China’s top meteorologist has warned that climate change is threatening some of China’s most important infrastructure projects such as the Three Gorges Dam and a high-altitude railway to Tibet.
Zheng Guoguang, head of China’s meteorological administration, told the state newspaper the Study Times that the increase in recent weather disasters such as floods, typhoons, droughts and heat waves are largely connected to climate change, adding that China’s rate of warming is higher than the global average, reports the Guardian.
Such weather occurrences increase the risks faced by large engineering projects, many of which are central to the country’s ambitious urbanisation plans. Zheng is quoted by the Guardian as stating that global warming “affects the safety and stability of these big projects, as well as their operations and economic effectiveness, technological standards and engineering methods.”
China is currently the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, with coal accounting for 60 per cent of its carbon dioxide emissions. Zheng said that China must address climate change if it is to put its economy on a more sustainable growth path.
Photo credit: marco bono, flickr/Creative Commons
