On Wednesday Zhu Guangyao, vice minister of the State
Environmental Protection Administration of China explained that
almost 1,000 of the country's lakes had disappeared over the last
50 years which was an average of 20 annually.
Zhu revealed the figure at the 11th International Living Lakes
Conference being held on Wednesday and Thursday in Nanchang,
capital of east China's Jiangxi Province.
He said 75 percent of China's 20,000 natural lakes and thousands
of artificial stretches of water suffered from algae pollution
caused by waste water containing nitrogen, phosphorus and other
harmful substances.
In central China's Hubei Province?known as the "Paradise of
Lakes" 217 lakes each with an area larger than one square kilometer
have disappeared since the 1950s when 522 large stretches of water
were scattered around the province.
The total area of Hubei's natural lakes has shrunk to 2,438
square kilometers which is 34 percent less than 50 years ago.
China has 361,100 square kilometers of lakes and 90,000 square
kilometers of wetlands. Freshwater storage stands at 226 billion
cubic meters.
The major cause of the shrinkage was industrial farming
activities, Zhu said. The overuse of water and pollution had
destroyed water and ecological systems in lake and wetland
areas.
The government had set up 160 wetland protection zones and
invested heavily in measures to prevent pollution, Zhu said, but
called for further efforts by domestic and international
organizations.
(Xinhua News Agency November 2, 2006)
