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Dangerous water shortages across China.
In China’s northern region, which is home to 40% of the nation’s population, farmers in Chifeng city were recently forced to postpone crop harvests after 10-meter deep cracks began to appear in fields, creating risks for injury. The city’s hydrological bureau also reported that 62% of 51 area reservoirs have run dry, leaving over 250,000 people short of drinking water.

In southwestern Guizhou province, more than 600,000 people also faced water scarcity as drought conditions there have similarly left rice fields covered with cracks, while hundreds of thousands of livestock compete for dwindling water supplies. The government has been building dams to help provide adequate resources for growing populations and industry.

However, these efforts have diminished supplies reaching down-river countries such as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, India, Thailand and Âu Lạc (Vietnam), with adverse effects to farmers there.

Meanwhile, the Chinese capital Beijing struggles to cope with increasing shortages as it hastens to complete a diversion project to deliver sufficient water to hundreds of millions of people.

According to experts at the World Bank, without drastic changes in water use, there could be tens of millions of environmental refugees appearing within the next ten years.

We are deeply concerned for the people of China and all those living downstream in the face of these growing water shortages.  May we all adopt the best means of conserving this precious resource and reversing climate change to ensure the survival of all beings.

In a 2008 videoconference with our Association members in New Zealand, Supreme Master Ching Hai pointed out the significant role of livestock raising in water scarcity and urged for action to preserve both water supplies and the planet as a whole.

Supreme Master Ching Hai: Of course, the changing pattern of weather is affecting everything else as well. But I think it affects more of the husbandry, the animal raising way of life.
Now, because animals raising takes a lot of water, more than even growing vegetables, so if we are short of water, then, of course, the livestock industry will become automatically minimized. And I hope it will be zero soon. Because the more they raise animals, the more water they need.

And the more water they need, the less water we even have for vegetarian food production, like growing crops and all that. So I hope everyone realizes it.

We disseminate information to let them know. That’s why we have to work hard, to help these good people. If we are working hard, and with the help of all the vegetarians, fruitarians, breatharians, waterians, all the non-meat eaters out there, if they’re all helping us, and even if the meat eaters if they are helping us also, then the planet will be saved.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/09/13/china.water.crisis/index.html
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-09/13/content_11294920.htm

Extra News
Video footage by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on Sumatra Island in Indonesia shows that illegal land-clearing activities are destroying the habitat and threatening the survival of the highly endangered Sumatran tiger, with only 400 left living in the wild.

http://www.france24.com/en/20101012-footage-shows-land-clearing-threat-sumatran-tigers
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69C1AD20101013


US-based automaker General Motors in Michigan partners with major utility companies DTE Energy and Consumers Energy for the installation of over 5,300 charging stations, to encourage the use of plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles.

http://www.france24.com/en/20101013-michigan-get-5300-charging-stations-electric-cars
http://www.favstocks.com/gm-utilities-to-install-ev-charging-stations-in-michigan/1326398/

A 2010 report jointly published by Greenpeace China, the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association, and Belgium-based Global Wind Energy Council, forecasts a more than five-fold rise in China’s wind energy capacity by 2020.

http://www.france24.com/en/20101013-chinas-wind-power-capacity-grow-five-fold-2020
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/5566/China-Likely-to-Lead-World-in-Wind-Energy-by-Year-End
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2010-10/13/content_11404498.htm