Is the liquid gold of the future not the poisonous sheen of oil but instead the promise of pure, potable water? Much of the world currently faces water scarcity to some degree – in fact, one out three1 people worldwide – and with the uncertainties of the future, such as climate change, urbanization, and the ever-growing population, the possibility that water shortage will be exacerbated into a crisis is real. This week, we discussed China’s water resource situation in depth. China is potentially “ahead of the game” when it comes to a water crisis: some have been hailing the water resource situation of Northern China as a serious problem since the 1990’s. “Water scarcity” is defined as less than 1000m3/year per capita; Northern China has barely 757m3/year per capita, and in some parts, as low as 300m3/year per capita. However, the true scarcity of China’s water resources is reflected by more than these numbers. Other factors affect the water that is truly available for human usage: water quality, access to water, rights to water, et cetera.
In class, we examined both some of these drivers of scarcity and the effects that they are having in China. For my presentation, I tried to categorize the drivers into primarily into natural and human-related. I believe that there are several ultimate human-related drivers: economic growth, population growth, industrialization, and urbanization. These lead to the prominent proximate driver: increased demand for water. Poor management, or ineffective management is another human-related factor driving the scarcity of water in China that is extremely important and perhaps in a classification all of its own. Despite this attempt to separate causes, I find that the interactions of the effects start to make it a superfluous exercise. Natural drivers of scarcity include the natural distribution and availability of water across the geographic landscape in China, which is extremely variable in both time and space. China includes both deserts and areas of high rainfall as well as being subject monsoon periodicities on both annual and interannual time scales. Yet these natural cycles are changing. The very recent Piao et al (2010) article in Nature that we read attempted to predict the future of the water availability for China’s future in a warming climate. I was disappointed by the lack of conclusive statements that they made, yet skeptical that they could draft any reasonable predictions, given the ways that the Chinese are currently altering the natural hydrology of their landscape. We have talked about a few examples of this: the 3 Gorges Dam, groundwater withdrawal compacting aquifers, even the South-to-North transfer of water or the city of Harbin seeking a new water source geographically farther away than the Songhua river. All of these complicate the predictions of how water will be available across China.
Considering the complications involved with sorting out causes, I will turn instead towards our discussion of potential solutions. How is China going to move towards a future of water management? Some things about the Chinese water resources have changed in ways that may be irreversible, such as the construction of the 3 Gorges Dam, and what is actually important is now how China proceeds forward. The World Bank proposes that China’s government performs an extensive overhaul on the management system and philosophy within the country. Water governance, like other environmental policy, is decided on national levels and left to local bodies to be implemented and enforced. However, a single water source may end up under the jurisdiction of multiple ministerial bodies. Clearing up the bureaucratic uncertainties with a more streamlined protocol would improve the ability of China’s government to meet its goals regarding water management. Additionally, the current spatial scale of administration may be inappropriate and more consideration of river-basin scale management is required. These suggestions from the World Bank are easy for us to agree with. However, other suggestions offered for improvement are more controversial. Is a water privatization system (as proposed by the World Bank) the best way to proceed to increase efficiency of water usages, decrease demand, encourage improvements of water-related infrastructure and reduce pollution? Or can the Chinese government make better choices with enforcement of the current system of “command-and-control”?
Unfortunately, our class is far from having the answers to the above questions. Instead, our limited discussions of national problems and policies as well as the case studies that we broached have only just gotten our feet wet, so to speak. Wumeng’s current event topic today, pollution in the Songhua river, was an excellent way to review many of the issues we discussed yesterday. The Songhua river is the major water source of three northern provinces in China, yet pollution has been making it a less available water resource. In class, we watched a CCTV news report on the issue and how, despite the severity, the government was stepping in to fix it. Not only is greater pollution of small (likely TVE) industries going to be curbed, but the city of Harbin is creating access to a purer, but more remote water source. Fixes that, looking at the state of the river and the drinking water supply today, have not been as successful as the government or the people would have hoped for. Additionally, this issue brushed upon the international affairs associated with water politics as the Songhua river leads into Russian territory. Clearly, the current methods are not as effective as they need to be to really solve these problems and change is required. But to what extent should China maintain its’ strong governmental control and to what extent should it allow other forces, such as NGO’s or market-based strategies, to enact change?
1 World Health Organization. Accessed Oct 19, 2010. http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/water/water_facts/en/index.html
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