Forces of nature wrought havoc in parts of Asia this summer
Forces of nature wrought havoc in parts of Asia this summer
By Andreas Landwehr and Juergen Hein
BEIJING/NEW DELHI (DPA): Environmental destruction and the
forces of nature wrought havoc this summer in large parts of
Asia, worst of all in China and Bangladesh which were hit by
devastating floods.
Every fifth Chinese person was affected when the country's
major rivers burst their banks, while for several weeks two-
thirds of low-lying Bangladesh were under water.
Monsoon rains also inundated eastern India, where 2,500 people
were killed, and parts of many other Asian countries from Korea
to Indonesia.
In Bangladesh, located in the watershed of three major rivers
flowing from the Tibetan plateau, the official death toll hit
1,500.
In China, the government said 3,656 people died in the floods,
but internal documents suggest that more than 13,000 people lost
their lives.
The Chinese media mainly showed pictures of People's
Liberation Army troops building dams and rescuing people -- trying
to regain the people's trust that suffered badly after the 1989
massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators.
The state-run press and television ignored the fates of the
thousands who died because party officials had squandered funds
for flood protection and because dams were blown up, inundating
rural areas to save larger cities downriver from the floods.
The efforts of the party were meanwhile highly praised. "With
such a party, such an army and such a people, we can create world
miracles," said President and Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin.
Today, many flood victims continue to wait for miracles.
Hundreds of thousands are still camped on dykes along the mighty
Yangtze river and cowering in emergency shelters in the country's
northeast, in temperatures of minus 20 degrees centigrade.
"We have far too little food," said Chen Yingyun of the Red
Cross in the northern province of Heilongjiang. While most of the
international aid was sent to the south, the north is also
lacking shelter, fuel and blankets.
The floods cost China an estimated 1 per cent of its annual
economic growth. They swept away 5.6 million homes, affected 230
million people and caused huge property damage.
The disaster highlighted a deadly combination of environmental
problems: large-scale deforestation, land reclamation projects in
lakes and over-population.
For years, large areas of forest were cut down, causing
erosion of hillsides and siltation of waterways.
One third of China's two largest lakes, Dongting and Poyang,
were lost in land reclamation. Rivers were constricted by
embankments and the flood plains along them settled.
In response to the catastrophe, Beijing ordered the re-
settlement of tens of thousands of people.
Logging was banned in many areas and lumberjacks employed in
reforestation programmes. Not the tree-feller but the forester
was declared the new hero of the people.
But edicts from the capital have to be put into practice in
remote provinces, which often face more immediate and pressing
problems. Under the anti-logging directive, for instance, every
third lumberjack -- or 1 million people -- would have to find new
jobs.
In Bangladesh, the problems are similar. Rains run off the
denuded hills ever more quickly and causes the rivers to break
their banks.
In what was the largest flood catastrophe in the history of
the country, 25 million people, a fifth of the population, lost
their homes this year.
Because the country is located in the flat river delta of the
Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna, structures in the past were built
in the elevated areas.
However, due to population pressures, low-lying areas have
increasingly become settled.
Most victims in Bangladesh either drowned, died in collapsed
buildings or were killed by water snakes. Others lost their lives
to infectious diseases caught in the polluted water.
The floods also wiped out 3.5 million tons of grains. The
World Food Programme launched the largest aid programme in its
history in Bangladesh and China.