Yangtze – China
China – Yangtze
The 6,300km-long Yangtze River drains a 1,800,000sq km basin across an area that is home to 385 million people. The basin’s industry and agriculture produces 40% of China’s gross domestic product. Along the central Yangtze, extensive lakes and floodplains once housed particularly diverse and rich biodiversity, and absorbed large summer floods.
Threats
Due to land reclamation for urban and agricultural development, the lakes of the central Yangtze region have been disconnected from the Yangtze River. This has reduced the flood retention capacity of the region as the river can no longer overflow into the lake systems. The region is now more susceptible to catastrophic flooding.
Disconnection has also prevented fish from migrating to their breeding grounds, which has led to a substantial reduction in the Yangtze’s fish stocks. This is one of the reasons the Baiji dolphin has become functionally extinct. It is also a continued threat to the endangered finless porpoise.
China now produces around 20% of the world’s CO2. Changes in climate, such as longer and hotter summers, are causing polluted lakes to eutrophy much more acutely. This means plant life proliferates in the lake, reducing the dissolved oxygen content, often leading to the extinction of other organisms. This can cause significant damage to the ecosystem and drinking water supplies.
Solutions
WWF has been working in the Yangtze river basin since 2002, with funding from HSBC.
The second five-year phase of the HSBC Climate Partnership runs from 2007 to 2011. It aims to reduce the impact of climate change on people and their livelihoods by promoting action in target cities and along the Yangtze.
The partnership is working to reconnect 50 networks of lakes back to the Yangtze to increase flood retention capacity. This will assist in the conservation of the endangered finless porpoise and improve biodiversity in general.
We are managing wetland networks effectively to restore their ecological function and so provide better quality drinking water, particularly for Shanghai.
We hope that managing the Shanghai estuary effectively will change agricultural practices so pollution is reduced and yields and income increase.
We aim to advise and catalyse specific cities such as Shanghai and Baoding to become models that demonstrate how cities and businesses can reduce their CO2 emissions.
We are working to raise awareness locally and nationally in China of the threats and solutions regarding future climate change. We are also working with local and national governments to implement improved policies and laws regarding freshwater and CO2.
