Certain parts of Northwestern and Southwestern China are suffering from a severe drought. Authorities have said that the drought situation is likely to continue into the month of May 2013 due to the hot and dry weather.
The forecast for the region predicts high temperatures and low rainfall, according to the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, on April 2, 2013. The agency also said that about 6.61 million people, mainly in Yunnan, Henan, Gansu, Sichuan and Hubei provinces, did not have enough drinking water due to the drought which has affected 7.3 million hectares of farmland .
Zhang Xu, an official from the agency said, “At present, the drought in the whole country is light compared with previous years”. The official also said that it is severe in some provinces like the Yunnan and Sichuan. The person in charge of project planning at the Ministry of Water Resources – Zhou Xuewen, said that the weather and lack of reservoirs are the major reasons for the continued drought in certain parts of Southwest China in recent years.
Meanwhile, the government is planning to construct water reservoirs, the process for which generally takes three to four years. Thus the country will need to cope with the situation until new reservoirs are built, unless the government looks to other alternatives.
