Sandstorms sound alarm for China on environment

By Andreas Landwehr May 4, 2006, 3:48 GMT

A villager pushes his bike through the sand after a sandstorm hit the village of Xinglong, Kangbao area, Hebei province, on Friday, 21 April 2006. . EPA/WU HONG

Beijing - Yellow sand and dust are still sitting on Beijing rooftops as meteorologists are warning of more sandstorms to come, and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is alarmed.

'Comrades, we cannot just sit in meetings behind closed doors while the dust swirls outside,' he was quoted as saying by Chinese state media, warning that the country cannot stick its head in the sand about what he said was a growing environmental problem.

He called this spring's frequent sandstorms 'a warning signal' and cited not only climate change as a factor in desertification and growing duststorms in China but also the country's economic boom.

In the government's last five-year plan, which ended last year, China exceeded nearly all of its economic goals. Only the aims for environmental protection were not fulfilled, Wen said at a conference about the 'critical environmental situation we are facing.'

Overgrazing and clear cutting have caused the deserts, which already cover a fifth of China's lands, to grow, and shifting sand dunes are creeping closer to Beijing. Global warming is also causing Tibet's glaciers to shrink 7 per cent each year, intensifying the drought, desertification and sandstorms, researchers at the Beijing Academy of Sciences warned this week.

As the world's second-largest producer of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and its largest coal user, China is not blameless in climate change.

Since February, the country has seen 10 sandstorms that have afflicted 10 provinces and their 200 million residents and reached the Korean peninsula and Japan. The worst storm recorded in five years dumped an estimated 330,000 tons of sand and dirt on Beijing alone.

In addition, Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, is experiencing its worst drought in 55 years. In northern China, more than 10 million people have been dealing with shortages of drinking water since mid-April because of the dry spell.

And an improvement in the situation is not in sight. A cold front from north-western China is forecast to bring renewed winds and sandstorms to Gansu province and Inner Mongolia, both north of Beijing, this week.

The sand, paired with industrial emissions and increasing traffic, has caused the sun to shine less and less on the 15 million residents of the Chinese capital, where pollution has reached record highs. Children and the elderly are urged more and more to remain indoors while visibility west of Beijing has fallen under 400 metres in the past weeks.

The China Meterological Administration is now examining whether it could forecast dust density in the air in addition to its predictions on rain, cloudy skies and wind.

Meanwhile, however, the problems are casting hazy skies over the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Organizers are expressing confidence that the weather will play into - not hurt - the Games, primarily because the sandstorms are seasonal.

'The Olympic Games are in August; sandstorms usually hit Beijing in March, April and May,' Liu Tuo, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration, said in response to concerns that China would not be able to deliver on its promises of a 'green' Olympics.

The frequent summer rains should cleanse the air, experts predicted, and if they don't materialize, Chinese authorities have experience in creating rain by seeding clouds.

In addition, traffic is to be drastically curbed during the Olympics, and most of the nearby industrial sites are to be shut down.

Government authorities have also indicated forestation efforts would alleviate the problem, and a green girdle would shield the capital, but Liu Tuo also said there was a 'fairly large gap in financing' for the projects.

In view of the millions of square kilometres of desert in China, its sandstorms will not disappear overnight, said Yang Weixi of the Desertification Control Centre while warning of 'unrealistic expectations.'