Topic: Desperate measures
Sector: Leaders
Page: 15 and 37
Summary:
China, the country with almost 20% of the world’s population, is now facing with the water shortage’s problem. Beside the geographic condition of China which most of the lakes are located in the southern part while the other half of the population lived in the desert-like of the northern part as shown in Figure 1, China is also using water at an unsustainable rate. As a result, the the number of river with significant catchment area are decreasing from more than 50,000 in 1950 to 23,000 now. How to cope with this problems? Rather than making sensible and eminently doable reforms in pricing and water conservation, Government have reacted to water problems by building huge project such as the The Three Gorges dam and the South-North Water Diversion Project.
Figure 1 The average annual precipitation in different regions of China and Taiwan.
The South-North Water Diversion Project has been criticized as a bad project with the huge amount of money spent on the project and many environmental impacts. The project basically links China’s two great river through three canals as shown in Figure 2.These two rivers have very different ecosystems and taking water from one to other could do irreparable environment harm. The water pumped has also been polluted that a third of the cost has gone on water treatment. Moreover, the project could also create a problem on region stability since the proposed dam on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra, Mekong and other rivers are bound to have an impact on downstream countries. Finally,This project would increase China’s water supplies by a mere 7%.
Figure 2 South-North Water Diversion Project
Own Thought: Water is one of the fundamental needs in human life but more important thing is the way we utilize them.
References:
Figure1 China Warned of Water Crisis by 2030, china.org.cn, June 6, 2002
Figure2 Beneath booming cities, China’s future is drying,New York Times, September 24, 2007
Tarinee Thongcharoen