In the greatest peacetime ransacking in living memory, a horde of scavengers has fallen upon towns and villages that will vanish under water after the gargantuan Three Gorges dam begins to stem the Yangtze River’s flow next year.
Investment bank faces environmental, social test
As a top investment bank criticized for involvement in the Three Gorges dam prepares to unveil an environmental policy, activists wonder whether Morgan Stanley Dean Witter’s words will be turned into significant action.
Nation sets campaign to fight geological disasters
(January 11, 2006) Officials are racing against time to finish a comprehensive geological-disasters warning system in the Three Gorges dam area before the coming flood season, China’s deputy minister of land and resources says.
China misses energy saving goal, but cracks down
(January 10, 2006) China missed its energy saving target last year, a top official said on Wednesday, but Beijing is cracking down on major companies that ignored environmental rules as sustainable development moves up the government agenda.
Chinese company chosen to help build huge dam in Ethiopia
(January 10, 2006) China has won a bid to help construct a dam on a Nile River tributary that will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric project and 10 metres taller than the Three Gorges dam.
Is China ready for more floods?
Some experts believe China’s big-dam projects are an inefficient use of the funds set aside for flood prevention, BBC News Online reports. ‘Give the people in the villages more money,’ it quotes water specialist Wang Weiluo as saying.
Floods ravage north-western China
At least 205 people are dead, and hundreds more are missing, in catastrophic floods in north-western China that local reports describe as the worst in the area for more than a century.
Only white dolphin in captivity dies
Qiqi, the only captive example of the world’s most endangered dolphin species, died yesterday, Xinhua reports. Yangtze River pollution and development projects, including dams, have been blamed for the species’ decline.
China detains 40 farmers on protests ahead of dam project
40 migrant farmers, forced from their villages by construction of the Three Gorges Dam, have been detained by police after protesting discrimination and hardship in their new homes in Qingdao, reports the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
China sacrifices towns to a new god
Villagers along the Yangtze are reluctantly leaving home, John Schauble reports from Fengdu. No one is under any illusions that life will be the same, let alone any better.
New Yangtze dams spell disaster for fish
(December 21, 2005) A group of Sichuan University undergraduates has won accolades for a research project that warns of the serious threat that new dams planned for the upper Yangtze pose to the river’s wild fish, and the communities that depend on them.
When flood control means more than a dam
In China, the world’s largest dam impounds floodwater, but without other controls, erosion will persist.
Deadline diggers: Archeologists race against the clock
The 100 teams toiling to save relics in the Three Gorges area ‘are fighting a losing battle, racing against a deadline they simply can’t hope to meet,’ China Daily reports.
China sentences four in radioactive
(December 17, 2005) China has sent four people to jail for stealing dangerous radioactive waste from a power plant in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
China’s longest river closes as flood toll rises
(December 16, 2005) The Yangtze River has been closed to all traffic at the site of the Three Gorges dam as flood water is now so high it is dangerous for ships to pass.
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