Perilous
Times and Climate Change
China's largest inland lake dries up as country battles
drought
China's largest inland lake has disappeared in worst drought to
hit the centre and east of the country for more than half a
century.
A fishing boat is stranded on the grass lake bed of Poyang Lake
Photo: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images
By Malcolm Moore, Shanghai 9:36PM BST 30 May 2011
BBC - The volume of water in Poyang lake in Jiangxi province,
normally 100 miles-long and 10 miles-wide, is now a tenth of its
normal level, according to Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.
Fishing boats and house boats have been left stranded on a vast
stretch of the lake bed, now a lush grassland.
The drought, which has seen no rainfall for two months, has struck
the central Chinese provinces that are known as the country's
"home of rice and fish".
Almost half of all the country's rice fields have been affected
and four million people do not have access to drinking water.
At Honghu Lake, in Hubei province, fish farmers have seen 80 per
cent of their stocks die. "More than 20,000 acres of fish farms
have been severely damaged," said Zou Haibin, the local Communist
party secretary in Dianhe, to Xinhua.
"I was born in 1967 and have never seen anything like this," added
Li Liangjun, a fish farmer in Dianhe. "Even my father has never
seen anything like it. It has not rained for nearly three months".
The drought has pushed up vegetable prices in major cities by as
much as 30 per cent, and the government has warned that if it
continues it may have an effect on this year's rice harvest.
However, the Chinese weather bureau has warned there is no rain in
sight and that it expects the drought to continue until early
June.