Is historically arid Beijing ready for a wetter future?

Highlights:

• Beijing hit by 'once-a-century' floods three times since 2012
• Experts say China's rain belt expanding northwards due to climate change
• Beijing still lags in prioritising climate adaptation in projects

During last month's deadly floods in Beijing, rural hotel owner Cui Jian and his guests spent the night stranded on a rooftop in torrential rain before rescuers battled through metre-high mud and silt to get to them the next day.

Beijing's mountainous northern Huairou district and neighbouring Miyun district received a year's worth of rain in a single week, triggering flash floods that devastated entire villages and killed 44 people in the deadliest flood since 2012.

The authorities' most serious weather warning came too late for most villagers in Huairou, who were already asleep by the time it was issued.

"In the past, they closed scenic areas and campsites, evacuated tourists and relocated villagers. If you warn people in time, good, but if not, it's a natural disaster," said Cui, whose 10 properties in the same Huairou district village, which he had spent 35 million yuan ($4.87 million) renovating, were submerged.

The floods exposed weaknesses in the rural emergency response infrastructure for Beijing, whose urban core is surrounded by several rural districts.

But they also revealed how historically-dry Beijing, home to 22 million people, remains insufficiently prepared for what experts say will be an increasingly wet future. The Chinese capital has experienced three deluges since 2012 that forecasters said could only happen once every 100 years, and climate experts warn there is a growing risk of disasters on a previously unthinkable scale.

Chinese experts are increasingly calling for city planners to prioritise "ecological resilience" given the disastrous effects of climate change.

"The current understanding of the climate crisis and its future challenges is insufficient, which naturally leads to insufficient deployment and planning," said Zhou Jinfeng, Secretary-General of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation.

China's ministries of housing and environment, and the Beijing city government, did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

While two Beijing districts devastated by floods in 2023 have issued long-term reconstruction plans prioritising "climate-adaptive city construction" and proposing measures to improve rural flood control systems and upgrade infrastructure, the vast majority of recently-commissioned infrastructure projects in the capital do not prioritise climate adaptation in their plans.

A Chinese government database showed only three Beijing infrastructure projects in the past five years whose procurement tenders mentioned "ecological resilience", while several hundred tenders mentioning "climate change" were mostly related to research projects at state scientific institutes in Beijing.

Ecological resilience refers to measures such as restoring natural river embankments, reducing the use of concrete and other hard materials and excessive artificial landscaping, as well as increasing biodiversity, according to Zhou.

In a shift away from decades of breakneck urbanisation that propelled China's economic growth, a top-level urban planning meeting in July emphasised building "liveable, sustainable and resilient" cities.

Mid-July is typically when northern China's rainy season starts, but this year it had its earliest start since records began in 1961, while several Beijing rivers experienced their largest-ever recorded floods.

Citywide rainfall in June and July surged 75% from a year earlier, official data showed.

This is due to the "significant northward expansion of China's rain belt since 2011" linked to climate change, the director of China's National Climate Center told state-owned China Newsweek, marking a shift towards "multiple, long-term, sustained cycles of rainfall" in the traditionally arid north.

'SPONGE CITIES'

China's policymakers have taken some steps to combat urban flooding. "Sponge city" projects have been underway across the country since 2015, transforming concrete-laden megacities with hidden drainage infrastructure such as permeable asphalt pavements, sunken rain gardens and modernised sewage systems.

The concept, originating in China, refers to mimicking a sponge's ability to absorb and release rainwater.

In Beijing, recently-built projects include flood control pumping stations, riverside parks and manmade lakes.

China spent more than 2.9 trillion yuan ($403.78 billion) on more than 60,000 "sponge city" infrastructure projects in 2024, according to official data.

Authorities aim to have covered 80% of urban areas in all cities by 2030, although many provinces and major cities are behind schedule.

In Beijing, new "sponge city" projects worth at least 155 million yuan have begun this year, according to a Chinese procurement tender database. Currently, 38% of Beijing's urban areas meet "sponge city" standards, media reports say.

But experts say such initiatives cannot help in Beijing's rural fringes because the mountainous landscape makes villages, usually built at the foot of steep hillsides and lacking emergency response infrastructure, more vulnerable to secondary disasters such as landslides.

Current "sponge city" standards are also based on historical precipitation data and are poorly-equipped to deal with extreme rainfall, said Yuan Yuan, Greenpeace East Asia's climate and energy campaigner.

Future contingency plans must also consider ensuring pre-emptive evacuation of residents and improving early warning systems, in particular identifying vulnerable populations with limited mobility, she added.

In the recent Beijing floods, 31 elderly residents of a nursing home in Miyun were among the dead. They had not been included in evacuation plans and were trapped in the rising waters.

"It's necessary to rationally plan the infrastructure needed by local communities and ... coordinate risk response plans and countermeasures, to create an integrated system to minimise future losses," Yuan said.