Tibet's largest water project completes damming

Ray

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The Yangtze, Three Gorges and China's 2011 drought

The water in the Yangtze river, China's longest, has dropped to its lowest ever recorded level. According to the latest census figures for the People's Republic, the urban population now represents 49.68% of the country's total population. Of the more than 600 cities, 400 are haunted by a lack of water and the problem is acute for 200 of them. If seasonal lack of water in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze further expands as it has in the past decade and becomes permanent, said the China Daily, "it will be impossible for North China, long plagued by drought, to rely on its southern counterparts to quench its thirst". More than 1,000 reservoirs in Central China's Hubei province dropped to such a low level that 500,000 people face a shortage of drinking water.

The newspaper said: "The government can never attach too much strategic importance to the water problem in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, given its position as one of the most important grain production bases, one of the most densely populated regions and the country's most developed area. Records show that the seasonal water level in this part of the Yangtze has constantly reached the historical lows of at least 20 years every year in the last decade."

On May 18, the State Council, China's cabinet, announced for the first time that "problems that demand prompt solutions exist" in the project's resettlement of residents, ecological protection, and prevention and control of geological disasters. The project's follow-up plan says that by 2020, those resettled as a result of the dam should expect to live the average life of residents in Hubei province and Chongqing municipality, which the reservoir spans. About 1.3 million people have been resettled since 1993, fewer than 20% of them outside the reservoir area. The rest had to move to higher ground. The plots there are smaller and, because the slopes are unstable, most are ill suited to farming. With limited access to arable land, compensation, preferential policies, education and transportation, many are still struggling in sheer poverty.

Now, China's President Hu Jintao has urged local government officials to treat drought relief in rural areas as an "urgent task" as he wraps up a four-day inspection tour in central China's Hubei Province Friday. According to Xinhua, Hu's call comes in the midst of the worst drought in 60 years that hit the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

These areas are China's important agricultural production bases. Hu asked government officials to provide fiscal and technological support to farmers and work to ensure they have enough drinking water. Efforts should be made to give full play to the role of reservoirs in offsetting the impact of the drought, Hu stressed when visiting the Danjiangkou Reservoir, which is part of China's massive south-to-north water diversion project.

On Friday 03 June 2011, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Li Ganjie told the press that the drought has caused the deterioration of water quality in several major lakes. The long-lasting drought has led to the sharp reduction of water levels in major lakes such as Poyang Lake, Dongting Lake and Honghu Lake. Monitoring statistics showed that water quality in these lakes saw a noticeable decline in March and April, compared to the same period last year, according to Li.

Wetlands and migrant birds in these regions have also suffered from the drought, the worst to hit the region in decades, said Li. Over 1,333 hectares of wetlands located east of Dongting Lake have dried up. The drought has left the Yangtze River, China's longest river, with its lowest levels of rainfall since 1961.

Li denied that the drought was aggravated by the river's Three Gorges Dam. He stressed that a shortage of rainfall tcaused the drought. The long-lasting drought has affected parts of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, which are located near the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. These areas have seen 40 to 60 percent less rainfall than usual.

The Yangtze, Three Gorges and China’s 2011 drought « Resources Research
 

Ray

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The Yangtze, Three Gorges and China's 2011 drought

The water in the Yangtze river, China's longest, has dropped to its lowest ever recorded level. According to the latest census figures for the People's Republic, the urban population now represents 49.68% of the country's total population. Of the more than 600 cities, 400 are haunted by a lack of water and the problem is acute for 200 of them. If seasonal lack of water in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze further expands as it has in the past decade and becomes permanent, said the China Daily, "it will be impossible for North China, long plagued by drought, to rely on its southern counterparts to quench its thirst". More than 1,000 reservoirs in Central China's Hubei province dropped to such a low level that 500,000 people face a shortage of drinking water.

The newspaper said: "The government can never attach too much strategic importance to the water problem in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, given its position as one of the most important grain production bases, one of the most densely populated regions and the country's most developed area. Records show that the seasonal water level in this part of the Yangtze has constantly reached the historical lows of at least 20 years every year in the last decade."

On May 18, the State Council, China's cabinet, announced for the first time that "problems that demand prompt solutions exist" in the project's resettlement of residents, ecological protection, and prevention and control of geological disasters. The project's follow-up plan says that by 2020, those resettled as a result of the dam should expect to live the average life of residents in Hubei province and Chongqing municipality, which the reservoir spans. About 1.3 million people have been resettled since 1993, fewer than 20% of them outside the reservoir area. The rest had to move to higher ground. The plots there are smaller and, because the slopes are unstable, most are ill suited to farming. With limited access to arable land, compensation, preferential policies, education and transportation, many are still struggling in sheer poverty.

