China taps into foreign water
solutions By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - As the World Water Congress
meets this week in Asia for the first time, the
choice of the Chinese capital couldn't be more
appropriate. The 1.3 billion people of the world's
most populous country have at their disposal only
a quarter of the water per person that is
available on average around the world.
But
China's water woes go far beyond the scarcity of
water resources. Pollution has left nearly half of
the water in the country's rivers suitable only
for agricultural and industrial use, making fresh
drinking water a luxury for many of China's 800
million peasants.
It
has cost China about US$136 billion, close to 7%
of its gross domestic product, to clean up all the
pollution pumped into the country's environment in
2004 alone. Most of that money has to be put
toward water pollution, the State Environmental
Protection Administration (SEPA) announced.
"These are figures that are extremely
alarming and show that the environmental situation
is very serious," Pan Yue, head of the national
environmental protection watchdog, said in the
SEPA report, released on Thursday.
China
is looking to the fifth World Water Congress, held
in Beijing this Sunday to Thursday, , to tap the
latest technology and attract more foreign
participation in its water industry. Foreign
investment in the water sector currently accounts
for only 10% of the total, but Beijing hopes to
raise this drastically.
More than 2,000
water experts and government officials from
various countries and international organizations
were expected to attend the congress.
The
forum will provide a "valuable platform to bring
in advanced ideas, technologies and experiences in
the water sector", Qiu Baoxing, vice minister of
construction, told a news briefing. "It will
benefit both China and the world."
Qiu
said China hopes to get expertise on how to deal
with the acute shortage of water resources and its
ever increasing water demand. "China is at the
crossroads in dealing with water problems," he
declared.
Nearly three decades of
breakneck economic growth, with little attention
paid to ecological degradation, has taken its toll
on the country's meager water resources - already
strained by rapid urbanization and population
growth.
Currently, 312 million Chinese
villagers are facing water shortages and unsafe
water supplies that have been contaminated with
fluorine, arsenic, high levels of salt or other
industrial pollutants, Minister of Water Resources
Wang Shucheng told the state news agency Xinhua.
China's urban water environment is
worsening too. About 400 of China's 600-odd cities
are short of water, according to the Water
Ministry. In Beijing and some 100 other cities,
the shortages are deemed "extreme".
If
left untackled, in 2008 - the year Beijing plays
host to the Summer Olympic Games - the water
crisis would leave the Chinese capital short by as
much as 1.1 billion cubic meters of water, the
ministry predicts.
Water scarcity
threatens China's food security as well. A
persistent drought this summer has affected the
lives of 17 million people in central and
southwestern China and has caused crops to dry up
in the fields.
"Overall, some 10% of
China's grain harvest is being produced by
overpumping of water, which means it is not
sustainable," said environmentalist Lester Brown,
director of the US-based Earth Policy Institute.
Despite the seriousness of the crisis,
Chinese leaders have shied away from raising water
prices to promote water conservation. Experts say
current prices are not high enough to make farmers
conserve water.
"Raising water prices is
not the right option for China because rural
incomes are not high," Qiu asserted.
As
rural areas have fallen behind the cities in their
development, public resentment and social unrest
have become some of the main worries for the
government in the countryside.
Protests
against polluting industries and lack of water
have become a common sight in villages across
China, as the environment has all too often been
sacrificed in the pursuit of profit.
Rather than risk social unrest by raising
water prices significantly, Beijing has announced
that it will spend about 1 trillion yuan ($125
billion) over the next five years to improve urban
water security and build sewage-treatment systems.
Another $5 billion is allocated to improve the
water supply in rural areas.
Wang vowed
that by 2015 all the 300 million peasants who
currently lack clean drinking water would be
provided with safe, potable water. Wang said China
is likely to exceed by far its United Nations
Millennium Development Goal, which is to reduce by
half the number of people without sustainable
access to safe drinking water by 2015.
But
an editorial in the official China Daily warned
that all the government investment will not be
enough to solve China's water crisis if promises
to clean up the country's filthy rivers are not
followed by concrete action.
"The wish
list the Ministry of Water Resources has delivered
for rural residents without access to safe
drinking water is a proper commitment," it said.
"But it is one thing to put a target on a wish
list. Achieving it is a challenge of a different
order of magnitude."
