The cabbages strewn across the courtyard of Song Baolin's home are all he has to feed his family for the next year.

"Because of the drought, my crops -- 6,667 square meters of corn and 1,332 square meters of millet -- all withered," Song says. "I have three others to feed in my family, and, except for these cabbages, we have nothing to eat."

Normally at this time of year, crops would be heaped on roofs and in courtyards, says Song, 56. "But this year, many villagers like me had no harvest because of the severe drought."

Song is a farmer at Heidagou Village in Chaoyang City, northeast China's Liaoning Province. Since June, Liaoning has suffered one of the worst droughts in 60 years. The drought hit more than 2 million hectares of farmland and affected 3 million people.

In the last four years, global warming has been blamed for worsening droughts around Liaoning, with a summer drought in 2006, a spring drought in 2007 and an autumn drought in 2008.

The farmers, whose livelihoods are at the mercy of the weather, are being driven into ever deepening poverty.

Heating problems

Last month, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the Progress Report 2009 of China's Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change, warning of severe weather around the country.

In the past 100 years, the country's average temperature rose by 1.1 degrees centigrade, higher than the worldwide incease, the report said.

China's annual mean temperature has risen steadily for the past 12 years and reached 9.6 degrees centigrade last year, 0.7 degrees higher previous year, the report said.

In northwest China, the annual mean temperature from 1987 to 2000 was 0.7 degrees higher than that from 1961 to 1986. As the temperature rose, droughts and sandstorms increased in frequency and scale.

Climate change has become the new threat for the abject poor -- those with an annual per capita income of less than 1,196 yuan (US$175) -- whose number was estimated at 40 million by the end of 2008.

Almost 95 percent of them live in climate endangered areas.

"In China, poverty-stricken places have low emissions of greenhouse gases, but they are affected most by the effects of climate change," says Lin Erda, director of agriculture and climate change research center of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The government has taken measures such as launching anti-poverty programs in villages, transferring workers to more climate-adaptable places, and relocating people from mountain and forest areas that are unsuitable for farming.

Protect and pestore

Liaoning, for example, has targeted farming, aquaculture, forestry and horticulture as the focus of its anti-poverty program, which started in 2002 and covered 2,805 villages and 2.3 million people by the end of last year. The program has raised annual per capita incomes by up to 600 yuan (US$88).

In order to help villagers suffering from this year's drought, the provincial government also called on employers to provide at least 220,000 jobs for disaster-hit farmers.

Moreover, the province has relocated almost 100,000 farmers from mountain areas and planned to remove the remaining 12,000 mountain dwellers to regions with better environments in next four years.

Liaoning's Beipiao City launched an anti-poverty program in 179 villages, providing almost 96 million yuan for more than 200,000 people.

Yan Yusheng, in Dabali Village, says the program helped him weather this year's extreme drought, enabling him to borrow 100,000 yuan from a bank and the local government to build two greenhouses: one for tomatoes and one for cucumbers and peppers.

"I might earn about 50,000 yuan in the next year after repaying the loans," says Yan.

But Ma Jun, director of Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, says the problem must be tackled at source.

The government must build suffient disaster relief systems and restore ecologically fragile areas, he says.

Since 1998, the government has prohibited tree felling, and promoted the return of farmland to forest and the protection of rivers and wetlands.

But the government should also take preventive measures to fight climate poverty, says Ma.

In the 11th five-year plan (2006-2010), the government aimed to increase energy efficiency by 20 percent, and the goal can be achieved based on the present statistics, Ma said.

"Also, China will increase its forest cover by 40 million hectares by 2020. The country's renewable energy rate will reach 15 percent by 2020 as well," says Ma.

The development of a green and low-carbon economy, and more nuclear energy use will also contribute alleviating climate poverty, he says.

Preventing the worst

Wayne Hancock, an independent Australian consultant on environment and agriculture working on development projects in China, says climate poverty is becoming more serious in China as unpredictable weather events appearing more frequently.

It has affected more than just farmers, as in some places people are suffer water shortages.

Hancock says the government should build up efficient weather prediction systems, and keep farmers informed of climate change information.

Government organs should coordinate to help farms better conduct their planting and farmers should also cooperate with each to reduce the risk, he says.

A report about climate change and poverty issued by Oxfam Hong Kong in July showed that as global warming became worse, surface temperatures around the country would rise by 2.3 to 3.3 degrees centigrade by 2050.

The Oxfam report also warned that if China took timely action, the increasingly severe climate change would weaken the effect of measures government has taken to fight poverty.

The report cited research in northwest, southwest and south China that showed the weather had become a major factor in crop production, the use of water resources, house construction and livestock breeding.

Yongjing county, in northwest China's Gansu Province, for example, has been suffering from drought since the 1980s, the report said.

Mabian autonomous county of the Yi minority, in southwest Sichuan Province, has experienced disastrous floods for the last 50 years.

Sudden climate change also worsened the effects of insufficient medical services and weak infrastucture, the report said.

In order to help climate affected people, the Oxfam report suggested government take climate effects into consideration when making anti-poverty policies.

Li Ning, an official from Oxfam Hong Kong, said the government should introduce more drought-resistant and flood-resistant crops and improve infrastructure building.

(Xinhua News Agency December 11, 2009)