Growth, climate winning

URUMQI/bole - Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has always been arid, a challenge to sustainable development. But water is getting scarcer.

In the past five decades, 243 lakes in China have disappeared and 62 of them - the most of any region - were in Xinjiang, according to a report on the country's water quality, water quantity and biological resources.

Xinjiang is left with 114 lakes of at least 1 square kilometer and a combined surface area of about 6,400 sq km - 7.7 percent of the total in China, said Wu Jinglu, researcher at Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where the report was issued in December.