You would think that rain would be a good thing for these drought stricken Chinese provinces, right? You’d be wrong. Now, China is suffering from unseasonal torrential flooding that is causing damage to their economy and to their agriculture.
The climate ‘weirding’ predicted by Thomas Friedman appears to be occurring in China, where the extremes of weather are causing ecological instability. This, in turn, causes food prices to go up because less and less food is growing in the fields. This causes political and economic tensions as the poor and middle class have to spend more and more of their paychecks on food.
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(Photo: A partially dried
reservoir in
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Besides these blatantly obvious effects of climate change, China is also having unseasonably warm winters. This causes frozen ponds and lakes to melt, which makes drinking water and water used to irrigate agricultural lands even more scarce. Once again, the complex feedback loops make it so that this increases the price of food, some slices being grown, which hurts many different aspects of the Chinese and global economy.
Much of the damage caused by climate change isn't even China's fault. Most of it comes from Western, industrialized nations. However, China has been building coal-fired power plants at a breakneck speed. This causes China to emit large amounts of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, which damages the health and the global climate.
Unfortunately, China is caught in a Catch-22. In order to fuel rapid economic growth, sacrifices have to be made in the ecological realm. That is why so many fossil fuel fired power plants have been being built. That is why so many Chinese are now beginning to buy cars and drive them. All of this causes economic growth and increases efficiency. This makes it very difficult for China to be able to effectively protect their environment without disrupting their economy. However, when we review the facts you can see that something has to be done:
• First, there was drought a few years back.
• This damaged agriculture.
• Now, there are floods.
• This is also damaging agriculture.
• Plus, now infrastructure like roads and buildings are being damaged.
• Frozen ponds and lakes are also melting, which is—you guessed it—damaging agriculture
Now, they are trying to get out of the sticky situation by investing in some green technologies such as improving energy efficiency in many different areas and by adopting some of the clean coal technologies used in developed nations. They still have a ways to go, this immense journey has at least been started with China's first steps.
Even amidst the terrible effects of global warming present in the cycling droughts and flooding that are crippling China's economy and ecology, there is something hopeful. People are noticing the effects of climate change and are beginning to adapt.
The Article was written by:
Isaac writes for DLProg a Non Governmental Organisation who specialise in addressing the important gap in international thinking and policy about the critical role played by leaders, elites and coalitions in the politics of development. Read DLProg's developmental research papers or learn about the leadership development program at DLProg.org
