14 DAY TRIAL // According to recent statements made by officials with the State Forestry Administration (SFA) in China, the Asian nation has lost more than 9 percent of its wetlands over the past few years. The experts said that the trend is likely to continue if preventive measures are not taken immediately.
Recent statistics demonstrate that the total wetland area lost covers around 340,000 square kilometers (131,274 square miles), which is the approximate size of the Netherlands. All these wetlands were lost, primarily due to shrinkage, between 2003 and 2013.
This is very bad news for the animals and plants that rely on such habitats to survive. Numerous animals and species of vegetation may be endangered as a direct result of the shrinkage, but studies to determine the extent of the effects have not yet been conducted in the affected areas.
Another side-effect is determine whether or not these areas should be used to protect the environment, to produce energy, to plant harvests for agriculture, or to construct and develop buildings. This struggle is currently omnipresent in China, and affects large swaths of the country.
According to the SFA group, wetlands were lost over the past decade to processes such as climate change, global warming, massive infrastructure projects, and demands stemming from the Asian nation's ever-expanding agricultural sector.
SFA Vice-Director Zhang Yongli told reporters recently that large construction efforts have been the primary cause of wetland decline over the past decade. The situation is most dire in northern China, which is coincidentally also the area exhibiting the most significant water shortages.
Official Chinese statistics indicate that around a half of China's 1.2 billion people live in the northern parts of the country, and have access to just 14 percent of the nation's water reserves. Several canals are already being constructed to bring more waters to the parched north.
Scientists with a non-profit organization called China Water Risk estimate that over 85 percent of the water consumed in China goes to agriculture. The country grows a lot of rice, which is a plant that requires vast amount of water to grow properly.
Recently, authorities in Beijing have announced plans to construct an additional 363 coal-fired power plants, facilities that require large volumes of water for cooling. It is unclear at this point how all of these installations will be hooked up to China's dwindling water supply, Spectrum IEEE reports.
“Current regulations and rules have some clauses on wetland protection, but most are in fragments and disorganized, far from meeting the need of our work,” Zhang said for ECNS.
“Provisions for investigation and supervision of land use, the punishment for lawbreakers and better performance of International conventions are still nearly blank. Thus, a set of practical and binding regulations, especially for wetland protection, is badly needed,” he concluded.