More than four-fifths of the wetlands along northern China’s biggest river system have dried up because of over-development, the state media reported recently in the latest warning of the dire environmental consequences of the country’s economic growth.
Fifty years ago, the Haihe river and its tributaries formed an ecologically rich area that included 3 809km2 of wetlands. But in the years since, the expanding megacities of Beijing and Tianjin have sucked much of it dry. The Xinhua news agency reported that the wetlands have shrunk to 538km2.
Officials blamed the decline on excessive exploitation of the Haihe and damming of the major tributaries.
Last month, water conservation was identified as a national priority in the government’s five-year plan. Supplies for China’s 1,3-billion population are less than a quarter of the world average. The situation is even bleaker further north, such as on the Liao river delta in north-east China, where farmers harvest the dried-up reed beds.
The drought is worsened by the expansion of urban populations and the encroachment of desertification.
The annual water shortage in the basin of the Haihe and two other major rivers — the Yellow and the Huaihe — is estimated to be more than 15-billion cubic metres. By 2010, this shortfall is expected to rise to 28-billion cubic metres. With reservoirs drying up, the authorities have turned to increasingly desperate measures, including cloud-seeding and ”mining” of ground water.
So much has been extracted that the Water Resources Ministry says more than 90 rivers run dry for part of the year and 70% of water supplies are contaminated. — Â