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.