BEIJING (AFP) – China will divert water from its two longest rivers to help farmers hit by the country's worst drought in decades, state media said Sunday.
Water from the Yangtze River, the country's longest, will be diverted to the northern areas of eastern Jiangsu Province, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing Zhang Zhitong, a senior Ministry of Water Resources emergency official.
The announcement came after Beijing last week raised its drought emergency to the highest level for the first time and sent relief supplies and technical specialists to eight major drought-hit regions.
Floodgates will also be opened in Inner Mongolia along the Yellow River, the country's second longest river, to increase water supply for central Henan and eastern Shandong provinces, Zhang according to the report.
China has released more than five billion cubic meters (177 cubic feet) of water from the Yellow River to fight the drought that has hit most of its north since November, Xinhua said.
The drought is also affecting central and southwestern rice-growing provinces.
More than 4.3 million people and 2.1 million head of livestock are short of water, the relief headquarters said this week, as parts of the nation experience their worst drought since the early 1950s.
About 43 percent of the country's winter wheat supplies are at risk, as some areas have seen no rain for 100 days or more, state media said previously.
The dry spell highlights one of China's main long-term worries, as water resources are being rapidly depleted due to the country's fast economic growth.
The capital, Beijing, is particularly badly hit, with experts warning the city of 17 million people will soon face water shortages.
Seems like mother nature is resting quietly recently, with the fires in Austraila and this drought in China. Although kudos to the CCP for undertaking such a huge action.
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
The Chinese have been investing enormously in reservoirs and aqueducts precisely because they foresaw problems like this, abet you'd have to be blind not too. Water shortages and the food shortages they can also are also the biggest driven behind limiting population. However the Chinese are also stuck working there own economic success, all that new industry and manufacturing absolutely guzzles down freshwater, and increased urbanization increases runoff which means less ground water supplies.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
How prepared are they when they're two most important rivers become seasonal? Once the glaciers that feed they melt completely (something that's apparently going to happen within the decade), that is.
"To make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe."
— Carl Sagan
A substantial amount of the Yangtze's flow is from the very rainy southern areas of China and won't be affected by the loss of the Himalayan glaciers, so it's a bit overstated. The Huang He regularly runs dry by the time it hits the sea these days thanks to over-use, however, so it won't be anything new.
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. -- Wikipedia's No Original Research policy page.
They ought to build more nuclear plants around the Huang He river basin and use either the electricity from said plants or waste heat to desalinate ocean water.
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
They are planning one of the largest roll out of nuclear power plants. I am at work so I can't give the links right now, but if you interested I will post them when I get back home. I don't know about what they plan to do in regards to desalination though.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
mr friendly guy wrote:They are planning one of the largest roll out of nuclear power plants.
Damn sure they are, because their power consumption is rising dramatically. They are undergoing an industrialization, which is accelerating and if China becomes equally industrialized, per capita, as First or Second World economies, they would alone weigh in the economic sense, the same as several First World nations combined. I'm sure they can pull it off barring some sort of soci0-political collapse, as well - their government did large-scale industrial projects before.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
But Stas, don't you know China is doomed? Doomed I tell you. At least what the doomsayers here said will happen when peak oil hits. That was before it became fashionable to say America will be doomed first. Now I believe the new claim is America is fucked, but its going to drag others down with it. Ah, doomsayers.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
mr friendly guy wrote:But Stas, don't you know China is doomed? Doomed I tell you. At least what the doomsayers here said will happen when peak oil hits. That was before it became fashionable to say America will be doomed first. Now I believe the new claim is America is fucked, but its going to drag others down with it. Ah, doomsayers.
Well at the least they never said anything about recovering from that doom. A lot of people have criticise the fast rate of China's growth. However, I think that without the fast growing rate, China would hardly stand a chance in this global depression.
Although China did experience many doomsday scenario for them before.
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
You mean like whats his name, Gordon Chang's prediction that China would collapse in.... 2006. Wow that really happened. Of course China like the rest of the world is going through a tough economic period, but thats due to the problems in America spreading out an effecting the world rather than problems in China's own economic and financial structure as Chang argues.
At least our doomsayers are smart enough not to actually put an exact time frame.
Never apologise for being a geek, because they won't apologise to you for being an arsehole. John Barrowman - 22 June 2014 Perth Supernova.
Countries I have been to - 14.
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, USA.
Always on the lookout for more nice places to visit.
