ENVIRONMENT-CHINA: Dying Rivers No Longer Inspire

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, May 14 1998 (IPS) - Once an inspiration for generations of artists and poets, China’s famous rivers and lakes have fallen victim to pollution. In fact, they are in danger of becoming the country’s sewage dumps.

Environmental degradation has reached such levels that the Yellow River is running dry for half a year and experts warn that the Yangtze River — China’s longest, might be soon find itself in the same dire condition.

This month, pollution killed 500 tonnes of fish in one of the country’s most famous lakes — Donghu, near Wuhan in Hubei province, turning its surface silvery white and causing an offensive stench.

Yet the Donghu lake’s example is just one of many in a country where 80 per cent of the major rivers are so polluted by industrial waste they can no longer support marine life.

The Chinese government plans to spend 54 billion U.S. billion dollars over the next three years to clean the pollution and promises that by the turn of the century all industries will be forced to meet Chinese discharge standards.

Any delay to meet these promises could have disastrous consequences, environmentalists warn.

The water shortage looms as one of China’s challenges in the next century. Half of the cities in the country suffer from a chronic lack of water and China’s per capita water resources account only for one fourth of the world average.

Compounding China’s gloomy water picture, the demand for water by industry and agriculture is projected to grow tremendously, as a new study of the Washington think-tank, the Worldwatch Institute shows.

Chinese industrial and residential demand for water is predicted to grow from 83 billion tonnes in 1995 to 403 billion tonnes in 2030.

But just as demand for water is rising, China’s major rivers are being threatened by drought not only because of increasing soil erosion and silting but also through contamination.

Professor Lei Hengshun of the Yangtze Technology and Economy Society warns that if the trend continues, parts of the Yangtze River will become as dry in the next 20 years as long stretches of the Yellow River are now.

A record of 700 kilometres of the Yellow River were dry for 226 days last year. The Yangtze — blamed for many disastrous floods through China’s long history, had 15 percent less water than normal in 1997, according to the Wuhan Shipping Department.

“This is a dangerous signal,” professor Lei told the China Economic Times. “If the trend continues, it could bring incalculable losses and irreversible damage to the ecology of the vast basin area.”

The river valley is one of the fastest growing economic areas in the country, with total production of goods and services accounting for major share of the country’s gross national product.

The Yangtze is being dumped with garbage and sewage from ships. Each boat passing through the Three Gorges discharges 177-236 tonnes of industrial and human waste each day, reports say.

“There is nearly no clear water in it from beginning to end,” professor Lei told the paper. “One day soon, those living on its banks will have to search for drinkable water.”

The tributaries of the Pearl River, irrigating China’s South, are turning red and black also because of serious pollution. A survey carried out by the environmental protection agencies of Guangxi and Guizhou provinces found that the Hongshui River, the largest tributary of the Pearl, turn black for several months a year.

The report published in the China Environmental News said local people had renamed the tributary the Heilongjiang, or ‘the black dragon’ river. Some 30,000 people in Tianhe county in Guangxi province were reported to be desperate as they had not been able to use river water since February.

The report said the tributaries of the Pearl were turning black in low-water season and red during the flood season but at both times the water was not potable.

China’s environmental crusaders are pinning much hope on the new government of former economic czar Zhu Rongji who was elected premier in March.

“With Zhu Rongji in charge, I’m now quite optimistic,” declares Qu Geping, chairman of the National People’s Congress Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Committee. “For the first time environmental protection is listed as one of the government’s top priorities.”

Spending on environmental protection forms part of an ambitious plan by Zhu Rongji to boost a flagging economic growth by increasing investment in basic infrastructure.

China hopes to raise a vast sum abroad for a grand environmental clean-up, as well as invest 180 billion yuan (21.6 billion U.S. dollars) of its own for the project.