As rivers run dry and fields turn to dust, China has announced dramatic plans to cut water use by industry and agriculture.

Water resources minister Chen Lei said it would cut the amount of water needed to produce each dollar of GDP by 60% by 2020. With the economy on course to grow by 60% by then, that effectively means it wants to consume no more water then than today.

The announcement suggests that the government has finally decided that it cannot rely on “supply-side” solutions to water shortages, like the $60-billion south-north water transfer scheme, which is aimed at watering the arid north with water from the giant Yangtze river in the south.

It comes after China’s worst drought in half a century, and increased water shortages caused by industrial pollution that makes river water unfit for drinking, even after treatment.


Official statistics show the country’s urban supply systems and irrigation networks currently lack, on average, 40 cubic kilometres of water a year – not much less than the entire flow of the Yellow River.

The problems are worst in the north, the country’s traditional breadbasket, which has two-thirds of its farmland but only a fifth of its water. Heavy extraction has reduced the Yellow River to a trickle most years.

China’s biggest need is to reduce water use for growing food. The country’s notoriously inefficient farms use two-thirds of the country’s water supplies.

According to Junguo Liu of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, the Chinese pump around 1200 cubic kilometres of water from rivers and underground aquifers to irrigate fields each year.

Unless efficiency is improved, he predicts that figure will rise by a quarter by 2020 as meat demand grows. Meat requires more water to grow than traditional vegetables and cereals.