February 23, 2007	Friday	Safar 5, 1428

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 22: From the mighty Mekong, Yangtze and Ganges to countless smaller waterways, Asia’s rivers sustain the lives of billions of people but breakneck development has put them under unbearable pressure.

Choked by sewage, silt and industrial waste, and made unrecognisable by dams and diversions, many have become biological “dead zones” and others like China’s iconic Yellow River often no longer even trickle to the sea.

“Looking at development in the region, it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said International Rivers Network campaign director Aviva Imhof.

“The situation in China is probably one of the most dire in the region in terms of both river pollution and the massive changes to the river ecosystems as a result of dams and diversions,” she said.

Charges of water-stealing and infrastructure schemes that parch downstream nations are traded back and forth. And many of the allegations, like the rivers themselves, go upstream to China.

CHINA: Flowing from the Tibetan Plateau, China’s main rivers include the Yangtze and Yellow, the Yarlung Tsangpo which becomes the Brahmaputra, the Langcang which turns into the Mekong, and the Salween and the Irrawaddy which flow through Myanmar.

The Yangtze and the Yellow become heavily polluted as they flow through greater China, and populations downstream of the other rivers complain that hydroelectric dams arrest their flow after they leave the country.

India and Bangladesh are concerned about a plan to dam the Yarlung Tsangpo and use the electricity to pump river water vast distances over Tibet to the head waters of the Yellow river.

The plan, which would cost billions of dollars, is part of China’s ongoing plan to bring southern waters to the dry north, including the capital Beijing.

Already, the litany of damage to China’s rivers is daunting. The country is in the grips of an acute water shortage with around 300 million people reportedly lacking access to safe drinking water.

More than 70 per cent of rivers and lakes are polluted, while underground water supplies in 90 per cent of Chinese cities are contaminated.

The United Nations has declared the estuaries of the Yangtze and the Yellow to be “dead zones” due to high amounts of pollutants which feed algal blooms that choke the water of oxygen.

And worsening pollution in China’s longest river, the Yangtze, is reportedly putting at risk the drinking water supply to millions of people in dozens of major cities.

THAILAND and MYANMAR: After leaving China, the Mekong, one of Asia’s most evocative rivers, flows through Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia before reaching the South China Sea via Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

The 4,000-kilometre river is one of the most biodiverse in the world, and the lifeblood for tens of millions of people living along its banks, providing fish, irrigation and a vital trading corridor.

But Beijing’s determination to turn southern Yunnan province into a hydroelectric power hub, which has already seen two dams built on the Mekong, threatens to have devastating social and environmental impacts.

“The unstable water level has already affected hundreds of fishermen along the Mekong river by reducing fish numbers,” said Sumatr Phulaiyao, Thailand coordinator of Southeast Asia Rivers Network.

The blasting of rocks and rapids in the upper reaches of the Mekong to create a navigation channel for huge ships is also causing concern.

“The Mekong is one of the last major great rivers in the region that is still in a pretty viable state ecologically and in how people are able to depend on the river's resources for livelihood,” said Imhof.

“But it’s a river that is make or break in the next 10 years as to whether it’s going to be able to survive because of all the development planned.” For many impoverished nations, signing deals with energy-hungry wealthier neighbours is proving a reliable way to boost their economies.

Myanmar, under military rule since 1962, last year forged an agreement with Chinese and Thai companies to dam the Salween River, Southeast Asia’s longest undammed waterway which is home to 80 rare or endangered animals and fish.

INDIA: India’s most famous river, the 2,510-kilometre Ganges which rises in the Himalayas, is so polluted by industrial and human waste that even those who revere its waters now fear it.

India’s Central Pollution Control Board found that the number of coliform organisms – an indicator of the presence of fecal matter – at one site at the start of a major bathing festival was 16 times that acceptable for swimming.

“The pilgrims come here to wash away their sins but after a dip here, they may carry skin diseases with them,” said Hari Chaitanya Brahmachari, a Hindu priest who runs a monastery in Varanasi, a city on the Ganges.

In the capital New Delhi, each day some 3,296 million litres of mostly untreated sewage is pumped into another holy river, the Yamuna.

“The Yamuna has been killed in the last decade,” said noted Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva. “There wasn’t this level of dumping of industrial or urban waste before. But the city has exploded in the last decade.” With water poorly managed and increasingly scarce in India – the World Bank has predicted a severe crisis by 2050 – the nation is keeping an eye on what its neighbours are planning for the rivers that it relies on.—AFP