flooding in china

9/28/2020

-David Sigler, GSP Blog Team Contributor

This summer, China has experienced severe floods due to months of record-breaking rain. This has caused the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River to come close to capacity. The water level reached 165.5 meters and the flow reached 75 million litres per second, just below the dam’s capacity of 175 meters and 98.8m litres per second. According to the Ministry of Water Resources, 443 rivers nationwide have flooded, and 33 have swelled to the highest levels ever recorded. As of August 13th, the floods have affected 63.46 million people with 744,000 displaced and caused damages of at least 178.96 billion CNY (about 26.3 billion USD).

Floods occur every year in China, however, they continue to get worse as time goes by. One study found that between 1961 and 2010, the number of heavy rain days each year increased by 30 percent overall. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences predicts that as climate change continues to warm the Earth and affect the weather, more severe disasters will occur.

To compound the issue, mitigation efforts are being outpaced by the floods. One example is the strategy of diversion zones adopted in the early 2000s. These zones are meant to divert the flow of excess water so that the intensity of flooding is reduced. People who lived in those zones would be relocated and compensated. Unfortunately, as the rains get heavier each year, these diversion zones continue to increase in size and displace more people. Eventually, they are pushed on to land that is ineligible for compensation.

Considered a once-in-a-century flood, the disaster comes right on the heels of the Coronavirus pandemic, striking yet another blow to China’s economy. Additionally, relief efforts for COVID-19 along with large infrastructure projects have reduced funding to combat flooding as China attempts to recover. The flooded area of the Yangtze River economic belt is home to about 600 million people and accounts for 50 percent of export value and 45 percent of China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In addition, many fields have been flooded and crops destroyed. This comes as droughts in the U.S. coupled with supply chain disruptions have crippled the production of food there. The U.S. and China are two of the world’s leading food producers. It is likely that the coming years will see global food shortages as a result of the flooding. For families that already experience food insecurities, these shortages will only exacerbate problems in finding enough nutrition.

The flooding has since subsided; however, China, along with the rest of the world, will have to prepare for more frequent and more severe natural disasters as climate change continues.