Along with its rapid economic development and rising water demand in the past few decades, China has also been experiencing increasingly severe water scarcity. The overexploitation of both surface water and groundwater resources has led to serious, often irreversible, environmental consequences including salt water intrusion, ground subsidence, and ecological degradation. In addition, as we have seen in recent reports from the Southern China drought, pollution often makes already scarce water resources unfit for consumptions and even agricultural use.  In recent years, China’s water demand and the growing concern of water scarcity has been covered by major media including the New York Times and the Economist.

Major concern is that coupled with the increasing urbanization, China’s farmlands will not be able to support the country’s population and unmet industrial demand for water will slow GDP growth. According to a 2002 World Bank report, since the 1980’s China has been experiencing water shortages of increasing severity in the areas of urban industry, domestic consumption and irrigated agriculture. In 2007, China’s Ministry of Water Resources reported that total national water deficit is estimated to be 30-40 billion cubic meters per year, and even more during drought years. Because of insufficient surface water resources, and because groundwater is generally less susceptible to contamination than surface water, groundwater extraction in many areas of China has become a main source of water resources. Unfortunately, because the recharge rates of such sources is also much slower (often deep aquifers have recharge rates are on the order of thousands of years), extraction rates have exceeded recharge rates. Depletion of groundwater resources has led to a continuous water table decline of 0.5 meters per year. It is reported that since 1960, water table declines have reached 40 meters for shallow groundwater and more than 40 meters for deep aquifers. The lowering of the water table and decline in soil pore pressure has led to irreversible ground subsidence. Areas around Beijing have been reported to land subsidences of up to several meters.

Surprisingly, China is estimated to rank fifth in the world for renewable water resources after Brazil, Russia, Canada and Indonesia. According to sources, the spatial and temporal distribution of renewable water resources and their inefficient management, pollution, as well as increasing per capita water demand are the major causes for severe water shortages in many areas. For example, northeastern China, which is known as China’s breadbasket, accounts for two-thirds of the nation’s farmland, but has only one-fifth of the country’s water resources. Also in northern China, 78% of surface water bodies in the Hai River Basin, to which Beijing and Tianjin, and Hebei Province belong, have been classified as “poor”, unfit for drinking and recreational use. Thus, the spatial distribution of water resources and poor water quality mutually exacerbate the situation in northern China.

In the past, water resource management in China has been predominantly supply-driven, meaning that few limitations were placed upon water usage and demand, and large engineering projects, such as the South-North Water Diversion Project, were implemented to meet those demands. This imbalance between supply and demand regulation led to an inefficient industrial and agricultural structure and water use. The Chinese Academy of Science reported in 2007 that China’s water use for industry-added value was 5-10 times the levels of developed countries and that industrial water recycling was only half of that of developed countries. Other reports indicated that only half the amount of water diverted by canals for irrigation actually delivered to the field and that only 40% of groundwater extracted for irrigation was actually used on crops.

In 2009 however, the New Scientist reported that Water Resources Minister Lei Chen that by 2020, China would cut the amount of water needed to produce each dollar of GDP by 60% by placing more restrictions on water demand. Such action would work towards China’s supply-driven strategy in battling water scarcity.

By improving regulation and management of water resources, China will be more in a better position to deal with the rising demand of water resources, a growing population,  and rising GDP. However, such regulation must be supported by a holistic infrastructure institutional systems including legislature, governing bodies, monitoring, , non-profits, and academia.

Posted in China, Drought, Water management, Water Resources | 7 Comments »

7 Responses to “Water Scarcity in China—Addessing a problem of quantity, quality and management”

1. Sophia says:

   May 20, 2010 at 7:38 am

   Hey thanks for the post. I have a few questions.
   1.I was just wondering what types of water demand management policies are being promoted currently to deal with the expected shortages on the national level?
   2. What types of partnerships exist between government-NGOs-academic institutions to address these issues?
   3. And, what kind of dialogue has there been around big dam projects? I know the Three Gorges Dam was very controversial for a number of reasons, but it seems like there are more big projects underway or being proposed. How are the “pros and cons” being weighed?

   Reply
   • Veronica Lim says:

     May 20, 2010 at 7:29 pm

     Hello! To answer your questions,
     1. Demand management policies are any policies that are implemented to influence the way individuals or industry use water. In China, this has be done (to varying degrees) through water pricing, domestic wastewater recycling, water pressure reductions, plumbing codes, industrial and agricultural water quotas and restrictions, and education programs.

