This summer brought disastrous floods across many parts of China – as usual, for the country is both prone and habituated to natural disasters of every kind. Economic losses run at close to one percent of GDP, although loss of life has been progressively reduced by early warning systems and engineering solutions, and disaster prevention efforts now also embrace community and administrative capacity building. However, as Matt Perrement reports, there may be plenty more trouble in store.
Natural disasters, extreme weather and periods of climate change are far from new. In the Bible Sodom was shaken into oblivion by the Dead Sea, and the story of Noah marks the beginning of man’s judgment by water. But China’s association with catastrophes is more arresting, their pattern of occurrence suggesting a rule rather than an exception. Six of the world’s 23 deadliest ever natural disasters –- four floods and two earthquakes –- are reported to have taken place in China, with a cumulative death-toll of around eight million people.
Floods have a fixed appointment on China’s calendar and remain the biggest natural killer and foe. Close to one million people were wiped out during the 1887 flooding of the Yellow River, the deadliest in history according to The Guinness Book of Records, and millions more Chinese have lost their lives during the 20th century, notably in the 1930s, 1950s and to a lesser extent the 1990s (See ‘China by Numbers’ at the end of this issue)
Droughts, and consequent starvation, come a close second, hitting hardest in areas of intensive agriculture such as Guangdong and Hunan -- although China’s worst experience of drought-related starvation is generally attributed less to nature than to Mao Zedong’s disastrous Great Leap Forward and agricultural policies, with as many as 20 million lives lost in the early 1960s.
Earthquakes too have devastated down the ages. China again claims top spot in the record books as a result of a 1556 tremor, felt across Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan, that killed 830,000. Major seismic shifts rocked Gansu Province in the 1920s, and a further 242,000 were left beneath rubble in Tangshan in 1976.
Death tolls that would bring most average-sized countries to their knees seem to have encouraged stoical acceptance in China. Some ordinary citizens even appear to have a curious affection for disasters: a Zhejiang farmer, who lost his entire crop recently, referred to the Matsa typhoon which hit Eastern China this summer, as an ‘old friend.’
But if his ancestors had had to face Matsa, it might well have left them dead. For, as Miao Hongjun, the UNDP ‘Focal Point for Disaster Reduction’ sums up, ‘Similar storms have killed many more.’
Technology cuts human losses
Over the last 50 years, annual death tolls have plummeted from hundreds of thousands to just over 4,000 during the severe floods of 1998. A multibillion dollar infrastructure construction boom has endowed China with tens of thousands of dams, reservoirs and dykes that have increased flood storage capacities along many of the eight major river basins – although a growing body of environmentalists also argue that this has been at the expense of natural flood-storage mechanisms. Flooding on the Yellow River now seems remote, thanks to the World Bank-financed Xiaolongdi Reservoir that has corked flows and raised capacity to accommodate a ‘once in a thousand years’ flood and helped to maintain a minimum flow into drier downstream sections.
Likewise, the infamous Three Gorges reservoir is expected, once fully operational, to further reduce flooding in the Yangtze, which currently experiences major floods once every 50-100 years. And additional infrastructure is in the pipeline according to Jiang Liping, a Senior Water Resource Specialist at the World Bank, who highlights weaknesses along the Pearl (Zhu), Songhua and Huai Rivers. “In some cases flood standards in smaller, poorer cities and counties only reach the 5-year standard,” he says (ie, can only withstand a ‘once in five years’ flood), adding that discussions have already begun on a Huai River drainage project.
Modern communications that trigger automatic flood warning signals using fiber-optics, global initiatives such as ARGO (‘Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography’, a global ocean monitoring plan that focuses on pre-empting disasters), and other technological fixes such as the installation of Doppler weather-radar systems have also been instrumental in averting potential disasters. Qin Dahe, Director of the China Meteorological Administration, boasted in a recent China Daily article that citizens “could receive a 3-hour warning,” and pre-Matsa manoeuvring this year saw three million people evacuated to safer ground, saving countless lives.
Better infrastructure and increased preparedness have eased pressure on relief efforts. “We are unaware of any communities that have not received emergency relief,” according to Gu Qinghui of the China Red Cross, which forms a central task force with the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MOCA) to coordinate relief efforts.
When coordination does break down, a bigger issue for agencies distributing aid is double-helpings. “Cases of duplication have occurred,” according to Gu. Ordinarily, he says, the Red Cross covers areas where MOCA does not or cannot reach, but confusion can occur at lower administrative levels where local government (rather than MOCA) takes the lead on coordination. Other forms of duplication, however, have less to do with inadequate coordination. Officials, Gu says, do not always come clean on what aid they have received. Disasters and aid, it appears, can combine to create a stockpiling mentality among officials keen to secure as many resources for their locality. An August report announcing a comprehensive public emergency defence system may be a first step towards addressing this.
Cases of corruption have also been unearthed by a recent National Audit Office report which alleges that officials in Yunnan diverted CNY 41.11 million (USD 5.1 million), sent by central government for earthquake victims, to build luxury homes and distribute proceeds amongst relatives. Avoiding misappropriation can be a challenge when dealing with aid, especially direct transfers of cash, according to Alistair Henley, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ regional delegation in Beijing; but he is confident that the China Red Cross has got its own house in order. Centralised procurement systems, detailed reporting requirements and monitoring systems that involve asking beneficiaries to confirm receipt of goods make for a “fairly water-tight system,” he says.
