another. As the drought bites, the conflict between farmers, traditionally portrayed as rampant land-clearers, and environmentalists is brought to the fore. In reality, while all the farmers I spoke to were global-warming sceptics, they also were passionate conservationists. And to be fair, as a huge island, Australia experiences such volatile swings in climate it can mask a perception of an irreversible shift. Farmers will argue that the current drought is very similar to that of the 1890s and 1940s.

Nonetheless, the effect on rural towns all along the Murray is acute. Figures from the Reserve Bank reveal that rural debt has almost doubled from A$26.4 billion in 1999 to A$43.3 billion in 2005. In Deniliquin, 20 minutes from the Burges’ farm, the wide streets are eerily quiet. That evening, in the empty Federal Hotel, I meet Wayne Cockayne, an obliging 44-year-old whose glassy eyes stare into the mid-distance. “This town’s gone backward,” he says, taking a sip on a Diet Coke. “In 1979, when I left school, the town was prospering. Farmers’ children are leaving the land now.”

For the past four years, Cockayne hasn’t made a cent from the cereals on his 3,000-acre (1,200 hectares) property 20 miles south of Deniliquin. This year he had to pay for water to be trucked in to flush his toilet. He grits his teeth. “I know about depression,” he goes on. “I locked myself in at home for four days. Then I got in the family car and drove into town. A friend found me slumped over the steering wheel, crying. I never thought I’d be a person who would suffer from it, but I’ve been better since I went to a grief and depression counsellor.”

“In the first seven years, I had, on average, two people a year from the farming community who presented with depression,” Dr Harry von Rensburg tells me in his surgery office in Barham, 60 miles west of Deniliquin. An owlish, direct-talking South African general practitioner, Von Rensburg has lived in Barham for the past decade. This year he is “actively managing” more than 120 farmers, including some of the most high-profile landowners in the district. A psychologist comes once a week and has back-to-back appointments. “If we could get her twice a week, we would fill that.”

A year ago, Beyond Blue, the national mental health body, reported that one farmer commits suicide in Australia every four days. I ask Dr Von Rensburg whether this figure is accurate.

“Absolutely. In the past three years, there have been eight suicide attempts here. A handful are on suicide watch — their spouses or children have taken control of firearms.” He leans back in his big black chair. “Shooting is the most favoured method; second is hanging.”

Von Rensburg puts this dramatic increase down to the drought’s longevity and the uncertainty it brings. “People are asking themselves, %26lsquo;Will this be ongoing? Are we going to see our landscape change?` That is the greatest fear — what we can’t control.”

Neil Eagle, the grand old man of orchard farming in the region, is a sprightly 73-year-old with large, dirt-encrusted hands and a deep, rumbling voice. He refuses to be beaten. Unlike his neighbour, who didn’t purchase water this year, and whose orange trees are virtually bare, Eagle’s citrus forest looks healthy. “It could get to the stage where there’s no water to buy,” he says, biting open a juicy orange. ‘”We could lose our trees. Then it would take seven to 10 years to get back into production. That would be very serious.”

Eagle’s family has been living around Eagle Creek since 1870. “As far as temperature changes go, in the Forties and Fifties it was definitely hotter than it is now,” he says. “I don’t agree with the doom and gloom merchants that the sea is going to rise.” He gives a wry smile. “It’s become nearly a religion, this idea of global warming.” Still, he can’t resist a swipe at those downstream in South Australia. “The equivalent of two-and-a-quarter Dartmouth Dams go up in evaporation in the Lower Lakes. It’s a squander of our resources.”

Some 300 miles west of Eagle Creek, in the state of South Australia, Anne Jensen is witnessing a collapse of entire ecosystems on the floodplains. In the Nineties, one local from Kingston-on-Murray described this as a ‘”garden of Eden” for river red gums, some of which are 400 years old. Today it resembles a graveyard. Jensen sees the “hundreds of thousands of trees” dying in the lower Murray as “a combined effect of a man-made drought in the river system, together with the severe natural drought which is proving to be the last straw”.

The twisted, ashen-grey branches of the black box eucalyptus and river gums are stark indicators of the region’s deteriorating health. These hardy trees require natural flooding to survive. They have done without a decent drink for over a decade, but now there’s “an abrupt change”, according to Jensen. “If we got a flood in the next two to three years, we could save the river, but only with enormous amounts of rain.”

A mile from Kingston is Banrock Station. More famous in Britain for its crisp white wines than its pioneering conservation strategies, this vineyard pumps profits back into restoring the local wetlands. It has had considerable success in improving the Riverlands’ biodiversity, but due to the minimal amount of water in the Murray allocated for the environment, and the rising salinity, they can only achieve so much.

