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Yunnan’s “Three Year Drought” Drying Up Vital Reservoirs

by on Wednesday, February 22, 2012 28 comments comments

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

For the third year in a row, Yunnan is suffering from unrelenting drought. As reservoirs across the province dry up, millions are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain drinking water, and their pain is not likely to end soon. Yesterday, Yunnan’s meteorological experts reported the drought is likely to continue into the foreseeable future, with sunny cloudless skies forecast for the next week. Pictured above, a farmer leads his goats across the bed of what used to be a reservoir.

The drought has impacted over 6 million people, and has caused agricultural losses of over 2 billion yuan.

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

Yunnan's "Three Year Drought" is wrecking financial and mental havoc on residents as reservoirs and fields around the province dry up.

Source: Sina News, NetEase, Shanghai Daily

  • Cool Matt

    This is becoming an annual event…. Hang in there Yunnan.

    • Irvin

      Bad advice, I’ll tell them to get the fuck out now while they can.

  • mr. wiener

    sandy sofa

  • blues

    Land’s gonna dry away into dust at this rate

  • Dr. Dust Cell

    if only there was a way to help/donate without all my money going into red-cross-like corruption

    • Bruce Tutty

      Red Cross corruption?…got anything to back that slur up..oh…you mean the China branch of Red Cross.

      • Joe

        You seem pretty clueless about how the Red Cross works.

        • donscarletti

          Nope, he’s spot on.

          The Chinese Red Cross Society is an independent organisation established in 1904 to provide humanitarian relief in accordance with the Geneva Convention. It is affiliated with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and is recognised by the International Committee of the Red Cross, but it is a separate and distinct organisation with its own regulations and procedures with limited to no oversight from foreign groups, as are all Red Cross Societies.

          I don’t know why people don’t bother to do a quick fact check on google before they call others “clueless”.

  • Foreign Devil

    Wish I had visited Yunnan when I had the chance. . now if I go I’m going to see another dustbowl?? It used to be lush Jungle in parts of that province. A shame. I’m sure deforestation has a large role.

    • Bruce Tutty

      Deforestation and air pollution will both effect this

    • Kunming Laowai

      The drought is not affecting all of Yunnan equally. It is mainly concentrated in the northeast part, adjacent to neighboring Sichuan, Chongqing, and Guizhou (which are also experiencing drought). The lush, tropical rainforests you refer to are still lush and tropical. They are in the southwestern part of the province.

  • moop

    china is doomed. they are going to have to subsidize so many things in the next 10-15 years. electricity, food, maybe even water the way their supply is either dwindiling because it is just too dirty to drink or because there are just too many people here. what happens to water prices when the only way to get drinking water is to import it or desalinize it?

    • Bruce Tutty

      Is it easy to advance a country’s living standard when it starts low, but will quickly chew through resources as it tries to lift it higher.

      Ask Russia….or better still, ask Taiwan how to do it.

  • hanyucha

    The girl in picture five seems to be suffering from dehydration, her head has swollen and her legs have shrunk.

    • http://www.accessfbchina.com/ Rod

      It’s a mirage. You’re dehydrated.

  • James Stanley

    Why are they carrying pails of water on their back? I thought China had already “reverse engineered” the wheel.

  • http://www.matthewsawtell.com Matthew A. Sawtell

    Can’t Drink Oil, Can’t Eat Gold – Who has the Rice Makes the Rules…

  • Xiongmao

    I’ve lived in Yunnan for the past 4 years and it’s NOT ‘turning into a huge dustbowl’. There’s still jungle and elephants in the South and mountains, glaciers and snow in the North. The areas really affected are farmlands and only in some parts of the province. Even though rainfall is low we still have hundreds of rivers and the big upper rivers of Salween, Mekong and Yangtze are not affected much. Most farmers can still feed themselves but it’s of course a major problem that they can’t grow enough to sell. Also there’s lack of clean drinking water in certain areas but it’s limited to a couple of millions out of Yunnan’s 65 million people. As far as I’m aware, the government has been doing a pretty good job at supplying the accessible parts of those areas with water.

    • eattot

      where you lived there?
      why you lived there?
      i am from there, i’d like to make friends with you.

    • moop

      be careful, eattot might want to eatyourdick. who knows what kind of snaggles are behind that mask

      • eattot

        i wanna hit your head hard, then chop your eyeballs out, fry it with your brians…
        then cut your male proud thing off, throw it to a wild dog…
        satisfied now?

        • moop

          no, not sure i’d like that much. sounds uncomfortable.

    • Hongjian

      I’m also currently in Yunnan, and if anything significant was done in the past to combat this ongoing drought, it was the provincial govt. efforts to clean up the Lake Dian (the largest fresh-water lake on the mountain yunnan plateau) and the rivers running through Kunming. Without those cleaned, the drought would be much worse being felt in the provincial capital.

      Still, more needs to be done. For example, China must invade Burma, end their bullshit and treachery of cozing up to the americans, genocide them all with the help of the ethnic Chinese rebels there, and build freshwater pipelines connecting nuclear desalination-plants on their coasts all the way to reservoirs in Yunnan.
      It is really time to finally make others die for China’s well-being for once – not just as always swallowing everything down and hurting herself only in the process as it is now.

      Punishing a traitorous country that is thanking China’s decades long of support and protection by enacting anti-chinese policies with the help of the USA for the sake of combatting an ongoing drought, is a good start.

      • moop

        china doesn’t have the balls, even if they had a million internet tough guys like you. the chinese are all talk, as are you

      • moop

        the flying tigers died for china’s well-being. africans die for china’s well-being all the time as they are played against eachother for resources to go to the prc, all the while the ccp is more than happy to provide the bullets. you are clueless

      • Xiongmao

        Hongjian, are you sure you’re in Yunnan and not an asylum? I live near the Burmese border and the Burmese are smiley, friendly, open people. And you do realise that China’s decades long support was to an oppressive military junta that no one in Burma liked right?

        • Hongjian

          Burmese should still die a horrible death for turning over to the US and suspending Chinese investments and projects, while banning ethnic chinese people doing business in their language.

          http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/14/us-myanmar-china-idUSTRE81D03R20120214

          Kill them all, grab their resources and ferment ther bodies into natural gas to power our busses here. These fuckers must die a horrible death to show the world what happens if you dare to fuck with China. For once, I admire the americunts for their policy of overly excessive violence in response to nations defying them openly. China must do the same.

  • Chinggis was here

    At least they won’t have to worry about being poisoned by cadmium in the water.

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