Now, China's President Hu Jintao has urged local government officials to treat drought relief in rural areas as an "urgent task" as he wraps up a four-day inspection tour in central China's Hubei Province Friday. According to Xinhua, Hu's call comes in the midst of the worst drought in 60 years that hit the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

These areas are China's important agricultural production bases. Hu asked government officials to provide fiscal and technological support to farmers and work to ensure they have enough drinking water. Efforts should be made to give full play to the role of reservoirs in offsetting the impact of the drought, Hu stressed when visiting the Danjiangkou Reservoir, which is part of China's massive south-to-north water diversion project.

On Friday 03 June 2011, Vice Minister of Environmental Protection Li Ganjie told the press that the drought has caused the deterioration of water quality in several major lakes. The long-lasting drought has led to the sharp reduction of water levels in major lakes such as Poyang Lake, Dongting Lake and Honghu Lake. Monitoring statistics showed that water quality in these lakes saw a noticeable decline in March and April, compared to the same period last year, according to Li.

Wetlands and migrant birds in these regions have also suffered from the drought, the worst to hit the region in decades, said Li. Over 1,333 hectares of wetlands located east of Dongting Lake have dried up. The drought has left the Yangtze River, China's longest river, with its lowest levels of rainfall since 1961.

Li denied that the drought was aggravated by the river's Three Gorges Dam. He stressed that a shortage of rainfall tcaused the drought. The long-lasting drought has affected parts of Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, which are located near the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. These areas have seen 40 to 60 percent less rainfall than usual.

The Yangtze, Three Gorges and China’s 2011 drought « Resources Research
 

Ray

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Now, the coup de grace


Blame on Chinese Dams Rise as Mekong River Dries Up

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 17, 2010 (IPS) - As the water level in the Mekong River dips to a record 50-year low, a familiar pattern of fault-finding has risen to the surface. China, the regional giant through which parts of South-east Asia's largest waterway flows through, is again at the receiving end of verbal salvoes from its neighbours.

Environmentalists and sections of the regional media are blaming the Chinese dams being built or operating on the upper reaches of the Mekong for contributing to the dramatic drop in water levels that are affecting communities in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, the lower Mekong countries.

"Changes to the Mekong River's daily hydrology and sediment load since the early 1990s have already been linked to the operation of the (Chinese) dam cascade by academics," states the Save the Mekong Coalition, a Bangkok-based network of activists and grassroots groups. "Communities downstream in northern Thailand, Burma and Laos have suffered loss of fish and aquatic plant resources impacting local economies and livelihoods."

Newspapers in Thailand, which are freer and feistier than those in other countries across the region, have been more blunt. "China is fast failing the good-neighbour test in the current Mekong River crisis," argued the English- language daily 'Bangkok Post' in a recent editorial. "The trouble is China's unilateral decision to harness the Mekong with eight hydroelectric dams."

Stung by this latest barrage of criticism, China has taken the unusual step of breaking its silence to mount its own defence, placing the blame for the drop in the Mekong River's levels to the unusually harsh drought across this region.

As part of this shift in diplomacy to engage with the lower Mekong countries, one of Beijing's envoys reminded critics that the water from China's portion of the Mekong, which it calls the Lancang, accounts for less than a fifth of the volume of water in the river.

Therefore, his argument goes, what China does upstream cannot have such a big impact on water levels downstream.

"The average annual runoff volume of the Lancang River at the outbound point (of China) is approximately 64 billion cubic metres, accounting for only 13.5 percent of Mekong's runoff volume at the (South China) sea outlet," Chen Dehai of the Chinese embassy in Bangkok said at a press conference.

Chen's defence came days after Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue told Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva during a visit to Bangkok that the upstream dams were not the reason for drop in water levels. "China would not do anything to damage mutual interest with neighbouring countries in the Mekong," Hu was reported to have said, according to the Thai media.

Beijing's attribution of low water levels to the drought, instead of its dams, has been endorsed by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter- governmental body that manages the river basin. "At this point we have no direct evidence that the drop in water levels is caused by the Chinese dams," said Damian Kean, communications adviser to the MRC.

"There was very low rainfall during the wet season, which ended four weeks earlier than normal, in October," Kean added during a telephone interview from Vientiane, the Lao capital, where the MRC is based. "MRC analysis has concluded that the current dry period and subsequent low water levels in the Mekong Basin were caused by some of the lowest rainfall in the region in over 50 years."

