BEIJING (AFP) – A flood crisis in China illustrates how the country’s alarmingly degraded environment, coupled with out-of-control development, has left millions at risk from natural disasters, experts said last Friday.

More than 600,000 people have already been evacuated from around Dongting Lake in the central province of Hunan, and surging waters in the lake and surrounding rivers are threatening millions more.

Dongting – which acts as a massive flood basin for the Yangtze River – has shrunk to less than half its size through unchecked land reclamation and silting, experts point out.

Around 900 people have already died around China this summer in floods and landslides, a toll that could rise sharply if the lake bursts its banks.

The region around Dongting and the Yangtze was at the centre of catastrophic floods four years ago when more than 4,100 people died, prompting Beijing to invest vast sums reinforcing flood defences.

But environmental experts argue it is fruitless continuing China’s centuries-old attempts to tame nature.

“The floods in 1998 highlighted some really important issues, such as deforestation and many people living below river levels,” said Paul Harris, an environmental expert at Lingnan University on Hong Kong.

“There is this idea that you can find a scientific, or technical solution to these problems, but a far more fundamental change is needed.”

In 1998, some officials noted that while floods in the Yangtze region were the worst for decades, the peak flow of the river in many places was not exceptional.

Massive development has made Hunan’s environment far less able to absorb floodwaters, while land reclamation and river control schemes have moved millions into the flood firing line.

Dongting Lake itself has shrunk from 6,200 square kilometres (2,385 square miles) 150 years ago to just 2,800 square kilometres (1.070 square miles), as land-hungry farmers encroach.