Wringing China dry and blaming climate change
Beijing blames climate change for wreaking havoc on scarce water resources, but critics say the country’s headlong drive to build its industrial prowess and huge hydro projects are just as responsible.
For China, global warming has become something of a convenient truth.
Beijing blames climate change for wreaking havoc on scarce water resources, but critics say the country’s headlong drive to build its industrial prowess and huge hydro projects are just as responsible.
On the eve of a global climate change conference in Stockholm, a UN climate body says shrinking glaciers in central Asia and the Himalayas would affect water resources in downstream river catchments, which include China.
One thing in the mind of policymakers and researchers is that climate change will add to uncertainties – in some areas, the water supply situation is already quite tense
“Some regions are already near the critical temperature threshold,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a draft summary report.
“In parts of Asia, increases in flood and drought will exacerbate rural poverty, due to negative impacts on rice crops and increases in food prices and costs of living.”
Rising temperatures are likely to speed icecap melting in the Himalayas, which could bring first floods and then severe drought, with diminished seasonal melts unable to replenish China’s rivers, including the mighty Yangtze.
This year, China published a national “water census” showing that as many as 28,000 rivers logged in a government database had vanished since the 1990s, leaving just under 23,000.