MIRO CERNETIG 31 July 2000 Globe and Mail (Toronto) Heaven's Desert, China -- This picturesque valley on Beijing's outskirts was once a playground for China's emperors, who came here to hunt, hold feasts or just idle by the river bank during the capital's languid summers. But that's impossible now. The land has turned to a yellow powder, the river has nearly dried up and the trees are dying of thirst. Sunburned peasants now cram the window jambs with rags, or simply brick them up altogether, to keep the ever-approaching sands of the Gobi out of their wind-blasted huts. In just a century, the emperors' valley has turned into the Heaven's Desert, where giant sand dunes rise up 100 metres or more, like something out of Lawrence of Arabia. And those dunes, just 70 kilometres northwest of Beijing, are on the move toward China's capital, at the rate of five metres a year. It's all a harbinger of China's top environmental crisis: There is too little water for its 1.3-billion people. "People in Beijing are becoming scared of the desert," says Wang Huaijun, a peasant who makes a living selling toboggan rides down the sandy slopes to tourists, as well as jaunts on a horse and a camel. "Beijingers come here every day to see the sand blowing in from the Gobi." This summer, the world's most populous country is in the grip of one of its worst droughts ever. That is fuelling fears that large swaths of China, from Mongolia to Xinjiang, and the half-billion people who live in between, are running out of water. Four hundred of China' 668 cities have now declared water shortages -- meaning the taps may function only a few hours a day, or not at all. At least 20-million Chinese don't have access to any running water. Another 200 million experience water shortages or some form of rationing that puts a serious crimp in their lives. In Shanxi, a province where half of the rivers have stopped flowing, coal miners now get only one bucket of water weekly to wash off the coal dust. In China this summer, there are daily examples of rivers, lakes and reservoirs drying up. In Hebei province, a portion of the Great Wall not seen in 20 years has suddenly emerged from the Pan Jiakou reservoir, which is drying up. The Songhua River, relied upon by 20 million, has gone dry. And Beijing's reservoirs, supplying 15 million, are dropping by the day. The water shortages are the result of a century's worth of environmental sins, what might be called China's three O's: overgrazing, overlogging, and overpopulation. Together they have brought about a national crisis, one that has many Chinese wondering if nature is taking revenge on their tired land. First, there were the spring sandstorms, the likes of which most Beijing residents had never seen. The sky turned an eerie yellow and the winds suddenly howled, blowing at least three peasant construction workers off a skyscraper to their death. Afterward, the city found itself under a shroud of fine yellow silt: It was the sands of the Gobi, which now drift hundreds of kilometres because of logging and widespread grazing that have stripped the land bare. Then came a plague of locusts, which thrive in the drought. They devoured two-million hectares of farmland, a further blow to farmers already suffering from water shortages that have left more than 15-million hectares of crops wilting under temperatures that have soared above 40 degrees for days on end. Economic losses from the massive drought will be difficult to estimate, but certainly are enormous. In addition to lost crops, China's economy is losing money from factories forced to slow down due to a lack of water. Last year government officials estimated that water shortages cost the economy $16-billion. Things have only deteriorated since then. China's lack of water even threatens political stability. A few weeks ago, in the drought-stricken province of Shandong, thousands rioted when officials tried to shut off the supply of drinking water to make repairs. One police officer was killed, and 100 villagers and 40 policemen were injured before the crowd was brought under control, according to the Information Centre of Human Rights and Democracy, based in Hong Kong. China's water shortage has now become a top-level issue within the Communist regime. In an unusual move a few weeks ago, Premier Zhu Rongji appeared on national television to tell his countrymen that Beijing's unusual sandstorms were "an alarm for the entire nation." Later, he travelled to Heaven's Desert -- so named because the sands come from the sky -- to use the massive dunes as a backdrop to issue three environmental commands: "Let trees spread on mountains, stop growing grain on hilly terrain and keep livestock in their pens." But it will take more than slogans to stop the desert's advance, or solve the water deficit. With each passing year, China -- 40 per cent of which is already a desert -- is seeing more of its vast northwest and central region transformed into a dustbowl. About 2,500 square kilometres of China turn into a desert every year. Much of that is a result of agrarian policies from the Mao era, when peasants were encouraged to cut forests and clear shrubland, to till the marginal land and flood hardscrabble fields with vast amounts of water. Geographic realities only compound the crisis. China has about 22 per cent of the world's population, but only 7 per cent of its fresh water. Furthermore, China's water is in -- or raining down on -- the wrong place. China's lush south gets 75 per cent of the country's rainfall; the north, with 40 per cent of the population and half the industrial output, gets 25 per cent. In addition, much of the fresh water that is available is polluted, the legacy of decades of neglect by state-run industries and cities that ignored water treatment. It is now estimated that more than one half of China's 700 major rivers are polluted. Around urban areas, about 90 per cent of lakes, rivers and reservoirs are unfit to drink from, including one of Beijing's largest reservoirs, which happens to be walking distance from the Heaven's Desert. "It is possible that water will be the biggest political issue in China this century," said a European diplomat, who has studied the problem for a decade. "Entire rivers could run dry in the years ahead, as the Yellow River already does some years. That could force mass migrations of millions, which could destabilize Chinese society." Cognizant of that possibility, China's leaders have come up with a solution on a grand scale: Move all that water in the south to the north. In recent weeks, state planners have revived a 1952 dream of Chairman Mao to divert water from the Yangtze River to the parched north and west. At a cost of at least $18-billion -- a figure many experts already say is too low -- it would pump water from the Yangtze over 1,200 kilometres of mountains and desert to the Yellow River, solving its deficit of water. Chinese planners, who have proposed three routes to divert Yangtze water north, say the project is ready to begin and could be completed by 2010. "The long-awaited plan, a controversial one second only to the Three Gorges project [to dam the Yangtze River], is becoming urgent with the ever-worsening crisis of water resources in the north, particularly after this spring's blanketing sandstorms," the China Daily, one of the regime's key propaganda tools, declared on its front page. Discuss this plan with ordinary Chinese and most will simply sigh with relief. Few wonder about the environmental impact of taking water out of the Yangtze and its estuary. Getting water is a more pressing concern. "We have so much water in the Yangtze River, it floods all the time and that water is wasted," said Zhu Min, a university student. "Why not bring it to the north of China. Why not use it to water Beijing." One possible downside: If they get such a windfall, may Beijing residents might simply keep pouring precious water down the drain. Since the 1950s, city residents have increased their water usage 40-fold. The aquifer under Beijing has sunk to 44 metres below the surface, from about four metres when Mao took power. This year, despite the ill omens, they have shown little appetite for embracing basic water conservation. Flush toilets, washing machines and now dishwashers aren't things most people want to give up. And like many people who live in arid areas (think California or Nevada), Beijing residents seem to be developing a fetish for lawns. Preparing for their bid for the 2008 Olympics, government workers are pouring out the water to try and grow lush lawns, now even on Tiananmen Square. Repeated promises of sweeping water quotas to control waste have yet to be announced. http://www.globeandmail.com/gam/International/20000731/UCHINN.html _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
