With increasing water needs, will China dehydrate India?

China—and not Pakistan—is a bigger threat to India simply because it does not have enough water.
Unlike India, which has 9.56% of its surface area covered with water, China has just 2.8%. This did not matter in the past. China’s land mass is so huge that, despite its larger population, it has one-sixth the density of people per km compared with India.

But water consumption increases exponentially with industrialization. Power plants, chemical factories, mining, steel and urban sanitation require huge quantities of water. Hence, China’s water needs have increased dramatically.

That could be one reason why annexing Tibet was crucial to China’s plans. It now controls 1,700km of the Yarlung Zangbo river, the Tibetan part of the Brahmaputra. The remaining 2,900km of the river winds into India through Arunachal Pradesh, and then, through Bangladesh. That, say experts, could be one more reason behind China eyeing parts of Arunachal Pradesh.

More worrisome is the fact that China has already completed feasibility studies for a major hydropower dam at the Tsongpo gorge to generate at least 40,000MW a year, more than twice the output of Three Gorges hydroelectric project. Construction is expected to start this year and the residual waters are expected to be diverted to China’s lands. It would starve India and Bangladesh of their share of the river’s waters.

Moreover, with Left parties winning Nepal’s elections, and China’s proposal last week for no-visa travel between Nepal and China, there are fears that the waters which flow into the Ganga (primarily Kosi), too, may get diverted, because many of India’s northern rivers begin in Nepal. That could parch northern India.

At risk will be India’s agriculture and hydroelectric dams on these rivers. It could revive the saying that the next wars will be fought for water, not land.

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Source: LiveMint.com

China: Poison in the Drinking Water

The thousand inhabitants of Leifeng couldn’t have lived in a more remote spot. The village, near the border with Siberia, is covered in a thick layer of snow during the winter. Not surprisingly, then, it is home to a small alcohol factory, which produces ‘baijiu’, the Chinese version of vodka. But the factory proved to be more of a curse than a blessing, as 14-year-old Zhang Guanghui explains:

“My mother worked in the factory for three months. She treated the bottles with acid, so the glass looked frosted. The work made her ill. Now she’s dead. We had to sell our house. My father now works a long way away and I live with my uncle.”

The acid that Guanghui’s mother used to etch to bottles was hydrofluoric acid. The exposure to it during her work, in combination with the polluted drinking water, proved fatal. Because as Guanghui’s neighbour explains, the factory was also dumping large quantities of the chemical in three disused wells in the factory grounds. And thus it entered the groundwater and the wells for drinking water used by the village’s farming families. Guanghui’s mother is the only person to die of the poisoning up to now, but hundreds of villagers are ill.

Brittle bones
Guanghui looks like a boy of ten. The growth of other children in Leifeng has also been retarded by their exposure to the pollutant. Fluoride seems innocent enough but high concentrations in drinking water can cause brittle bones and damage teeth as well as causing memory loss and eye, stomach and liver problems. Chinese research has also indicated that high concentrations of fluoride in children can lead to a reduction in IQ.

Justice
Zhang Ruwen (pictured below), Guanghui’s uncle, has been fighting for justice since 2002.

“My sister-in-law died, my nephew is handicapped and my brother left the village and he had psychological problems because of that poison.”

There are tears in his eyes as he tells of his sister-in-law’s deathbed request:

“Your brother can’t do it but you have such a strong sense of justice. After I die, you must get justice for me”.

Mr Zhang, working with a retired lawyer, has compiled a dossier detailing the cases of 25 villagers. The x-rays and medical reports were investigated twice by a university in Beijing. Armed with the dossiers, the two men went to Beijing in 2002 to present their case before the highest national complaints commission. The complaints commission ruled in favour of the villagers from Leifeng and local authorities were forced to agree to solve the case within 10 days.

Damages
Very little has happened since then. The director of the regional court has refused to comment on the case. In 2006, free piped water was installed for everybody living within 60 km radius of the factory. A few of the villagers have been awarded damages and even collected the money but only on condition that they will undertake no further legal proceedings. The overwhelming majority of the villagers have received nothing.

The villagers are divided; some of them are too scared to initiate legal proceedings as the director of the factory has got good connections. They say its impossible to win the case as the factory bosses have bribed the authorities and a criminal prosecution as a lost cause despite the strict environmental and pollution laws.

Some of the villagers are still hoping for financial compensation high enough to pay for painkillers. But even their leader is beginning to lose hope. Justice for the residents of Leifeng will only come about as a result of the economic crisis. After all, the global financial crisis has already forced scores of polluting factories to close across China.

Source: Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Parched China to slash water consumption by 60%

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.

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Source: NewScientist

Farmers Pay the Price for Decades of Water Waste in China

AS CHINA’S 15-day lunar new year holiday began, Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, was in the plush Swiss resort of Davos, hobnobbing with other global powerbrokers. Towards the end of the holiday on February 8th, he appeared in a very different setting. Sporting a pair of smart white trainers, he strode through a grain field in the village of Yangbei, Henan province. He squatted down to talk to local farmers to offer them help to see them through a severe drought that now plagues Henan and six other provinces in northern and central China.

After 100 days without precipitation in the region, the government has declared a “Level 1” emergency for the worst drought in 50 years, authorising an extra 300m yuan ($44m) in special drought-relief spending. It will finance everything from cloud-seeding rockets to the digging of new wells and tankers to deliver water. This year’s winter-wheat harvest is at risk. February 8th saw some rain, but only 5-10 millimetres, compared with 200mm farmers say they need in coming months.

The drought comes at a difficult moment. The global downturn has hit China’s exporters hard, and millions of rural migrants have lost their jobs in coastal factories and returned to their villages. Mr Wen pleased local farmers with what he had to say. They have already received help from the government, which last year invested in a new deep well. Like many of her neighbours, Fang Yue-ling, a farmer, was confident such high-profile promises would presage more assistance.

As population and living standards rise, such virtues will not be enough. China’s water woes will only worsen, especially for farmers. When supplies tighten, urban and industrial users usually have priority. Ma Jun, a water specialist in Beijing, says that since the 1950s China has been digging ever deeper wells, and building ever more dams, canals, and water diversion projects. But all this has taken a toll. Because of lower water-tables and depleted aquifers, many rivers can no longer replenish themselves in the dry season. The government’s current emergency measures are necessary in the short term. But he argues that in the long term the focus must shift to conservation, efficiency, and more rational pricing so that city users pay their fair share. He concedes the Red Flag Canal is a “genuine miracle” and that there is a role for other grand projects. But, looking ahead, he argues that, in China’s ability to go on tampering with its natural-water resources, “we have reached our limit”.

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Source: The Economist