Water Crisis in China
March 15th, 2007
Submitted By: Steve Rodger
According to the Chinese government, environmental pollution cost China US$64 billion in economic losses in 2004. This means that environmental degradation and pollution cost the Chinese economy the equivalent of 8-12 percent of GDP annually. With expected rises in China’s population (despite the one-child per person law), these problems are only expected to get worse. China’s growth is only causing additional shortages of their water (China From the Inside). The government should look towards sustainable development programs (China: Sustainable Development Gets Priority) to help alleviate their countries severe desertification, droughts, and marine pollution. In a nutshell, China does not have enough water to support the exponential economic growth it aspires to.
Water and waste pollution is the number one problem facing China, according to hydrologists and government officers. Rural and poor farmers are the people suffering the most. So what is the solution?
Raising water prices would cause some to conserve water, but prices are already high enough to make rural farm workers conserve. Currently billions are being invested in sewage treatment plants, which will help to treat foul H20. Additionally, China is looking for foreign solutions (China Taps Into Foreign Water Solutions) to solve their water crisis. There will be no one solution to this immense problem. Rather many small scale solutions will ultimately help to alleviate China’s water crisis. Moreover, there comes an immense business opportunity attached to their water solution.
Entry Filed under: Pre-Departure, Beijing, China, Misc.
8 Comments Add your own
1. Lee Smith | March 15th, 2007 at 10:30 am
It is never an easy thing forcing nature to bend in ways it was not intended. Luckily for the United States cities like LA and Las Vegas grew slowly enough to let the infrastructure grow along with them. That’s all changing now. Like China, no matter how many canals or pipelines are built the resource is just not there.
The article entitled, China taps into foreign water solutions, talks about how China will be utilizing foreign knowledge to help them solve there water issues. Because of this investment some very interesting technology could be coming out of China in the coming years. California has a great opportunity to get on board with this technology and improve its own infrastructure.
2. Adib Assassi | March 18th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
This is a major problem for China but it seems like they’re on the right track. They obviously recognize the problem and are working on solutions. It doesn’t seem like the issue is so much lack of water as it is the contamination of the water that they do have.
China has been emphasizing economic growth at any cost for many years and as a result has experienced this growth. But this growth has come at the cost of polluting the water and rest of the environment. Now that China has resources it can maintain this growth and protect its environmental resources at the same time. If it begins to enact and enforce laws to prevnent companies’ pollution emissions, I think this will go a long way. This will also allow China to develop its infrastructure in the meantime.
3. Andrew Gardner | March 20th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Steve, you mentioned that the higher water prices are already causing rural farmers to cut back on their water usage. While this is a great way to limit the use of water, it feeds into another major problem in China, food! As water prices continue to increase, farmers will apply less and less water (think marginal input costs and the law of diminishing returns). This will decrease yields per acre and the total food available to feed its citizens.
As China attempts to solve its water crisis, it needs to find a way to keep water available and cheap for its farmers. Otherwise the country could find itself without water and food!
4. Jared Samarin | March 22nd, 2007 at 6:35 pm
I would have to agree with both Andrew and Lee on this topic. China has not spent nearly enough on infrastructure to both deliver water and treat it before the rapid growth. In California the Central Valley was a lake and a deaert before the 1930’s and the Central Valley Water Project. I would look for countries like Israel and the United States to take leading roles in the development of water menagement solutions for the Chinese. Although I would say that if California is not careful we will soon find ourselves in the same boat (no pun intended) as the Chinese.
5. Eric Cole | March 23rd, 2007 at 1:16 am
A recent article I read discussed the necessity of another Manhattan Project type program to be undertaken. They weren’t discussing the need for another weapon of destruction, but instead, for the need to assemble a group of the brightest minds to come up with a radically different form of energy to supplant our dependence on oil. A Presidentially mandated venture could operate outside the purview of special interests, tasked solely with the responsibility of discovery. This could be similarly applied to the acquisition of water. The advantage of approaching the problem in this manner is that while they could end up just inventing a more efficient process of desalination, they could also come up with something that is beyond the realm of our imagination. Especially in China, with such a growing proportion of the population studying at universities, assembling a group of brilliant thinkers could quite easily be done and from there, the possibilities are endless.
6. Fatih Sunor | March 23rd, 2007 at 11:51 am
China is considered as an investment paradise with limited or no regulations on environmental issues. Steve, the article you have chosen asked me to consider the financial dimension of environmental pollution. The US$64 billion economic losses caused by pollution in 2004 is a very important signal of discontinuity of economic growth. As discussed in the documentary “China rises” although limited regulations on enironmental issues attract investors, obviously it kills certain industries like river fishing and as Andrew mentioned results in reduced efficiency in farming. China definitelly should cut the water consumption and invest in water reuse facilities to assure a sustainable growth.
7. Katie Hofman | March 23rd, 2007 at 3:56 pm
“Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink” is what comes to mind when I think of China and their impending water crisis. Here is a large country with rivers, oceans and seas available to them, yet are finding it hard to hydrate their people and their crops. Many others who have commented on this post hit at the same point I will, which is that there needs to be a paradoxical shift in the infrastructure in order for China to be sustainable in the future. Prices are one thing, education is another area. What are other solutions? What about incentive programs to reduce pollution? Increased money for water treatment facilities? The list is limitless of what could be done. The main point being, something needs to be done. Unfortunately, it almost seems like the two goals of the Chinese government are in competition with each other, those goals being environmental sustainability and economic growth. As they turn a blind eye on the pollution that certain industries are releasing into the environment they are growing in one area while harming another. It isn’t until all of these issues are raised and grand shifts in the way things are done there that their water concerns will be alleviated.
8. nanheyangrouchuan | March 28th, 2007 at 9:41 am
China’s biggest environmental problem is lack of consistent and stringent law enforcement. Natural processes/organisms can absorb surprising amounts of pollution as long as it is not overwhelmed.
Despite 150 years of hard lessons by the West, China considers advice from the EPA and its EU counterpart to be “lecturing” and “looking down”. China is the only country allowed to lecture others as it is the center of the world and the guardian of the gates of heaven.
China does buy alot of technology, but most of that technology remains either uninstalled or bypassed (to save money on salaries for technicians and engineers, as well as equipment maintenance). What most Chinese companies do with the pollution control techology is reverse engineer it for sale to poorer countries.
China has commissioned quite a few water treatment plants, but most sit idle as they have a mandate to be profitbale and the best way to be profitable is not to turn on the power.
China’s north-south water diversion is just taking heavily polluted water from the Yangtze and moving it north. So people in the north may have more water, but it will be pretty much unusable.
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