DRY AS A BONE: Children play on a dried-out pond in a village in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, hit by severe drought this summer
　　
　　At a news briefing ahead of the World Water Congress and Exhibition in Beijing, scheduled to begin September 10, Acting Chairman of the Organizing Committee and Vice Minister of Construction Qiu Baoxing delivered a statement that cut to the heart of the problem: “Shortage and pollution of water resources have become an essential factor affecting China’s sustainable development.”
　　Water has long been considered an inexhaustible resource. But China is facing an unmistakable water crisis, and recently, because of increasingly hard-to-miss symptoms of the shortage, people in all parts of society are beginning to realize just how precious a commodity water really is.
　　At first glance, it seems like there should be enough: China’s total supply of freshwater resources ranks sixth in the world, after Brazil, Russia, Canada, the United States and Indonesia. But despite this apparent advantage, China’s per capita water resources fall far below the world average of 7,600 cubic meters per-capita due to the country’s enormous population size. China’s per-capita amount of 2,200 cubic meters is expected to decrease further as the country continues its rapid economic growth and population expansion.
　　“Without excessively exploiting underground water, China has a water gap of nearly 40 billion cubic meters. The country’s 320 million rural people aren’t able to drink safe water and over 400 cities don’t have sufficient water supply, 110 of which face a serious shortage,” Wang Shucheng, Minister of Water Resources, said recently.
　　Some water resources experts warn that the current shortage is no more than a warning signal, with a greater crisis yet to come. The Ministry of Water Resources issued a water crisis warning as early as November 2001. At the time it said that when the Chinese population peaks at 1.6 billion in 2030, China’s per-capita water resources could fall to 1,700 cubic meters, the internationally acknowledged level below which an area is said to be experiencing “water stress.”
　　
　　Poor natural conditions
　　
　　Scant water resources to slake the thirsts of a population of 1.3 billion, and the uneven geographical distribution of these resources, form the basis of water conditions in China.
　　Affected by monsoons, China’s precipitation varies considerably among different seasons. The time of precipitation overlaps with the hottest seasons, mostly in summer and autumn and scarcely in winter and spring. Generally, regions with the lowest precipitation levels receive it concentratedly only at certain times of the year, which easily gives rise to drought in spring and flooding in summer. Meanwhile, two thirds of China’s water resources is comprised of runoff flooding, which means rivers often flood in the rainy season and dry up at other times.
　　China’s water resources are also distributed geographically unevenly, inconsistent with the distribution of land, mineral resources and productivity. Generally, water resources are concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the country, and in mountainous areas. Annual precipitation amounts vary from more than 3,000 millimeters in the southeast to less than 50 millimeters in the northwest. 　　China is prone to floods and droughts, such as the severe drought that hit Chongqing and Sichuan in southwest China this summer, the country’s worst in 50 years. While per-capita water resources in some areas of the north approach the level of the driest countries in the world, the water-rich south often suffers from seasonal droughts, which adversely affects rice, the major crop reliant on watering, as well as other cash crops. The last two decades have seen a nominal change in the country’s surface water resources and total water resources. Yet due to factors such as global climate change and river drainage, and total water resources in south China are rising while water resources in the north are falling significantly.
　　Against these difficult conditions, the Chinese Government has taken a series of measures to try and guarantee the basic water demands necessary for daily life and social and economic development. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the state has built a total of 85,000 reservoirs, with a total reserve capacity of over 500 billion cubic meters.
　　Recently the government began to restore the longest canal in the world, built 1,400 years ago. The Grand Canal, which starts from the northern end of Beijing and ends in the southeastern city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai, still runs today for 1,794 kilometers.
　　As well, the government has initiated a plan to build new canals to channel water from south to north, though the project also involves land requisition and the resettlement of people living along some parts of the proposed canals. The south to north water transfer project, China’s largest ever water project, involves an estimated investment of 500 billion yuan and proposes to move 44 billion cubic meters of water per year through three transfer canals, from the Yangtze River Basin to north China.
　　
　　Serious waste
　　
　　For a long time, the phenomena of serious water shortage and low efficiency in water usage, or even waste of water, have coexisted in China.
　　In terms of efficiency of water usage in agriculture, China’s average grain output per cubic meter of irrigation water is about 1 kilogram while that of advanced countries is 2.5 to 3 kilograms. For the time being, the majority of China’s farmland is continuing to adopt the old method of flood irrigation. The amount of farmland using water conservation technologies in irrigation accounts for just 35 percent of the effectively irrigated farmland, as compared to over 80 percent in some developed countries.
