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The Thirsty Dragon: China Spends Record Sums On Water Conservation In 2019
January 11th, 2020
Via China’s Global Times, a report on China’s increased investment into water conservation projects in 2019: China spent a record 726 billion yuan (104.46 billion U.S. dollars) on water conservation projects in 2019, said a senior official with the Ministry of Water Resources Thursday. The country started the construction of 23 key water conservation projects and completed […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: The Invisible Water Shortage In Hebei’s Capital
December 19th, 2019
Via China Dialogue, a report on why – despite the fact that Shijiazhuang in northern China is suffering from a serious water shortage – local people think otherwise: The stalks left after the soy harvest in the village of Tatou are still green. By mid-autumn, most crops in northern China have been harvested. But here […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon: Southern China Experiences Another Severe Drought
November 12th, 2019
Via Future Directions International, a report on another drought in China: Water is described as China’s Achilles heel. It is ‘the most long-term and fundamental of China’s vulnerabilities … China has failed to secure a sufficient amount and quality of water for its citizens, leading to an “absolute scarcity” of the resource’. The drier than normal […]
Read more »How Climate Change, Dams, and Geopolitics Threaten The Mekong’s Future
November 7th, 2019
Via Foreign Affairs, an article on the troubles facing the Mekong River: On October 29, Laos unveiled a new dam in the country’s north. The 1.3-gigawatt Xayaburi dam sits on the Mekong River, which flows the length of the country. Laos plans to build nearly a hundred like it by 2020—many with direct funding and […]
Read more »The Thirsty Dragon and Parched Tiger: Tibet’s Rivers Will Determine Asia’s Future
November 3rd, 2019
Via The Diplomat, a look at the dawn of a new era of building dams on the Yarlung Tsangpo, where countless lives and ecosystems are being risked in the name of “development” and geopolitics: Over the last seven decades, the People’s Republic of China has constructed more than 87,000 dams. Collectively they generate 352.26 GW of […]
Read more »Lake Baikal Crisis: Chinese Activity a Handy Scapegoat for Russian Government Inaction
October 23rd, 2019
Via Future Directions International, a look at Russia and China’s collective impact on Lake Baikal: Lake Baikal is the oldest, deepest and the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. Located in south-eastern Siberia, the lake is 25 million years old, 1,642 metres deep and contains 23,615 cubic kilometres of water (one-fifth of the world’s unfrozen fresh […]
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