Yellow River at Risk

A new scientific analysis was written by Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and  commissioned by Greenpeace. It describes the environmental deterioration driven by global warming. With rising temperatures, permafrost (frozen soil) melting causes the land to degrade which undermines the river basin’s water holding capacity. Meanwhile the loss of the glacial melt water, the water held in the permafrost and the increased evaporation in the hotter conditions are leaving lakes and tributary rivers shrunken or completely dried up. The effects are devastating stockbreeding of the region and the lives of local people, increasing desertification, and causing local species to die out.

The Yellow River's birthplace is breaking down and drying out; cutting off the lifeblood of the river.

See more impacts in the region at our Yellow River site in English or Chinese.

The scientists draw on the latest research into various environmental changes on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau to assess the role and impact of climate change in the declining environment in the region. Their findings include:

• Glacial retreat – just in the last 30 years 17% loss of glacial area has occurred in the region; a melting rate ten times greater than through the previous 300 years.
• Permafrost melting – the thawing of the ecologically vital frozen soil is accelerating such that the lower boundary of the permafrost region has moved northward by 50-70 metres .
• Lake shrinkage – in the past 50 years the Yellow River source lakes Eling and Zhaling have dropped in level by 3 - 4 metres to record low levels. Over 3,000 small lakes, three quarters of the total number of the lakes formerly in Madoi County, have now disappeared; leaving nearly 600 households, 3000 people and 119,000 cattle without water.
• Desertification – the melting permafrost subsides and dries the soil, causing grasslands to alter and pests to infiltrate, degrading the land and ultimately turning it do desert. In the last 15 years, the desertification rate has registered at 1.83% annually, The overall land area that has degraded in the this period is estimated at 34.4% of the total area of the Yellow River source region.
• Biodiversity loss – the rapid spread of intrusive species favoured by the new warmer and melted conditions, such as rats, coupled with the loss of grasslands, and desertification means that this region – one of the richest in biodiversity at high altitude – is losing its ecological integrity and key species such as snow leopards are threatened with extinction.

The Yellow River source region is vital to the whole river and acts as a high altitude ‘water tower’ of the mother river. The Yellow River is the second longest in China and extends 5482 km, second only to the Yangtze River, It covers an area of 7.5 million km². The Yellow River serves as an important water source in the northwest and northern part of China for industrial and agricultural activities, comparatively speaking, Yellow River does not have abundant water. The annual runoff averages 58 billion m³, 2% of the total run-off in China, about 1/17 of the Yangtze River. This means that the Yellow River is very sensitive to even small changes in its water supply. The source region plays the major role in supplying the whole river basin, providing 55.6% of total river runoff for the length of the river above Lanzhou. The abundance of water at the source region directly affects supplies in the middle and the lower reaches of the river.

In June 2005 Greenpeace led an expedition to document the impacts identified in the study and captured images of dried lakes, advancing deserts, glaciers in retreat, degraded landscape and settlements destroyed by the effects. This qualitative investigation reinforces the findings of the scientists with documentary evidence.

Experts have said that deterioration of the Yellow River source region due to climate change could contribute to the loss of half of the water flowing into the Yellow River within the next few decades. When you see the empty wells, bridges over nothing but dry dirt, cracked ground where there should be lakes, bare rock and sand where it was once healthy grassland you know something is seriously wrong. The Yellow River source region is sending a clear and urgent warning to the world that climate change is harming us now and is going to get worse. Having seen the effects in this region first hand I believe that we have already passed the threshold of dangerous climate change. Unless the world acts fast to tackle climate change, I fear for the Yellow River; for the hundreds of millions of people that rely on it for their lives; and ultimately for China and the rest of the world.