{"id":236,"date":"2014-01-09T14:43:20","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T14:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2014\/01\/09\/xinjiangs-capital-urumqi-faces-water-crisis-fueled-migration\/"},"modified":"2014-01-09T14:43:20","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T14:43:20","slug":"xinjiangs-capital-urumqi-faces-water-crisis-fueled-migration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/xinjiangs-capital-urumqi-faces-water-crisis-fueled-migration\/","title":{"rendered":"Xinjiang\u2019s Capital Urumqi Faces Water Crisis Fueled by Migration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The migration into Urumqi of large numbers of Han Chinese from China\u2019s inner provinces has especially strained the city\u2019s resources, Dr. Peyzulla Zeydin, a former associate professor of geography and natural resources at Xinjiang University, told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/p>\n<div>The capital city of northwestern China\u2019s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is quickly depleting its available sources of water and faces a looming crisis made worse by a rapidly growing population and mismanaged environment, experts say.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>The migration into Urumqi of large numbers of Han Chinese from China\u2019s inner provinces has especially strained the city\u2019s resources, Dr. Peyzulla Zeydin, a former associate professor of geography and natural resources at Xinjiang University, told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\u201cFollowing the rapid development of Urumqi, the large green zone along the Urumqi River has been destroyed, and numerous high buildings have been constructed one after another,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\u201cNo one is paying attention to the city\u2019s damaged environment and shortage of water,\u201d Zeydin said.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>The Urumqi River, which is fed by a glacier, is among the key sources of water supply to the capital\u2019s main reservoir. &nbsp;Another is Say\u2019opa Lake, lying to the city\u2019s east. The section of the Urumqi River that formerly ran to the city has now dried up, sources say.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>An internal government report published in Chinese in 2012 and in the Uyghur language last year estimates a future jump in Urumqi\u2019s population from 4 million in 2015 to 5 million in 2020, with the Xinjiang region\u2019s current total population standing at just over 20 million.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>And by 2020, the needs of the city\u2019s increased population will far exceed existing resources, according to the report, published in Xinjiang Wenshi (History and Culture of Xinjiang) by Zhang Guowen of the Office of Consultants of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional Government.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Resources threatened<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Urumqi\u2019s existing water resources are estimated at 1.12 billion cubic meters (39.6 billion cubic feet), according to the report. Already, Urumqi\u2019s total annual consumption of \u201cpure\u201d water\u20141.10 billion cubic meters (38.8 billion cubic feet) in 2011\u2014has surpassed the amount of the larger total considered fit to drink.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Additionally, natural sources of water to the Urumqi region are receding, with a glacier to the north of Urumqi losing mass each year and the freshwater Say\u2019opa lake to the city\u2019s east steadily shrinking in volume, according to the report.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Melting from bottom to top, the glacier has shrunk about 140 meters (460 feet) over the last 40 years, with the glacier\u2019s total area reduced to about 40 square kilometers (15 square miles), the report said.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>And the Say\u2019opa Lake has dropped 2 meters (6.5 feet) in depth and shrunk by 10 square kilometers (4 square miles), according to the report.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Glacier No. 1, located in the Tianshan Mountains to the city\u2019s north, \u201cis the most important water resource for the Urumqi region,\u201d Peyzulla Zeydin said, speaking to RFA.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\u201cThe ice cover is gradually melting due to global warming and damage to the area\u2019s ecology, and the face of the Say\u2019opa Lake is receding year by year,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Urumqi was formerly a \u201cgreen city in which inhabitants carefully guarded water sources and planted trees and flowers in their yards,\u201d Zeydin said.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\u201c[Now], if the government does not invest in the protection of the ecology and water resources, Urumqi will become a cement skyscraper-covered city without flowers or trees.\u201d<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>Reported by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Eset Sulaiman. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/div>\n<div>&nbsp;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The migration into Urumqi of large numbers of Han Chinese from China\u2019s inner provinces has especially strained the city\u2019s resources, Dr. Peyzulla Zeydin, a former associate professor of geography and natural resources at Xinjiang University, told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,126,128,127,26],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chinese-government","tag-energy","tag-han-migration","tag-urumqi","tag-uyghurs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}