Yellow River Drying Up in China

Yellow River Drying Up in China Correspondent: This is China’s lowest plateau. Nearly 3,000 years ago this area roughly the size of France was forested. Centuries of clear cutting led to the topsoil being eroded. The plateau was unable to retain water and now the whole area appears as almost a lunar landscape. The Chinese are trying to rehabilitate the area, re-landscaping the eroded hills and ravines resettling parts of the plateau and introducing irrigation. The big fight is it’s known involves thousands of people in restoring the land often using traditional methods in a monumental speed that will take centuries to complete. The water for the scheme of hundreds of others is diverted from the yellow river which takes its name from the color of the sands that silt into it from the lowest plateau but the large scale diversion of water from the yellow river to provide irrigation for agricultural and industrial schemes and for urban domestic use is causing a major ecological problem. The Yellow River is running dry. Last year it failed to reach the see for more than 200 days. For the past 5 years it has been much the same story and each year it has run dry for longer. For the visiting tourists it’s a phenomenon, for China it’s much more than that. Lester Brown: (President, Worldwatch Institute) -It’s amazing the Yellow River is the cradle of Chinese civilization for 3 or 4,000 years Chinese civilization has been sort of building up around the Yellow River, it’s always been there until 1972 when for the first time in China’s long history it ran dry for about 15 days and then it ran dry for the next dozen years or so sort of intermittently but beginning around 1985 it’s been running dry each year for part of the year. In the last 3 years it has run dry for more than 100 days and last year it was actually 226 days so for 7 months last year it didn’t reach the sea. Correspondent: While the image of the yellow river running dry is dramatic, the invisible lowering of underground water supplies under the North China plain were about 40% of China’s grain is produced is equally troubling. Scientists have found the water table is dropping about 1-1/2 meters every year because of over use above ground and say the experts that rated drop can’t be allowed to continue. Professor Shen Gan Qing: (Chinese Society for Eco-Economic Environmental Hydroscience)-In order to produce the same amounts of food the Chinese farmer uses 15 times the water that an Israeli farmer uses. In order to produce the same amount of industrial output Chinese industry uses 30 times the water that Japanese industry uses. It’s kind of waste is alarming and not sustainable. We mislearn to moderate our use of water to insure that future generations have the water they need. Correspondent: With 70% of China’s grain harvest coming from irrigated land the search is on for more efficient uses of water, the days of huge volumes of water being poured or sprayed on to fields much of which is lost through evaporation have gone. Here in Gansu province on an experimental farm different methods of irrigating crops without wasted are being tried out. Plastic sheets can reclaim evaporating water dripping water and specially punctured water pipes feed the plants and crops directly. Another method is to use capillary tubes from a main hose which are dug into the soil and feed the plants roots. There’s precious little waste. Lester Brown: They’re beginning to take some small steps but given the dimensions of the problem and the rapidity with which it is unfolding they really need to shift from low gear into high gear.