Economic losses on the rise
But whilst lives are being saved, economic losses from natural disasters are rising. Losses this year have already been calculated at CNY 86.3 billion, approaching the total for 2004 levels of CNY 90.6 billion (USD 10.9 billion).
This is partly explained by the growth of China’s economy, and the rising land and property prices it has brought: a destroyed house this year is valued at more than last. But more ominous factors also have an effect. China’s frenzied construction boom has long been associated with low standards, and safety has become one of the main concerns of home-buyers made cautious by the surge in cases of collapsed buildings. Key flood defence structures such as dams, reservoirs and bridges have also been foundering under the force of gushing rapids and moderate earth-tremors. What would happen to these in the case of an earthquake on the scale of Tangshan or an 1887 flood? “Construction quality is a problem” says Jiang Liping, referring to both materials and technical standards. He adds that government officials have already approached the Bank to seek finance for rehabilitating a list of at-risk dams.
The decimation of livestock in harsh winter weather has also cost herders across northern China millions in lost income, with memories of 2001 blizzards still fresh in the minds of many in Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. Prolonged frost and low fodder availability are immediate reasons according to Achim Fock, a World Bank economist specialising in rural affairs. But underlying causes also include overgrazing by larger herds. “Government is struggling to offset long-term and short-development issues” commented Fock, who is keen to use a pastoral development project in Gansu and Xinjiang as a platform to encourage stakeholder consultation as an alternative to top-down planning.
Technical fixes aren’t enough
Human and administrative capacity remains weak in other areas too, and Jiang Liping is adamant that attitudes must change. “If people think that building dams and heightening dykes can prevent floods then this is wrong. We cannot defeat nature,” he says, urging the need to also take non-structural prevention measures. In particular, he wants to see unified river basin management systems that cut across local and provincial interests. This, he argues, is the way forward in complex cross-boundary environments.
Staff from other agencies echo Jiang’s refrain. “If more money were made available for non-engineering projects then I would be very happy,” commented Miao Hongjun, who confirmed that UNDP has identified disaster reduction as an area for greater cooperation during the period 2006-2010. “Highly populated, quake-prone areas such as Yunnan need further attention,” he says. Sitting on the Himalayan tectonic plate, Yunnan and Xinjiang accounted for nine of China’s 21 earthquakes in 2003 and 92% of quake-related deaths.
NGOs are also leading on building human capacity. The Red Cross, more traditionally associated with relief efforts, is using humanitarian responses as a platform for longer-term disaster reduction projects. A development programme now focuses strongly on the mountainous western region where destruction is “considerable and repetitive,” according to Alastair Henley. “The further you are from modern communications the harder it is to access and benefit from high technologies such as more accurate weather forecasting,” he points out. “The east coast benefits from first-world efficiency,” but the west remains vulnerable.
Also highly vulnerable are the human settlements on traditional flood plains and ‘flood detention’ areas – but resettling them would be a monumental task, given that estimates of the total population living in natural flood plains rise as high as 100 million.
Some experts nonetheless believe that removing at least the most vulnerable people from high risk areas is the next big step. “Detention areas need to be re-established to increase flood buffer capacities,” according to Richard Hardiman of the European Commission delegation in Beijing. Jiang Liping confirms that the World Bank is hoping to support such work during its next funding cycle.
Reversion of drained – and usually highly unproductive – farmland to wetlands has in fact been official government policy since 1998, in tandem with the policy to convert sloping agricultural land to forest cover. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) initiated pilot work of this kind five years ago in the central Yangtze, returning that had been reclaimed from Boyang and Dongting lakes. But the need to find compensation, alternative land and livelihoods for resettled households has limited this kind of intervention to a very modest scale.
Others tend to see this from a rights perspective. “Humans have historically chosen to settle in areas prone to flooding. It is unrealistic to move all those threatened by floods to safer areas” according to Miao Hongjun. Similar voices would doubtless be voiced in earthquake-prone Japan and California: communities with long-established roots and livelihoods cannot simply be ‘cut and pasted’ like text on a word document. Aside from the gradual urbanisation of the Chinese population, Miao suggests that reducing vulnerability in areas of high population density is the best that can be achieved, citing the need for improved early warning systems, contingency planning and stockpiling of emergency goods.
China’s land reclamation programme of the 1960s-1980s, as part of the then ‘grain is the backbone’ policy, is not the only socio-environmental problem that needs to be tackled. The official verdict on the 1998 floods was that deforestation in the upper Yangtze was to blame, and a logging ban and reforestation programmes were put in place. But what can be done about emerging threats such as melting Himalayan glaciers? These are shrinking at a rate of 11-16 metres a year, according to the WWF, which is predicting possible havoc along the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong (Lancang) rivers, wreaked by a combination of floods and then drought.
“Will we have a big flood? Certainly.” The question is a no-brainer to Jiang Liping, who clearly understands the primacy of nature, quashing any complacency about technical fixes as a panacea. The risk is also a good incentive to government to play a full part in the implementation of Hyogo Framework for Action (see note below) and make good on its pledge to complete a CNY 600 billion comprehensive disaster prevention system by 2020. “We need to be ready,” implores Jiang, only too aware of the inadequacies in a current system where millions, especially in poorer areas, remain at risk.
The Asian Disaster Prevention Centre (ADPC), based in Bangkok, is currently working with UN agencies (UNEP, UN/ISDR and UNESCAP) to organise an Asian Conference on Disaster Reduction in Beijing on September 27-29. The aim of the conference is to advance implementation of the ‘Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015’ adopted by the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, and promote regional cooperation and action for disaster reduction for Asia.