Industries must safeguard China's diminishing freshwater resources
25 Nov 2005
WWF is highly concerned about how the toxic spill in Heilongjiang province will impact the region's people and ecosystem. The region's precious natural resources must be protected through implementation - by all stakeholders - of shared priorities and goals that ensure good ecosystem health and ecological security.
This includes improved regulation & monitoring of toxic chemicals, better risk assessment schemes to regularly check the safety of production procedures, and better preventative safeguards such as creating wetland buffer zones,' said Dr Li Lifeng, Director of WWF-China's Freshwater Programme, "We call upon industries and those who regulate them to work together with other stakeholders to prevent this from happening again."
The Heilong-Amur ecoregion - site of the November 13 petrochemical plant explosion - is a top priority region for WWF, which has been working on forest conservation and species protection in the region since 2001.
The province is home to one of the world's most distinctive temperate forests; it has one of the best and last examples of temperate deciduous mixed with conifer forests in east Asia.
It is a critical area for conserving endangered animal and plant species, including Yew trees (Taxus), Siberian tigers (Panthera tigris altaica), and leopards (Panthera pardus orientalis), as well as Musk deer (Moschus moschiferus), Brown bears (Ursos arctos), Asiatic black bears (U. tibethanus) and rare bird species such as the Siberian and red-crowned cranes (Grus leucogeranus and G. japonensis, respectively).
Freshwater ecosystems are by far in worse condition than forest, grassland, and coastal ecosystems. Half of the world's wetlands may have been destroyed in the past 100 years alone. In the coming decades, problems associated with the lack of fresh water are set to reach global proportions, with water shortages expected to become severe in at least 60 countries by the year 2050.
In China, freshwater is being threatened from population pressure and rapid economic development. In the last half century, China's population has more than doubled and become heavily concentrated along the major river valleys.
Untreated sewage and industrial waste pollute 70% of China's rivers.
China has no national legislation on wetlands, and only three provinces (Gansu, Heilongjiang, and Hunan) have passed provincial wetland legislation.
Slope erosion, sedimentation, intensive land reclamation and industrial pollution are some of the factors that have degraded water quality and the wetland landscape. As a result the wetland ecosystem has been severely affected by habitat fragmentation and the disruption of natural processes.
For more information
Caroline Liou, WWF-China
Phone: + 6522-7100 ext 3239
Email: caroline@wwfchina.org
Cheng Zhu, WWF-China
Phone: + 6522-7100 ext 3286
Email: zhcheng@wwfchina.org
