Monday, October 10, 2005

VOA News - Greenpeace says Global Warming Threatens China's Yellow River

By Daniel Schearf
Beijing
10 October 2005


Environmental group Greenpeace says global warming is threatening the main source of China's Yellow River and causing serious damage to the environment and people's livelihoods. The group says carbon-dioxide emissions must be reduced or the river and the livelihoods of people who rely on it will be at risk.

A study commissioned by Greenpeace and produced by the Chinese Academy of Sciences says rising temperatures in the Tibetan Plateau are melting glaciers in the region, which are the main source of water for the Yellow River.

The study says that in the past 30 years, 17 percent of glaciers in the region have melted and the rate of melting ice is 10 times faster than it has been in the last 300 years.

Greenpeace says global warming also is melting permafrost in the region, draining lakes, turning grasslands into deserts, and destroying the river basin's capacity to hold water.

Li Mo Xuan is a works on climate change and renewable energy campaigns for Greenpeace in China. She says the degradation to the source of the Yellow River has turned people in the region into "environmental refugees" and if left unchecked it could destroy the Yellow River completely.

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