China Shares Experience of Disaster Reduction with Neighbors

China is sharing its experience with natural disaster reduction and water resource management with South Asian and African countries in response to their common threats of climate change.

A 10-day training program on management of flood control and disaster mitigation, sponsored by China's Ministry of Water Resources, started on Thursday in Beijing.

Ten officials and professionals on irrigation and natural disaster prevention, coming from Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan, will receive training in water resource management, flood control as well as natural disaster warning and reduction.

Sharing borders of thousands of kilometers, China and South Asian countries have faced more frequent natural disasters partly because of climate change in recent years.

In 2010, severe floods ravaged more than 50 percent of the land in Pakistan and more than 20 million people were affected.

In July, floods and landslides triggered by continuous rainstorms submerged about 200 villages in southern Bangladesh.

Since July, about 14 million people in China's Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, as well as the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Chongqing Municipality, have faced drinking water shortages because of drought.

"The impact of climate change now is becoming a bottleneck for future sustainable development of these countries. More experience sharing disaster reduction and advanced technologies is urgently needed," said Jia Jinsheng, vice-president of China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research.

"At present, many large-scale water irrigation and hydropower projects are built by Chinese companies in Nepal. We benefited a lot from China's advanced technological support," Sashi Bahadur Bisht, an engineer from Ministry of Irrigation in Nepal, told China Daily.

Also, a work team on disaster reduction sent by China's Ministry of Water Resources went to Thailand to provide technology services in its flood-hit areas in October.

"To fight drought, China will devote itself to help other developing countries, especially African countries, to improve their irrigation projects in the future," Gao Zhanyi, director of the National Center for Efficient Irrigation Technology Research, told China Daily on Wednesday.

In October, Gao was elected president of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, a non-profit NGO with members from 110 countries based in New Delhi.

He is the first Chinese president in the commission's history.

"Support to introduce advanced technologies and equipment, as well as training professionals, will be priorities," he said.

To ensure its food supply, China's irrigation areas hit 60 million hectares in 2010, a sharp increase from 49 million hectares in 1980, statistics from the Ministry of Water Resources showed.

Irrigated land in China produces more than 75 percent of the country's grain and more than 90 percent of its vegetables and economic crops, official figures showed.