　　In terms of water efficiency in industry, the major problem is a low recycling rate. Statistics from 2004 show that China’s water consumption per 10,000 yuan worth of GDP was 399 cubic meters, four times the world average level and eight times that of industrialized countries; for 10,000 yuan worth of added industrial value, China’s water consumption was 196 cubic meters and China’s recycling rate of industrial water was between 60 to 65 percent, while the figures for industrialized countries were below 50 cubic meters and 80 to 85 percent respectively. 　　The waste of water is particularly serious in people’s daily lives. A large amount of urban wastewater from washing cars, watering grass or washing hair in salons flows away without recycling. According to rough estimates, 20 percent of China’s urban tap water leaks due to aging pipes, which is more than double the amount in cities of developed countries. More and more Chinese people are drinking purified water instead of boiled tap water out of health concerns or for the sake of convenience. But few people know that some purified water manufacturers use outdated equipment and technology, meaning that only 1 ton of purified water is produced from 3 to 4 tons of source water.
　　Besides water waste, overuse of water is also exerting strains on resources. Some regions in northern China are actually using water required by the natural environment and ecological systems to sustain social and economic development. The number of cities and well irrigation areas in the countryside, which excessively exploit ground water, has grown from 56 at the beginning of the 1980s to more than 160 at present. The area of overuse has grown from 87,000 square kilometers to over 180,000 square kilometers, resulting in ecological disasters such as ground sinkage, water hardening and backflow of seawater.
　　
　　Creating a water-saving society
　　
　　Facing the harsh reality of the country’s water situation, some Chinese cities have strived to conserve water. Cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao have built several model projects of producing renewed water from urban sewage, laying the foundation for promoting the production and use of renewed water in China.
　　“If further efforts in conserving water are made and one third of the water consumed by cities is recycled and reused, the amount saved would equal the total water amount of the newly built canal,” said Qiu Baoxing, Vice Minister of Construction.
　　Li Lifeng is the director of the fresh water project for the Beijing office of World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a global environmental conservation organization. He thinks China still needs to overthrow the traditional project-oriented management and usage models of water resources, implement measures of low-pollution production and ways of building a water-saving society, as well as take advantage of the ecological system in holding and cleansing water and preventing flooding.
　　Minister of Water Resources Wang Shucheng pointed out, “Building a water-conserving society, which consists of water conservation campaigns and enhancement of efficiency of water resources, is indispensable in guaranteeing China’s sustainable development.”
　　He explained that the efforts to build a water-conserving society go beyond promoting the conservation of water. Wang said that different from the traditional water conservation campaigns that focused mostly on water-saving projects, equipment and technologies and relied essentially on government’s administrative means, building a water-conserving society mainly requires the formulation of mechanisms and economic incentives. He noted that through influencing the production process, China’s economic growth mode could be transformed and the country put on a path of resources-friendly and environment-friendly development. 　　Wang said the goal of building a water-conserving society will be achieved by following several steps; most importantly, further clarifying water ownership and usage rights. In China, the state controls the water. The Central Government is supposed to clarify water usage rights and grant them to different regions and government branches through legal procedures.
　　“There should be one macro quota system and one micro quota system,” said Wang. He elaborated that the macro quota system defines the water usage quota for a region, an industry, a company or an irrigation area while the micro quota system regulates water usage per unit of product or service.
　　He added that a host of legal, engineering, economic, administrative means should be comprehensively adopted to guarantee the realization of those quotas. “Economic incentives should be developed and used to promote water conservation,” he said. “In particular, a scientific pricing mechanism of water should be designed, including charging a punitive rate for consumption beyond quota, awarding water-efficient clients and promoting trade of water quotas.”
　　Meanwhile, government agencies have steadily ratcheted up the price of water, so as to encourage conservation and to compensate for the cost of wastewater recycling. “The government will raise the price of water for industrial use and give discounts to companies that treat the wastewater before discharging it,” said Qiu, the Vice Minister of Construction. The new pricing scheme will be launched at the end of this year or beginning of the next year, according to him.
　　“One effort to optimize allocation of water resources is to activate the market of water rights, where water rights could be transferred commercially,” said Wang. He said companies that use others’ water quotas must pay compensation while companies also could profit from selling their water rights. “The trade of water rights will stimulate enthusiasm in water conservation and water consumption will thus gravitate to areas of higher profitability and higher efficiency,” Wang said.
　　According to the plan, by 2010 water consumption per 10,000 yuan worth of GDP will tumble by over 6 percent. Agricultural irrigation water will realize zero growth. Water consumption per 10,000 yuan worth of added industrial value will plunge from 173 cubic meters to 120 cubic meters; water efficiency of service industries will approach the world advanced level.
　　Wang also noted the construction of a water-conserving society encourages the participation of the public in different forms so that stakeholders could intensively take part in the formulation and implementation of policies, such as setting up associations of clients, allocation of water rights and formulation of water price.
　　“The major task of building a water-conserving society is the institution of three systems respectively in charge of management of water resources, trade of water rights and water-conservation projects and device,” he said. “The next 15 years is the key period of building a water-saving society.”

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