Two years ago, the “Living Murray” programme pledged to recover 500 gigalitres, the equivalent of Sydney Harbour, for the Murray for environmental purposes by 2009. At present they are likely to fall 80% short of that target. For years, the country’s most valued artery has been withering, some would say dying. “In 2002, the river ran out of water,” says Adelaide-based professor Mike Young, a water expert. “There are three dredges in the mouth to keep it open and to keep water going into the Coorong wetlands.”

This 60-mile stretch of wetlands holds a particularly poignant place in Australian history, as the inspiration for the film Storm Boy, about a young lad who befriends a pelican called Mr Percival. The Coorong is an internationally recognised wetlands sanctuary for migratory birds, but it sits on a part of the coast that is now gasping to stay alive as sand pours in. Over the years, there has been a steady decline in its pelican population, due to a lack of fish and hyper-salinity. The water in the southern lagoon of the Coorong is four times saltier than the ocean.

As Anne Jensen explains: “In South Australia there is water in the river and it looks all right, because of artificial pools held up by weirs. You can see plants and birds.” She pauses, sighing. “It’s the same problem with the drought. It’s been raining, people’s gardens are green. But it’s a false image.” And many hundreds of kilometres away in Albury there is no water in the Hume dam.

I catch up again with Malcolm Holm and his family at the Hume dam. Reduced to 12% of its capacity, there is a yawning gap of cracked red earth at the end of the boat ramp where the water level should be, and the limbs of blackened trees reach skywards. Holm laughs when I tell him that after driving around the region, I’m drowning in arguments about water allocation. “It is very political,’” he says.

What has struck me is that if temperatures continue to rise globally, as predicted, what is happening now in Australia is bound to occur in other regions, where many countries share one river system — the Euphrates in the Middle East, the Mekong in Asia. The World Bank estimates that by 2025, about 48 countries will experience water shortages, affecting more than 1.4 billion people, the majority in under-developed regions. Here in Australia, at least the economy is robust and competing groups whose livelihoods depend on the dwindling flow of the Murray can sit down and talk. Where rivers cross borders, it won’t be a case of negotiating and compromise — it will be war.

The future of many Australian farmers hangs in the balance. Notwithstanding showers in recent months, the pendulum from a La Ni%26ntilde;a wet-weather phase, which usually follows an El Ni%26ntilde;o drought, has not swung. “And it is unlikely to do so for the rest of the year,” says Dr David Jones, head of climate analysis at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. The drought, the bureau warns, is a long way from breaking. “It will take years to refill the dams.”

Last year the drought whittled 1% off the national economy, and this year reduced the available annual milk supply by more than a billion litres. As I write this in late July 2007, during Australia’s winter, the blistering summer is still several months away. But Professor Mike Young warns that already “Adelaide is in a very frightening situation. If it doesn’t rain and the dams don’t fill, there isn’t enough water in the system to supply the city.”

Living with such continued stress inevitably takes its toll, as it did on Holm, known by his friends as a particularly careful person. What’s improbable is how rationally he dealt with the accident in his dairy in which he lost a hand. “I called Jenny on the mobile and told her I’d cut off my hand,” he says. It had ended up on the ground after going through the whole machine and was taken and preserved by the paramedics. “Luckily it wasn’t mangled.” Holm was given a hefty dose of morphine and antibiotics and transferred by air to a Sydney hospital. His hand lay in ice in an “Esky”, a cool box more commonly used in Australia for chilling beers.

“He amazed me,” says Jenny, who travelled with him. “On the plane, he kept saying, %26lsquo;Have you got that Esky?` ” How did you cope? She shrugs and smiles, her face crumpled from the strain. “He’s still alive. I knew we’d be OK.”

Five weeks and 22 hours of anaesthetic later, Malcolm’s hand was sewn back on. “The first skin grafts from my arm didn’t take, so they took [skin] from my back,” he points to the bulbous lump on the wrist. “I’ve got another three operations ahead. There are two tendons to stitch up, pins to remove and a bit of liposuction on the arm to get rid of the flap.”

Movement is returning as the nerves grow back. “It’s a good outcome,” he says, cradling his arm. “It’s the little things … I can’t do up a button, so we’ve put Velcro on my shirts.” At least it’s your left hand, I say. “I am left-handed.” He gives a dry smile. “But I feel lucky. If I was wearing a jumper or a long-sleeved shirt I wouldn’t have had an arm at all.”

Malcolm had to hire extra staff, and eight households are now dependent on his business. What if the drought doesn’t break? “We’re in a lot of trouble.” His eyes narrow. ‘”We have very little fodder. After mid-August, there’s no hay left.” He half-laughs. “I’m a typical farmer. I just get on with it. Life’s always a challenge.”

