China: Drought causes water, food shortages

Monday, May 14, 2012

As southern China continues its third year of drought, families and villages share the hardships.

Three-and-a-half-year-old Xueyun and her 2-year-old brother live with their grandparents and great-grandmother in Jinhua, a rural township of Jianchuan county, Yunnan province.

The children’s parents left the village to find work.

In Jianchuan county, 20 per cent of the population - nearly 37,000 people - is suffering from water shortages, and around 12 per cent of people are short of food. The drought has affected 2,058 hectares of farmland.

Great-grandmother Li Shouxing, 78, is the children’s primary caregiver. Every day she struggles to carry water by herself for household use.

Since February, there have been daily lines in Jinhua for water rations; 600 people from 98 households queue up to get water for their families and livestock.

“The village’s water tank was dried up two years ago. Then tap water was connected from a water source far away, but it was also dried up since the beginning of this year. There is water rationing in the village now,” Shouxing says.

Xueyun’s grandparents carry water to irrigate the seven acres they farm.

They pay about US$50 a month per acre for water and spend a lot of time carrying it. They also cover watered plants with plastic film to reduce evaporation. 

“Most wheat we planted in early spring has withered. If it doesn’t rain, we will lose all our maize, too,” says Shouxing.

“We lost a lot of crops this year. Villagers have to spend much on water and also food. Our lives are really hard,” says Li Jiashou, an official from the village committee.

Needs are urgent

Though there has been scattered rainfall in the area since early April, it has not been enough to ease the drought or improve food security. A World Vision assessment team said that crops were dying before they could mature.

“As the time for growing spring harvest has already passed, villagers will very likely be faced with [a] more severe food crisis,” the team reported.

World Vision plans to conduct food distributions in Jianchuan and Fuyuan counties, in addition to previous water distribution and improvement projects to the water supply in Fuyuan.

Fuyuan county is experiencing its worst drought in 50 years, with 65 per cent of the farmland experiencing drought conditions.

An estimated 541,000 people have been affected.

Unfortunately, Yunnan province is not the only Chinese province currently affected by drought.

According to China’s Flood Control and Drought Relief agency, drought has caused water shortages for more than 8.57 million people throughout the country.

Some 3.64 million hectares of farmland across Yunnan, Shanxi, Hubei, Sichuan, and Gansu provinces have been affected. 

Droughts are frequent in China, which has 20 per cent of the world’s population, but only 6 per cent of its fresh water resources.

Anita Zhao is a World Vision communications officer based in China.