Water and Sanitation

The 'Sea of Death' is the not so affectionate name that has been given by the Chinese people to the Taklamakan desert, a desert of such epic proportions and intimidating size, that its name in the local Uygur language translates as 'You can go in, but you will never come out'. As my car passes through the gate indicating my entrance to this treacherous land, I can only hope that my chances of exiting have been improved by the relatively new 500km of trans-desert highway that stretches endlessly before me from one side of the desert to the other.

Anna-Katarina Gravgaard introduces our latest water project, direct from the field in Nepal.

It is estimated that nearly 40 cities have been abandoned as a result of desertification in Northwest China in the past 2000 years. The old city of Yinpan, which lies approximately 300km east of the modern city of Korla in China's western Xinjiang province, is one of those cities. Lying on the fringes of China's most formidable desert, the Taklamakan, its location is one of the harshest and most remote in all of China.

Sandwiched unforgivingly between the mighty Tengger desert to the south and east, and the equally menacing Badain Jaran desert to the north and west, surface water has long since dried up in the dry and ravaged Minqin Oasis in Gansu Province. Problems lie not only with Minqin's harsh location however, but also in the ways local people have been using the little water that remains.

As I enter the desert resort of Shapotou, signs beside the road boldly announce my passing into "The Desert Capital Of The World". Whilst seemingly quite an ambitious claim, the dramatic convergence of the Tennger desert, the Yellow River and the "Fragrant Mountain" range, has created one of the most spectacular natural settings in all of China.

The secret is out on this unique location however, as is evident by the line of buses outside the entrance, all carrying groups of tourists eagerly anticipating a day of fun in the sand.

You can smell a sandstorm. As I woke this morning, my throat was drier than normal and the smell of dust and sand had crept into my room whilst I was sleeping. I opened my curtains expecting to see the Yellow River out of my window but all I could see was a haze of yellow light.

Sandstorms have been one of the major problems as a result of desertification in China. As the spring winds blow, dry and degraded topsoil is picked up and thrown into the air to be carried in immense clouds of sand and dust.

Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region is a small province lying in Loess highlands of north-central China. Dry and desert-like, it is China's poorest province and is the least visited by outsiders.

I am here this week to visit the isolated town of Hongsibao, which lies 150km south of the province's capital Yinchuan, completely surrounded by dry and arid land. Ten years ago, this town didn't exist.

"The dryness affects our lives a lot. We call it the 'black disaster', which means there is no grass. On the grassland, we are afraid of this disaster", says Zamusu, a farmer who has lived on the central grasslands of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous region, in Northern China, for the whole of his life. "When I was young, there was much more grass than now", he continues, in what seems to be a statement echoing across the 70 million acres (28million ha) of the gently undulating grasslands that dominate the Xilamuren steppes north of the region's capital, Hohhot.

An estimated 35,000 people died last week as the 5th World Water Forum convened in Istanbul, Turkey. If you didn't hear the news, don't be surprised; the 35,000 deaths the week before, and the week before that didn't grab any headlines either.

One of the biggest challenges facing the thousands of delegates at the forum from water and sanitation NGO's is getting the media to take notice of the startling numbers of people dying each day from water borne illness, and the billions around the globe without access to clean water and sanitation.

Kenya's Lake Turkana, was in the spotlight in the just ended World Water Forum here, when a claim that the country's second largest lake faced the threat of extinction due to plans to dam Ethiopia's River Omo — the lake's main inlet.

Ms Ikal Angelei told the forum that the Government of Kenya had "traded off," the people of Turkana in exchange for hydro-electric power to be supplied from Ethiopia after the damming of the river.

The Water Wars portal is highlighted in a special edition of Foreign Exchange devoted entirely to global water issues. Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Pulitzer Center journalist Alex Stonehill and draws on the portal to share video reports and student perspectives. Rose George, author of The Big Necessity also joins the program to discuss the critical issue of sanitation.

In Kibera, a massive slum of rusty tin roofs and makeshift homes spreading out from the southwest of the city, the rain is turning the twisting dirt roads and alleyways to thick red mud.

Here in one of largest slums in the world--a flashpoint for violence stemming from Kenya's parliamentary elections in December--the rain is causing open sewers to swell and uncollected garbage to rush in rivers of tattered plastic and human waste through backyards.