Yunnan Communities in Karst Landscape Continue to Face Water Difficulties
China’s karst landscape stretches through eight provinces in southern China – from Guangxi and Hubei in the east to Guizhou, Sichuan, Yunnan and parts of Tibet in the west. Unfortunately, this has also become the border of poverty, ecology, and opportunity in south-southwestern China. The karst belt is about 500,000 square kilometers with 8,200 million people living. In Yunnan Province, the karst landscape comprises nearly 44 percent of its total land area.
Sad, shocked eyes looked at us from the hospital bed. Earlier in the week Sam Ren had driven the “iron buffalo”, a type of village tractor which carries goods and people across the field to tend the chilli plants. The villagers had been planting this field for some years and used the path across the fields regularly. At night they set out to return home on the same route.
The first big eruption of Mount Merapi was on the 26 October. A lot of people living as close as 10 km to the volcano were evacuated to safer areas. Like many other students in Yogyakarta, the Jesuit scholastics were still going to school on the following days, viewing the volcano spewing ashes which made a 2 km column of cloud, as they were riding their scooters to the campus.