     2. In general, the structure of environmental regulation– from the research that goes into making policy, to the passing of policy, to the implementation of the policy and adopting appropriate measures to monitor and meet standards– is looser than it is in many western countries. Within just governmental agencies, sometimes the distinctions between responsibilities can be hazy. Also, because the environmental services/consulting industry is not as developed, academic institutions often work directly with government and industry to propose both regulatory solutions and the technological solutions to meet them. To my knowledge, NGOs play a relatively small part in the national picture, but can make big differences in education and awareness on the local level.

     3. Currently, a major mentality for remediating environmental issues in China, is that a “treatment” should be added to fix the problem, instead of perhaps working in other ways to either avoid the problem altogether or to think of alternative solutions. Large projects like the Three Gorges Dam and the South North Water Diversion Project, and even undertakings like treating the polluted water of Taihu Lake all reflect this mentality. Instead of seeking holistic and integrated management processes to fit local needs, large national projects are adopted in attempt to solve as much of the problem as possible in one shot. Not only are the actual outcomes of such large projects scientifically debatable (is the dam structurally sound? will pollution increase due to slower flow rates? will it cause earthquakes? what will be done with the massive amount of accumulated sediment in the dam?), because of their overarching regional nature, they may also ignore unique local attributes (could flooding have been prevented in these cities by utilizing local hydrogeological features? what will happen to local cultures, wildlife and industry?). To put it shortly, large projects are designed to be a kind of panacea to a problem that spans a large geographic area, but they ignore local concerns and may cause very large ecological stressors because of their shear size and because such large project are often not well intregrated into the natural environment and do not make use of natural processes.

     Reply
2. Vvin says:

   May 23, 2010 at 6:22 pm

   Great information. What’s your thought on Singapore’s water management? Can China follow the same model? Would it be effective in China? Thanks.

   Reply
   • Veronica Lim says:

     May 26, 2010 at 12:19 am

     Hello,
     Currently Singapore relies heavily on water imports from Malaysia. (See Water of Blue report here). Since 2003, the country has been building facilities to utilize reclaimed treated wastewater. The water gets remixed with reservoir water before entering the water supply system. Recently, there also has been news that Singpore wants to end its reliance on Malaysian water supply by adding desalination plants to supplement its domestic water supply.

     Desalination is a very costly procedure, even more so than importing water from other places (depending on where you import from). Considering that China is such a large country with huge water demand and with many of its water-scarce areas located in areas not suitable for desalination, this would probably not be a good solution.

     The use of reclaimed water, however, is probably a good idea for China’s water future. Currently however, the quality of effluent from wastewater treatment plants is not fit for human contact. Currently more cities are adopting man-made wetland facilities to further remove nutrients from reclaimed water effluent. After flowing through the wetlands, water can reach a level suitable for agricultural or recreational use (by China’s surface water standards). After it reaches this standard, it can also be directed to infiltrate groundwater supplies. The process of infiltration will furthur increase the quality of the water, perhaps making it suitable as a potable water source.

     These current methods combine reclaimed wastewater with furthur treatments and natural process. In areas suitable for installing such facilities, such a holistic plan that incorporates the entire hydological cycle is beneficial as an economic and natural approach. While the process is not as “direct” as Singapore’s (almost) complete reuse of treated wastewater, it fits China’s national situation (huge population, lower state of economic development than Singapore, hydrogeologic characteristics etc).

     Reply
3. Vivian says:

   May 29, 2010 at 10:44 pm

   Thank you. This is most helpful.

   Reply
4. Huck Rorick says:

   August 4, 2010 at 2:01 pm

   Your articles and answers are very interesting.

   In a 2001 article, Lester Brown (Earth Policy Institute) said
   “…the Hai River basin, which has over 100 million people and includes Beijing and Tianjin, both large industrial cities. Water use in the basin currently totals 55 billion cubic meters annually, while the sustainable supply totals only 34 billion cubic meters. This annual deficit of 21 billion cubic meters is being satisfied largely by groundwater mining-by overpumping. Once the aquifer is depleted, water pumping will necessarily drop to the sustainable yield, cutting the water supply by nearly 40 percent. Given rapid urban and industrial growth in the area, irrigated agriculture in the basin could largely disappear by 2010, forcing a shift back to less productive rainfed agriculture.”

   Do you know what has happened with water supply and use since then?
   Has any of Lester’s suggested problem come to pass?

   (Parenthetically, do you know how the sustainable water supply is calculated for this basin? What annual rainfall is?)

   I am currently working on designs for sustainable communities in China. One of the elements we are working on with some intensity is water with an eye to recycling, reuse, reclamation of water & fertilizer resources in sewage, … and more.

   Huck Rorick
   http://www.groundwork.org

   Reply
5. Huck Rorick says:

   August 4, 2010 at 2:02 pm

   P.S.
   Is there any way for me to get email notification of a reply?

   Reply