Oxfam provides water in China’s worst drought in decades: 10 Million people short of drinking water

Source: Oxfam
Date: 02 Mar 2010

A severe drought has hit China, including some of the most impoverished provinces: Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Sichuan, Shanxi, Henan and Shaanxi and the municipality of Chongqing. More than 10 million people face difficulties in accessing drinking water. Oxfam Hong Kong is already providing water in Yunnan Province and has also assessed the situation in the neighbouring provinces of Guizhou and Guangxi. The international poverty alleviation and humanitarian organisation has staff based in all three provinces.

The hardest hit province is Yunnan, where 5,969,000 people and 3,594,000 livestock face a shortage of drinking water; 3,310,000 people are in need of aid. The drought has been serious in Yunnan since autumn of 2009: 31.5 million mu of land (a Chinese acre) has been affected, with 6.2 million mu completely dried up. In all, the direct economic loss of agriculture has been estimated at more than 10 billion Yuan.

Oxfam is working alongside the Yunnan Province Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, and assessments have been completed in Wuding County. Oxfam is also working with the local government of Luquan County to plan the disaster response. Providing clean water for people and livestock is the agency's top priority, and work is also underway with the Runtu Mutual Help Working Group and the Yunnan Youth Foundation to provide water in Anning City (since 28 February) and Luquan County (since 1 March). Taking into account that the drought will mean either no spring harvest or a small one, as well as difficulties in the next planting season, Oxfam also plans to provide food aid in these communities.

In Guizhou, about 2,930,000 people and 1,250,000 livestock are without drinking water: it is the most serious drought here in 60 years. Areas hard hit include Bijie, Liupanshui and Anshun. Some 311,700 hectares of crops have been affected, with 170,700 dried up and 31,500 unproductive. Direct economic loss is estimated at 634,471,200 Yuan. Up to 970,000 people are in need of aid. Oxfam has completed initial assessments in Guizhou and will focus on food distribution. Drinking water is another need under review.

In Guangxi, Oxfam has reached initial consensus with governmental partners of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and has prepared a relief plan.

Link: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/NMUO-836TBX?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=DR-2009-000033-CHN

China drought forces huge water cutbacks
18 February 2009

AS RIVERS run dry and fields turn to dust, China has announced dramatic plans to cut water use by its industry and agriculture.

Water resources minister Chen Lei announced plans to cut the amount of water needed to produce US$1 of GDP by 60 per cent by 2020. With China's economy projected to grow by 60 per cent by that time, it effectively means the nation aims to cap consumption at today's levels.

The statement follows China's worst drought in half a century and increased water shortages caused by industrial pollution, which is making river water unfit for drinking even after treatment. Official statistics show the country's urban supply systems and irrigation networks are falling short by 40 cubic kilometres of water a year.

The move also suggests that the government has finally decided that it cannot rely on solutions like its $60-billion south-north water-transfer scheme, which will divert southern water to the arid north.

China's biggest need is to reduce water used for growing food: its notoriously inefficient farms use two-thirds of the country's water supplies. According to Junguo Liu of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, about 1200 cubic kilometres of water is pumped from rivers and aquifers to irrigate Chinese fields each year. Unless efficiency improves, he predicts that figure will rise by a quarter by 2020 as demand for meat grows - meat production needs more water than vegetables and cereals.

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126963.600-china-drought-forces-huge-water-cutbacks.html

Vietnam Feels the Heat of a 100-Year Drought
By Martha Ann Overland / Hanoi Thursday, Mar. 04, 2010

Every year, even at the peak of Vietnam's dry season when the Red River is at its lowest, Hanoi's skilled captains manage to negotiate their flat-bottomed boats through its shallow waters. But this year, with a drought gripping the entire country, and water levels at record lows, the river is eerily quiet. What is normally a bustling waterway is becoming a winding river of sand, and farmers who depend upon the river for irrigation are watching the expanding sandbars as nervously as the boat captains. "If there is no water in the coming days," says 59-year old farmer Vu Thi La, who just put in her spring rice seedlings, "it will all die."

Across Vietnam, high temperatures and parched rivers are setting off alarm bells as the nation grapples with what's shaping up to be its worst drought in over 100 years. At 0.68 meters high, the Red River is at its lowest level since records started being kept in 1902. With virtually no rainfall since September, timber fires are burning in the north and tinder-dry conditions threaten forests in the south. Soaring temperatures in the central part of Vietnam have unleashed a plague of rice-eating insects, damaging thousands of hectares of paddies. "It's the beginning of everything," Nguyen Lan Chau, vice director of the National Center for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting, says gloomily.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1969630,00.html#ixzz0hD4SQrx3