The Observer Magazine

Copyright Guardian News %26amp; Media Ltd 2007

Homepage photo by Georgie Sharp via Flickr

Between October 2008 and February 2009, the central Chinese province of Henan endured its worst drought since 1951.

Henan was not the only province affected. Many provinces, including Hebei, Shandong and Anhui, have suffered a lack of rainfall; some areas have gone without precipitation for 100 days. According to figures from the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters (SFDH), at the height of the drought on February 7, 2009, 107,333 square kilometres of cropland were affected – around double the annual average of 50,666 square kilometres. Rural residents have been worst affected, with millions left short of drinking water.

The drought has now been eased by a number of rain and snow falls. This may have calmed the worries of many people, but the sad truth is that the drought will be back again. As the SFDH points out, droughts have long been a problem for China, particularly in the basins of the Yellow River and Huai River in the north, where water pressures are most acute. This area has only 7% of the nation`s total water resources, and sees droughts nine years out of every 10. The Chinese government and the people must face up to the fact that droughts are a regular occurrence.

Australia has suffered terrible drought for the past several years, which many scientists link to global warming. This helped to focus climate change as a political priority, which led to prime minister Kevin Rudd signing the Kyoto Protocol at the 2007 UN-led climate-change talks in Bali, Indonesia.

In China, global warming will worsen already grave water shortages. The government and the people are taking action on climate change, but this year`s drought needs to refocus our attention on the problem.

Many experts are giving recommendations for dealing with the symptoms of the drought. Irrigation equipment has been left for years without maintenance in many Chinese fields and some call for increased investment in bolstering anti-drought technology; others call for the popularisation of water-efficient agriculture.

They are not wrong. A lack of long-term government spending on irrigation and water-saving technology – combined with the low returns from agriculture that have caused farmers to leave the land and look for work elsewhere – means that Chinese agriculture is very inefficient in its use of water resources.

A report from the World Bank in January, Addressing China`s Water Scarcity [pdf], put the value of China`s productivity per cubic metre of water at US$3.60, compared to US$4.80 for average middle-income countries and US$35.80 in high-income countries. The most important factor is agriculture, which uses two-thirds of China`s water. The Ministry of Water Resources says that only 46% of water used in irrigation actually reaches the crops. In developed countries this figure is between 70% and 80%.

A survey by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture found that before Chinese New Year, over 20 million migrant workers had lost their jobs in the recent economic downturn and returned to their villages. Encouraging these people to help save water in agriculture will help increase water efficiency and could provide employment for some.

Qian Zhengying, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and former minister of water resources, wrote with colleagues in Science Times that there is more to water-saving in agriculture than simply improving irrigation. They write that the balance of crops, forestry and livestock needs to be adjusted across arid and semi-arid regions to ensure that local industry is suited to the natural environment. For example, the decision not to plant water-intensive rice crops around Beijing has helped reduce water use.

Farmers need to cut water use, but so do households and industry. And if water pollution is not controlled, the country`s water crisis will only worsen.

China is currently working on a huge water engineering project known as the South-to-North Water Transfer Project, which aims to move much-needed water across regions. The eastern branch of the project will take water from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the central branch of the Han River. Plans will see at least half of the water carried by the eastern branch used in agriculture, while the central branch will meet urban and industrial demand in cities like Beijing and Tianjin.

Although the central branch passes through central Chinese provinces such as Hunan and Hubei, they will not benefit until it starts carrying water in 2014. At that time, water shortages may be relieved to some extent, but the real solution will only be water conservation and the improvement of water management.

Water resources minister Chen Lei stressed the importance of implementing strict rules on water management at a national meeting on February 14. These should include, he said, laws, regulations and policies on water use and the setting of “red line” benchmarks for water resources, which must not be crossed.

But water management is not a matter only for the Ministry of Water Resources – or indeed the government. The World Bank report points out how China needs to shift from the traditional top-down model of water management to a more modern style.

The report suggests forming a national water resources committee to lead and coordinate water affairs, or combining departments with responsibility for water management at the ministries of water, environmental protection, housing and urban-rural development into one new ministry. It also emphasises how full use can be made of market measures, such as water rights, water pricing and environmental compensation mechanisms; and says that public participation should be put on a sound legislative footing.

The suggestions are all pertinent. Let us hope this latest drought can raise awareness about the need to change China`s water management systems.

Li Taige is a Beijing-based journalist. He obtained a masters degree in engineering from Sichuan University in 1997, and studied as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2003-2004.

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