{"id":2656,"date":"2015-01-29T14:45:18","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T19:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/despacio.org\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2015-01-29T14:45:18","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T19:45:18","slug":"drought-and-urban-development-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/2015\/01\/29\/drought-and-urban-development-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought and Urban Development (II)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week’s post<\/a> looked at the ongoing drought in the Southwestern United States.\u00a0Residential sprawl there has led to tremendous\u00a0water waste and the depletion of the Colorado River basin\u00a0through damming and irrigation. Now we turn to more extreme feats of civil engineering in northern China.<\/p>\n

Part II: Northern China<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"El<\/a>

The Hai River in Tianjin. The river basin also houses Beijing. The two cities have a combined population of over 30 million.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The North and Northeast Plains of China are experiencing their worst drought in 60 years<\/a>, which has already cost farmers $1.2 billion in losses.\u00a0The North China Plain is one of the densest and most populous regions in the world, home to Beijing and Tianjin, China\u2019s second and fourth largest cities, as well as\u00a0more than twenty cities<\/a> with over a million inhabitants.\u00a0A population this size requires an enormous water supply for domestic, industrial and agricultural uses. China possesses one of the largest amounts of internal renewable water resources in the world but these are not distributed evenly within the country. Northern China contains only about one-fifth of the country\u2019s surface water<\/a> and in some parts, per capita renewable water resources are as low as 500 m3<\/sup>, less than one-tenth of the global average.\u00a0Despite this shortage, domestic water waste in cities is a major problem\u2014in part due to the same sprawl factors affecting the Southwestern U.S.\u2014 but given that 70% of the region\u2019s water usage<\/a> comes from agriculture, urban wastefulness is clearly not the main culprit.<\/p>\n

To meet the demands of a growing population, it is estimated that China must increase total agricultural production 30% by 2030<\/a>, requiring an even greater water supply.The dry northern plains contain 65% of the country\u2019s cultivated land and produce half of its grain. As in the U.S. Southwest, the chronic imbalance of productive demands and water supply has led to massive irrigation projects and groundwater mining. In some parts of Northern China, around two-thirds<\/a> of water withdrawal comes from aquifers.\u00a0Extraction from the Hai River Basin, which houses both Beijing and Tianjin, has caused its\u00a0aquifers\u00a0to decline at a rate of up to 8.8 km3 <\/sup><\/a>per year.\u00a0To address the chronic problem of water scarcity, the Chinese government has begun construction on the North-South Water Diversion Project<\/a>. It entails around 2,400 kilometers of canals to bring water from the water-rich south of the country to the drier north, the largest such project in world history.\u00a0In addition to the construction costs\u2014one estimate put it at $62 billion<\/a>\u2014and the displacement of up to half a million people living near construction zones, there are concerns about this megaproject\u2019s effect <\/a>on southern China\u2019s aquifers and watersheds.\u00a0Notably, the\u00a0Chinese government has indicated their intention to use the North-South diversion project to stimulate coal-fired electrical plants<\/a> in the North, which would actually compete with farmers for water.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the whole project temporarily averts the larger problem of unsustainable water use\u00a0by agriculture and industry. And as population, economy and industry continue to grow in Northern China, this postponement may not last long.\u00a0One part of the problem is inefficiency. Chinese irrigation systems and industrial processes are relatively inefficient when compared to other countries, leading to low agricultural productivity of\u00a0$3.6 per cubic meter<\/a>\u00a0of water and tremendous waste.\u00a0The Economist<\/em><\/a>\u00a0has criticized China\u2019s heavy subsidies of water as the main cause of this inefficiency, arguing that there is no incentive to consume wisely.\u00a0This may be true but raising prices to market levels could also lead to unequal water access, allowing wealthier families and farms to waste water while poorer ones go without. Perhaps the bigger problem lies in the water supply. China\u2019s major rivers are so polluted that\u00a080% of them do not support fish<\/a>\u00a0and only\u00a03% of cities have clean groundwater<\/a>.\u00a0The pollution of surface water caused by pesticides, fertilizers, industrial waste and improperly-treated wastewater leads to unsustainable groundwater extraction.<\/p>\n

As water resources dwindle in the North, the Chinese government is gambling on a costly water diversion project that will harm\u00a0southern ecosystems and communities rather than addressing one of the root causes of scarcity. Pollution on this scale drastically limits the usable water supply. Civil engineering\u00a0and liberalizing the water market\u00a0will not change this fundamental fact.<\/p>\n

Next week: <\/strong>One of Colombia’s largest coal mines uses\u00a017 million liters of water each day while the region’s inhabitants try to survive on less than one.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week’s post looked at the ongoing drought in the Southwestern United States.\u00a0Residential sprawl there has led to tremendous\u00a0water waste and the depletion of the Colorado River basin\u00a0through damming and irrigation. Now we turn to more extreme feats of civil engineering in northern China. Part II: Northern China<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/despacio.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}