But this does not wash with environmentalists like Carl Middleton, who argue that China's lack of transparency about the volume of water it lets flow south has fed the suspicion that its dams are making current crisis worse. "If the dams are not contributing to loss of water level in the Mekong, then China should publicly release information of water level flows," he told IPS.

"The Chinese have not disclosed information about the operations of its dams on the Mekong," added Middleton, the Mekong programme coordinator of International Rivers, a U.S.-based environmental lobby. "You need proper information and data to manage a river basin."

Although China does not supply information to the MRC about dry-season water flows, it has, after years of silence, been more forthcoming about hydrological information during the wet season, when there are floods. This followed the first agreement Beijing signed with the MRC in 2002.

China's reluctance to cooperate with the MRC stems from it being an observer, rather than a member of the body, and therefore not bound by its agreements. Military-ruled Burma, or Myanmar, is the other observer in the commission, which groups Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

The 4,660-kilometre long Mekong river flows from the Tibetan plateau, through southern China's Yunnan province, and passes Burma before journeying through the Mekong Basin shared by the four MRC members to empty out into the South China Sea in southern Vietnam. Nearly 80 percent of the water that reaches the basin flows from tributaries in the lower Mekong.

China has already completed four of a cascade of eight dams, with the Xiaowan Dam, whose reservoir began harnessing the Mekong's waters in October 2009, being described as "the world's highest arch dam."

But disquiet about the dams and their impact on the Mekong River's ecosystem and fish catch has been rising since the first of these dams, the Manwan, came on line in 1992. Fishing is the main source of livelihood for the 60 million people living in the Mekong Basin, and the annual income from fisheries in the lower Mekong is between two to three billion U.S. dollars.

The year the Manwan dam began operations also saw a severe drought and drop in the Mekong's water level, giving rise to the argument local communities and activists have held on to for nearly two decades – that China's dams are linked to dramatic and erratic dips in the river's water levels.

"The local communities along the river banks in northern Thailand believe that the change in the water levels began after the Chinese dams," says Montree Chantavong of Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance, a Bangkok-based environmental lobby. "It has impacted their fisheries activity."

ENVIRONMENT: Blame on Chinese Dams Rise as Mekong River Dries Up - IPS ipsnews.net
 

J20!

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Ray

Nothing you've said and posted so far has addressed my question on which countries has suffered desertification due to Chinese dams. "All you've said is: This can happen to the riparian states i.e. India and Bangladesh because of Damming the Brahmaputra"

Your first post addresses the relocation of people away from the flood areas. Then it mentions erosion and landslides. That's what dams do. If a previously dry hilly area is covered in water, what do you think will happen at the edges where water encounters sloping dry soil? Land Slides. The soil erosion is the problem, but then it was bound to happen, even if a smaller dam was built.

Your second post discusses impending droughts in China. Droughts are beyond anyone's control, even China. Nowhere in your post does it mention Chinese dams as a cause for droughts. Dams ARE a source of water you know...

The third article talks about flooding in the Yangtze river. Maybe you just don't know, so I won't be condescending, dams HOLD BACK floods. What do you think would happen if the Three Gorges wasn't there. Wuhan would be flooding again. More people would be missing or dead. More dams=less flooding in villages. The Three Gorges is saving lives in Wuhan, but maybe you dislike everything Chinese so much you don't see that.

Fourth article discusses environmental issues caused by the dam. Algae blooms and soil erosion. I've never disputed any environmental issues caused by the dam or any other dam. But it doesn't say anything about it draining India and Bangladesh of fresh water.

Three Gorges Dam Causing Drought in Southwest China?
: This is a speculative article that GUESSES at the causes of droughts in China. " The drought in the Yangtze basin this summer have spurred speculations that the massive Three Gorges dam has upset the region's ecological balance and is causing the decrease in rainfall." There has been droughts in China before, and there will be drought in the future, blaming the Three Gorges, in a time of global warming, without basing it on verifiable data makes this a SPECULATIVE article.

If you cant give me proof of China's dams drying Asia out, just say so. Don't post random articles about the Three Gorges causing erosion, algae booms, and having caused the relocation of people in the flood area. EVERY DAM does that. What do you recommend, not preventing floods, providing pollution free power to huge cities, and not moving people out of a dams flooding area?

All dams have their issues, mostly environmental like soil erosion, but stopping China's flood happy rivers, which kill a lot of our citizens, and pollution free power is worth the trouble in a time where China is actively trying to reduce its carbon footprint.
 

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