A recent report, titled “Climate Change and Poverty: a Case Study of China”, observes that more than 95 percent of poor people’s lives in ecologically sensitive regions are deeply and mostly affected by the changing climate. According to this report, a map of China’s impoverished areas overlaps the map of the country’s ecologically fragile areas.

The report, released on June 17, 2009, was initiated by Greenpeace China and Oxfam Hong Kong, with joint efforts of experts and researchers from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) and local meteorological officials in Sichuan, Guangdong and Gansu.

The report show that at Mabian County in Sichuan province, the direct economic losses resulted from rain storms and other flood-related disasters have strikingly increased in the past 5 decades. Compared to 9.7 billion yuan in the last half a century, the average annual direct economic losses from 2001 to 2008 reached 23.8 billion yuan.

However, Lin Erda, a member of China’s national climate change expert panel as well as senior researcher with CAAS, observes that China has established a remarkable record in alleviating poverty.

According to statistics by State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, there were 250 million people living in absolute poverty in China. But the number had decreased to 14.8 million by 2007, or 1.6 percent of the country’s total population.

On the other hand, case studies from Guangdong, Sichuan and Gansu provinces show that global warming does lead to floods, snowstorms and landslides, which adversely affect the ecologically fragile regions and undermine poverty alleviation efforts.

Xu Yinlong, a CAAS expert said: “Since China’s current poverty relief projects chiefly focus on income improvement, money is only helpful to those who live in ecologically favorable regions, whereas people in the ecologically sensitive regions are often pushed back into poverty by natural disasters.”

Li Yan, Greenpeace China climate campaigner, observed that if the government doesn’t take the initiative to forge an aggressive climate rescue treaty in the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December, China’s poverty alleviation efforts for the past few decades could be severely undermined.

“Developed countries should provide at least $50 billion annually to help developing countries take climate change adaptation measures, since they are largely responsible for causing climate change,” said Li Ning, officer of Oxfam’s Climate Change Program.

“Meanwhile, Developing countries, including China, should give priority to take change adaptation measures, like anti-drought and anti-flood crops, infrastructure improvement and elevation of bridges and roads in flood-prone areas.”

Hongsipu Development Zone is China’s largest relocation and poverty reduction project that has been built on a broad stretch of reclaimed desert in Ningxia Hui autonomous region. Ma Jianjun, a 19-year-old Hui ethnic boy, is one of thousands of children who grew up there.

Ma recalls that when his family lived at Xihaigu, a place which was very windy and dusty all year round, they did not have enough food and their annual income amounted to 500 yuan or even less. Xihaigu was listed as one of the world’s most uninhabitable zones by the United Nations World Food Program for its extreme environment. The relocation has helped hundreds of thousands in Ningxia live a better life after the local government began the program in 1998.

With an area of 2,000 sq km, Hongsipu at present is home to 200,000 migrants and has more than about 2,700 hectares of irrigable land. Hongsipu’s 2008 GDP of was 502 million yuan, a 12.9 percent increase over the previous year, while farmer’s average net income reached 2,660 yuan, an increase of 16.5 percent. However, Chinese farmers’ average net income stood at 4,761 yuan in 2008.

Li Ning of Oxfam observed that ecological migration not only requires a huge amount of investment but takes a long time to bear fruit as well.

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