Yangtze delta warned to prepare for effects of climate change

Posted on November 10, 2009
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China’s most populous river needs massive investment and careful planning to ease the impact of climate change, which is causing floods, droughts and storms to intensify, a new report (pdf) said today.

The Yangtze delta, which is home to about 400 million people, has been warming far faster than the global average for more than a decade and the implications for food security and biodiversity will worsen without remedial action, according to the study led by WWF China.

The report found that in the first five years of this decade, temperatures along China’s biggest river have increased by 0.71C, after a rise of a third of a degree in the 1990s.

The consequences are already apparent, from the source to the estuary. The report’s authors – which includes many of China’s leading scientists – calculated that climate change was responsible for 81% of grassland degradation near the headwaters of the Yangtze on the Tibetan plateau. By the estuary near Shanghai, the sea level had risen by 11.5cm in the past 30 years.

As well as having a dire impact on wildlife, particularly in wetlands, the report warned that people living on the delta would have to adapt or suffer from falling harvests, lengthening droughts and fiercer storms.

If current trends continue, it predicted rice production in the Yantgtze basin would decrease by between 9% and 41% by the end of the 21st century, while harvest of corn and winter wheat would decline even more precipitously.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/10/yangtze-delta-climate-change