The daunting challenge of water scarcity and pollution in China

October 5th, 2015

Dr. James Horne, Australian National University, Australia

China’s rapid economic development of the past 30 years has taken a massive toll on water availability, water quality and the environment.

Chinese annual water use is currently over 600,000 GL (over 70 per cent of available water resources), or some 26 times water use in Australia. Water shortages are commonplace in hundreds of China’s cities, particularly in the north.1 Like Australia, around 60 per cent of use is by agriculture. Even more than in Australia, a very large number of China’s rivers and groundwater systems are seriously over used.

According to China Water Risk, the Ministry of Environmental Protection’s 2014 State of the Environment Report suggests water quality is still deteriorating, with groundwater supplies in over 60 per cent of major cities being classed ‘bad to very bad’ and water quality of a quarter of key rivers unfit for human contact.2

Over the past decade, the importance of sustainable water use and water quality to Chinese economic and health outcomes has become crystal clear, and it is now a very high priority of the Chinese government.

The 2010 National Water Resource Master Plan caps national water use at 670,000 GL for 2020 and at 700,000 GL for 2030. The growth in water use allowed under the target cap in what is an already highly stressed system will exceed Australia’s annual water use!

The State Council’s April 2015 Action Plan for Water Pollution Prevention is the most vigorous plan yet to address water quality issues. It recognises the broad and pernicious adverse impact of water pollution, and seeks to put in place an ambitious program of actions to strengthen the process of cleaning up a deeply degraded water environment.3 The Action Plan details goals and assigns responsibilities for achieving them.

It seeks to reduce the extent of heavily polluted water bodies and to improve drinking water quality in cities. Large ambitious clean up programs will be directed at major industries (including paper making, coking coal production, nitrogen fertilisers, non-ferrous metals, pharmaceuticals, pesticide and tannery production), with ‘sort it out or close’ directives likely. This is obviously a strong measure, illustrating the current conflict between water quality and production.

To take some pressure off existing water supplies, the authorities will continue to seek to improve water use efficiency in irrigated agriculture. They will also seek to improve the reuse of industrial and mining wastewater, and increase the use of desalination technologies. To do this effectively and efficiently will be a huge, complex task. Part of this task will involve a greater role for water pricing within cities, and wastewater charging policies. These are already being ramped up. It seems likely that private capital investment will play a larger role.

The robust action plan set out by the State Council in April will require close coordination among nearly a dozen national Ministries. Strong coordination between national and other levels of government will also be critical to deliver the results sought, as much of policy implementation is delivered by lower levels of government.

Inter-basin transfers4 like the south-north water ‘pipelines’5 that will ultimately move around 40,000 GL annually (around 75 times annual water use in Sydney) from the Yangtze River and its tributaries to northern provinces including the cities of Beijing and Tianjin will help significantly to ameliorate scarcity in that region. The eastern and central routes are now operational – the central route (capacity around 9500 GL) started to deliver water at the end of 2014. The project comes at a capital cost so far of over USD 80 billion, and brings with it new environmental and water availability concerns in the south.6

In the future, large scale water desalination and advanced wastewater treatment plants will play a more important role delivering drinking quality water to northern cities, but the scale of the task will again bring with it extraordinarily large challenges (China currently has over 700 million people living in urban areas, a figure that will continue to grow rapidly over coming years). Improving water use intensity and efficiency in agriculture – particularly in irrigated agriculture – will be critical to allow higher agricultural production alongside reduced water use. Water markets have an increasingly important role to play.

China is at a crossroads with water use and water quality. Even the large deliberate campaign of action currently being carried out will take several decades to fully implement. Persistence with strong compliance and enforcement, concerted coordinated effort by the public sector, major cultural change within the corporate sector and strong leadership from government will be essential to achieve the outcomes China’s increasingly affluent society demands.

References:

For general information regarding water consumption and water quality in China, see Ministry of Water Resources the Peoples Republic of China (2015). Conserving and Protecting Water Resources webpage. Last accessed 21 August, 2015: www.mwr.gov.cn/english/cpws.html China Water Risk (2015). 2014 State of Environment Report Review. China Water Risk. Available at: http://chinawaterrisk.org/resources/analysis-reviews/2014-state-of-environment-report-review. EU – China Environmental Governance Programme (2015). Action Plan for Water Pollution (English Translation). Available at: www.ecegp.com/english/news/shownews.asp?ID=919 Zhao, X., Liu, J., Liu, Q., Tillotson, M., Guanc, D., & Hubacekd, K. (2015). Physical and virtual water transfers for regional water stress alleviation in China. PNAS, 112(4), 1031-1035. China Focus: Yangtze water not a cure-all for Beijing’s thirst. (2014, 12 December). Xinhua. Available at: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/indepth/2014-12/12/c_133851112.htm. Crow-Miller, B. (2014). Diverted opportunity: Inequality and what the South-North Water Transfer Project really means for China. Global Water Forum. https://www.globalwaterforum.org/2014/03/04/diverted-opportunity-inequality-and-what-the-south-north-water-transfer-project-really-means-for-china/

James Horne is a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. His research interests cover public policy in general and water policy in particular. Until 2011, he was Deputy Secretary Water in the Australian Government Department of Sustainability, Environment, Population and Communities.

The views expressed in this article belong to the individual authors and do not represent the views of the Global Water Forum, the UNESCO Chair in Water Economics and Transboundary Water Governance, UNESCO, the Australian National University, or any of the institutions to which the authors are associated. Please see the Global Water Forum terms and conditions here.