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DAM-L Rain Water Stored to Ease Thirst on China's Impoverished Land (fwd)
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From: Right to Water <right-to-water@iatp.org>
To: dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca
Subject: Rain Water Stored to Ease Thirst on China's Impoverished Land
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 14:39:24 -0500
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Right to Water (right-to-water@iatp.org) Posted: 05/02/2001 By svarghese@iatp.org
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Rain Water Stored to Ease Thirst on China's Impoverished Land
On the land, sculpted by karst rocks in south China's Guangxi Zhuang
Autonomous Region, water dripped down through long iron strings or ropes,
which have one side pinched on small creeks seeping out from swallets on
the high mountain, to sustain the living of impoverished people.
However, located in the subtropical region and facing the Beibu Gulf,
Guangxi is far from being short of rainfall. The invention of water tanks
and cellars made of rock and cement, which can be used to collect and store
rain water, has led to remarkable achievement in eliminating poverty in
that area.
The region has 38 percent of its 238,000 square kilometers of land
featuring karst rocks, which is neither arable nor compact enough to hold
water.
The harsh living conditions, especially the scarcity of drinking water, has
made the autonomous region, populated by over a dozen ethic minority
groups, one of the remaining impoverished areas in China.
In the past few years, some one million water tanks were built in Dashi
(Big Stone) Mountain area in Guangxi through poverty elimination efforts.
The area is known as the most impoverished prefecture in the region, easing
water shortages for 6.72 million people and several millions of live stocks.
When the first water tank with a capacity of holding 150 cubic meters of
water, was built in front of Luo Shangliu's home in 1998, local people
began to see miracles happening, fish and ducks swimming in water,
grapevine coiling on the bear frame built over the tank.
"We used to grow grains in swallets praying for good weathers to bring us
some bare harvest," said Luo, who was the first to try the rain storing
method in Guangxi.
Less than a year, stone tanks were built in every household in his village.
They bade farewell to governments' grain, which use to sustain them for
half a year of living. Water dripping from strings has become a history.
In 1985, Guangxi had 15 million of impoverished population, accounting for
one tenth of the country's total. Many ethnic minority people still sustain
traditional living styles like their ancestors with no running water, no
flat road, and no electricity in their lives.
The central government appropriated some 5 billion yuan of funding for
building roads, water conservation and power grid facilities to help the
region get out of poverty over the past six years.
Under a variety of poverty relief programs, thousands of mountaineers
decided to leave the rocky mountain for the flatlands. However, the
building of water tanks has proved effective to help more stay put, and
become better off.
In Guangxi, a 40 cubic meter water tank can collect enough rain water to
transform 0.07 hectares of dry land into a patch of paddy field, which
usually lifts up the rice yield by over 450 kilograms.
By building such a tank, local people can get a 700 yuan government
subsidy, which is nearly one-fourth of the investment.
In addition to Guangxi, rain collecting projects have been deployed in a
number of other places across the country, where 24 million people suffer
from acute water shortages.
By 2000, more than 1.43 million rain-collecting water cellars were dug in
arid Gansu Province in northwest China, where water can be hardly found
hundreds of meters underground.
The rainwater has eased the water threat for 50 million people and 50
million head of live stocks in China, arousing the attention of experts in
countries in West Asia and Africa, which also face serious water problems.
Source: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200104/26/eng20010426_68687.html
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