Water shortages place millions at risk in parched Yunnan, China. As the worst drought in a century plagued more than 25 million residents in the southwestern province of Yunnan, experts stated that the severe conditions have been intensified by climate change, which has decreased the rains and increased extreme weather events in the province since the 1960s.
Environmental scientist Yang Yong of the Hengduan Mountain Research Center stated, “The ecological system and the environment have accumulated so many problems in so many years, [after] decades of deforestation [and] unplanned farming.”
Many rural families have faced food shortages as the drought, which began in Fall 2009, took its toll on 8 million hectares of arable land and the crops that are the region’s only source of sustenance.
Chinese Correspondent (F): You can see behind me this long irrigation ditch. It could irrigate 1,000 mu of farm land, but the water in the reservoir has completely gone dry and cannot provide any water. You can see that this ditch has gone dry completely. It can’t offer a tiny drop of irrigation water.
Chinese Correspondent (F): Do you have enough drinking water?
Villager (M): We can barely survive. Don’t you see people fighting for drinking water?
Drought-afflicted farmer, harvesting broad beans (M): Our harvest over the last few years is much better than this. It’s impossible to harvest anything now. It’s already dry.
Drought-afflicted farmer 2 (F): We are struggling; we don’t have enough working hands. In total we have 300 families. We all harvest nothing this year. Only the stalks are left. If the wind is big, the leaves will fly away.
VOICE: In the spring of 2010, the provincial Department of Land and Resources began a water excavation project supported by China's Ministry of Land and Resources, which has successfully dug 1,791 wells to supply over 2 million residents as of May 24. However, Vice Director of the Department of Land and Resources Li Lianju cautioned that this project can provide only a temporary solution.
In early June, some relief from the intense conditions also arrived as Yunnan welcomed the blessing of rains that helped bring some much-needed moisture to crops.
We thank the Chinese officials and personnel working to ease the acute drought situation, as we pray for plentiful rain and the resilience of the afflicted. Let us all meanwhile join in alleviating such extreme conditions through our sustainable care for the environment.
Ever-concerned for humanity’s welfare, Supreme Master Ching Hai addressed such tolls of global warming during a September 2009 videoconference in Peru, while suggesting the most effective actions to preserve life and restore our Earth.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : Some countries and communities have to cope with worsened drought situations. There is not enough water to raise crops or even to drink. Their rivers and lakes are drying up or completely gone.
We can see everywhere reflections of a planet in trouble, with monsoons and flooding in one location and people losing their harvests and drinking water to drought in another.
One way that our world can be preserved and stabilized is through everyone’s change to a compassionate lifestyle, choosing organic vegan diet, which not only eliminates methane and other toxic, heat-trapping greenhouse gases emissions from the livestock industry, but the organic part takes care of harmful fertilizer chemicals and allows the soil to absorb a huge amount of atmospheric CO2.
In Rome, Italy, environmental activists display a temporary hotel constructed entirely from trash gathered along beaches to raise public awareness regarding the extent of pollution on European coastlines.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2010/06/100604_rubbish_hotel_et_sl.shtml http://news.oneindia.in/2010/06/07/romegets-hotel-made-largely-out-oftrash.htmlExtra NewsNorwegian researchers find that the winds from fires in North America and Eastern Europe have deposited persistent organic pollutants in the Arctic, causing further imbalance to its delicate ecosystem and leading to yet another concern as such events are increased by global warming.
http://www.france24.com/en/20100601-forest-agricultural-fires-threaten-arctic-reporthttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100601072630.htmA group of European scientists report that a proposal to combat climate change by creating artificial white clouds over the ocean to reflect sunlight may interfere with the natural process of cloud formation and could increase temperatures instead.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/radical-plan-to-combat-global-warming-may-raise-temperatures-1993281.htmlA new flood-tolerant variety of rice is grown successfully in trials in Thừa Thiên-Huế Province of Âu Lạc (Vietnam), showing great resiliency and bringing even higher yields than normal varieties.
http://www.saigon-gpdaily.com.vn/Science_Technology/2010/5/82542/http://en.www.info.vn/science/153-nature/4767-regularly-flooded-locality-successfully-grows-new-adaptable-variety-of-rice-
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