Is
China changing its tune? In August
of last year, I discussed water use (and misuse) in China.
Drowning the Dragon
At the time, the Olympics were just
around the corner, and all the preparation and fanfare surrounding the event had
focused on China’s efforts to host a “green Olympics,” but very little
attention—relatively speaking—had been paid to long-term effects of all this
development. Specifically, how the
radical rearrangement of Beijing’s urban landscape was adversely effecting the
country’s water resources. By
rerouting 80 billion gallons of once-rural water into the city, farms and
villages surrounding Beijing were drying up. In order to generate enough supply to
meet demand, the Beijing authorities pushed through several infrastructure
projects—canals, pipes, pumps, you name it—in order to channel as much water as
possible into the city.
I
finished my blog relating a friend’s story about a trip down the Yangtze river
prior to the completion of the Three Gorges Dam (which moved 1.4
million people and flooded a 410-mile-long area in the middle of the
river). Travelling by boat through the heart of
China, my friend described the eerie silence as they floated along a river
hugged on either side by abandoned
villages and cities—all completely silent now that its residents had been
evacuated ahead of the massive flooding that would occur once the dam was
completed. As the river continued
along its stately route, ghost towns, one after the other, dotted the shore.
For
many years, environmentalists and scientists have urged China to take a
different approach, to look beyond large dams and the elaborate rerouting of
natural waterways and, instead, focus on efficiency and conservation. Wouldn’t China’s resources be better
utilized—the
argument goes—by
focusing on water recycling and even desalination. It seems that perhaps the government of
China is ready to listen—that
country’s choices could provide lessons to areas all over the globe that
struggle to deal with diminished supply and expanding
demand.
The
newest projection of China’s agenda involves the construction of three canals
along the Yangtze, in order to divert
thousands of gallons of water over hundreds of miles to Beijing and other
urban areas in the north. The
project is estimated to cost $62 billion and is designed to transfer 12 trillion
gallons a year from the Yangtze to the increasingly urban north. And, like the mass exodus prior to the
Three Gorges Dam, more than 350,000 people living in the cross-hairs of this new
project will be forced to move. The
outcry has, of course, been loud and passionate.
Critics
worry that diverting water of the Yangtze will cause algae blooms, thereby
making the river—already,
by polluted factories—that
much more contaminated. Environmentalists point out that increasing supply to
Beijing and it’s neighbors will only promote waste and inefficiency.
Surprisingly,
government officials seem to have listened to at least some of the
protests. Some parts of the project
have been postponed for further study, and the officials have begun to admit
that despite the scope and scale of this project, it will do little to supply
the North’s ever-increasing demand for water.
“It
can only be a supplement to the water shortage in the short term,” Zhang Jiyao,
the minister in charge of the water project, told The Associated Press. “More important, we must depend on
saving water.”
If
China is successfully in solving its water woes through conservation and
efficiency, could the country provide a blueprint that other similarly
challenged communities could emulate?
Could China become a role model instead of an example of “what not to
do?”