Changsha, Hunan province - To alleviate rising flood waters from the Huai River and two tributaries of Dongting Lake (the Lishui River and Yuanjiang River), the Chinese government for the first time is making use of retention polders to absorb flood waters. Retention polders are areas that were once reclaimed for cultivation but whose permanent residents have been relocated, with no official development projects and no permanent residents since 1998.

Unlike during the devastating floods of 1998, when extraordinary measures were taken to protect and reinforce dykes, this year the government has used 8 of the 22 retention areas in the Huai River Basin to hold flood waters.

Along the Lishui River, five small polders, which were evacuated as part of China’s wetland restoration programme after 1998, have been opened to reduce water levels. In the early morning of July 10, a large 3,200 ha polder, with a holding capacity of 250 million m3, was dynamited to reduce flood pressure on Lixian County. Another even larger polder in the area is ready to be destroyed if necessary to make way for rising flood waters.

The polders’ former residents have been moved to higher ground and given housing subsidies from the government as part of the central government’s ’32 character’ policy, which was implemented in the aftermath of the massive floods in 1998 — one of China’s worst natural disasters, resulting in 4000 deaths, the displacement of millions of people, and billions of dollars in damages. The measure aims to reduce the frequency and severity of floods by reversing the previous policy of land reclamation, which from 1949 to 1997 converted 62 per cent of Dongting Lake to farmland. Instead of rebuilding higher dykes as in the past, the new policy mandated that the rice paddies be returned to lake.

In total, 149 retention areas have now been designated, 40 of them in the Yangtze River Basin and 24 in the Dongting Lake Region.

Since 1999, WWF’s Yangtze Programme has been working with local government and communities living on reclaimed land that is vulnerable to surging floods. Villagers of WWF pilot sites have now abandoned their efforts to fight floods and instead have adapted alternative livelihoods such as fish farming and duck breeding that make use of the Yangtze’s flood waters.

For further information:

Mr. Zhang Yifei, Communications Manager for Yangtze Programme, WWF China Programme. Tel: 0731-5110087. Email: yfzhang@wwfchina.org