Desert, drought and the water crisis

by Tony Lambert

In spring last year Beijing experienced no less than twelve sandstorms. On April 6 a violent sandstorm, the worst in ten years, darkened the sky and, as winds reached 45 miles per hour, visibility plummeted along Beijing’s busy Third Ringroad. North of the capital, the desert is steadily encroaching. Nearly one million tonnes of Gobi sand blow into the capital every year. Some scientists have already warned that Beijing will be forced to implement water-rationing in the near future.

Across North China there is a growing crisis caused by lack of water, compounded by misuse of what water is still available. For thousands of years the area has been gradually drying up due to climate changes. Desert sands now cover the ruins of ancient cities which once flourished in now barren oases along the Silk Road. Last year fields only 45 miles from Beijing were buried by the advancing desert.

Yet human foolishness and greed have created an even more serious environmental catastrophe. The mass campaigns for industrial and agricultural growth by Chairman Mao led to the planting of unsuitable crops and the deforestation of hills and mountains. Whole forests were chopped down in the drive to make useless pig-iron. Today, motives are very different in the new market economy, but the environment is still under heavy pressure. Scientists say that desertification is the result of severe over-grazing and rampant logging of timber that has destroyed the thin topsoil. Vast amounts of water are siphoned off by farmers and by factories along the Yellow River. This once mighty river is now reduced to a mere trickle as it approaches the sea and the riverbed is often dry for months on end. The loess plateau of the Yellow River in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces has been seriously eroded into a barren, yellow moonscape, and the peasants there have among the lowest incomes of anyone in China.

Two-thirds of China’s 600 cities are short of water — 108 of them seriously. (Daily Telegraph, 20 October 2000) The government is aware of the scale of the problem and has taken several measures to counter the increasing dessication of the whole of north China. Official statistics put desert areas at 1 million square miles or 16% of China’s total land area. Premier Zhu Rongji traveled across the deserts of north China last May where he issued a dire message of the urgent need to protect the environment. Tens of billions of yuan have been set aside to arrest the spread of the deserts with six billion specifically designated for the Beijing area. Local government has been ordered to plant trees as a form of “sand-proof fence” around deserts and return overworked low-yield farmland to pastureland. (South China Morning Post, 24 September 2000)

Even further south, the Huai River, China’s third largest, is also facing a crisis. For the first time in history the river virtually dried up last year after summer rains failed. Boats were left high and dry in the mud. Many cities like Fuyang in Anhui province (an area incidentally where there are many Christians) have already been forced to sink more and more wells to find fresh water and have already drained underground aquifers (layers of rock which normally hold water). A senior engineer stated: “At first they could find water at 100 feet underground, but now not even at 1,000 feet.” Water shortages already affect 23 million people in northern Anhui. Frantic industrialization has polluted precious water reserves: a notorious two-mile-long sewer discharges filth from leather and liquor factories into the Huai at Fuyang. Last May ten people walking nearby actually passed out from the fumes, and six died from exposure to the concentration of poisons. Now underground water has been completely drained causing severe subsidence: the land has dropped ten feet. In Tianjin similar subsidence has led to land sinking three feet. (Sunday Morning Post, 14 January 2001)

However, while north China faces recurrent drought, south China, especially along the Yangtze, has experienced serious flooding annually. Chinese authorities have therefore conceived a bold scheme to divert surplus water from south to north in the largest water diversion project in history. Several major rivers will be diverted for hundreds of miles. Three projects are envisaged which would carry 1.87 trillion cubic feet of water every year through a network of pipes, canals and aqueducts totalling 2,138 miles. Highest priority will be given to work starting near the eastern city of Yangzhou running along the line of the old Imperial Grand Canal to carry water north to the Beijing and Tianjin area.

Another project plans to build the world’s largest hydroelectric plant which will produce more than twice the electricity put out by the controversial Three Gorges Dam now in process of construction across the Yangtze. The Three Gorges Dam is due to be completed in 2009. The new project is to build a 38 million kilowatt power station in Tibet at Muotuo on the Yarlung Zangbo river. The cost of blasting a tunnel through a mountain will be more than US$14 billion. The water will flow out of the tunnel into a new reservoir and then be diverted more than 500 miles across the Tibetan plateau to the arid regions of Gansu and Xinjiang.

Not everyone agrees that these gigantic schemes are necessary. A Chinese geologist has said the dam could be an embarrassing white elephant as environmental conditions in Tibet continue to deteriorate with glaciers receding and lakes going dry. Others see these mammoth schemes as part of the mentality of Soviet-trained engineers who have now risen to positions of power in China but still have a Stalinist fixation with huge dam projects. However, senior government figures have announced that 31 new dams are on the drawing-board over the next decade.

The projects also have an international aspect. The plan to dam the Yarlung Zangbo in Tibet could affect the Brahmaputra River which is a major lifeline for India and Bangladesh. Vietnam issued a statement in October 2000 criticizing a Chinese plan to construct 14 dams on the Mekong. Development plans in Tibet are likely to affect the flow of water out of China into the Mekong, Irrawaddy, Ganges and Indus Rivers affecting the lives of millions outside China. (Daily Telegraph, 20 October 2000; Sunday Telegraph, 22 October 2000)

The desperate situation in northern China will deteriorate still further unless drastic measures are taken. A Chinese hydrologist has written that simple conservation measures could cut national water consumption by 25% almost overnight. Northern farmers, at present, pay about one tenth of the true cost of water, allowing them to flood water-thirsty crops in a wasteful way. Chinese factories dump billions of tons of untreated waste water every year leaving most rivers polluted.

Some readers may ask: What has all this to do with the gospel? In fact, everything. False ideologies have devastated the environment as has been seen in the former Soviet Union. Francis Schaeffer, in his book on the Christian view of ecology Pollution and the Death of Man, states:

“Biblical Christianity has a real answer to the ecological crisis. It offers a balanced and healthy attitude to nature, arising from the truth of its creation by God; it offers the hope here and now of substantial healing in nature of some of the results of the Fall, arising from the truth of redemption in Christ…. A Christian based science and technology should consciously try to see nature substantially healed, while waiting for the future complete healing at Christ’s return.”

At root, selfish and greedy attitudes need to be changed, and people educated about the long-term benefits of care for the environment and water conservation. Christian environmentalists, agriculturalists and water experts could make a real contribution over the next few years to help save China from ecological catastrophe. In the past Christian missionaries and Chinese church workers were in the forefront of campaigns to promote literacy, combat foot-binding and combat harmful superstition.

The indigenous and communal “Jesus Family” showed how it was possible to make the best use of tiny plots of unproductive land. Today Chinese Christians can show the advantages of conservation of God’s creation and form rural communities genuinely based on love and mutual support.

Copyright OMF International