CHINA: December 17, 2007


BEIJING - High altitude glaciers in China's remote west have shrunk by up to 18 percent over the last five years due to global warming, state media said on Friday, citing preliminary results from an on-going survey.


The shrinkage was most evident in two areas in the far Western region of Xinjiang and in part of Tibet, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"The change of glaciers is in fact a manifestation of the pressure upon China's environment from global warming," it quoted Ding Yongjian, a Chinese Academy of Sciences research fellow, as saying.

"Global warming has led to an increase in the average temperature in the western area of China over the past few decades. This has caused the glacial shrinking, a thawing of frozen earth and worsening arid conditions," it paraphrased him as saying.

China is set to overtake the United States as the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide as early as this year, and is under rising international pressure to curb emissions from its factories and vehicles.

But Beijing says its domestic energy efficiency programme is helping cut its contribution to climate change and offered to do more in return for clean technology from the developed world.

Its team has been widely praised at UN-led climate talks in Bali for a positive and cooperative attitude. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)


REUTERS NEWS SERVICE