Promotion and Awareness
ADB National Media Workshop on Water - Shanghai, People's Republic of China
8-10 September 2005
Shanghai, PRC
Session Descriptions
WATER IN ASIA AND NATIONAL WATER POLICIES IN THE PRC AND THE SOUTHERN PROVINCES
The Peoples Republic of China (PRC), with a population of 1.3 billion, is likely to face severe water challenges over the coming years, despite having the world's fourth largest fresh water reserves. While supporting 21 per cent of the world's population, PRC has just seven per cent of its water supplies. Some of these challenges are:
- water pollution to urban and rural water supply
- intense demand for water by growing industries, farms and cities
- contradictions between the problems of drought in the north and flooding in the south
- dwindling water of the Yellow River
These can only be addressed through a coherent and integrated national water policy.
The opening series of presentations provided a macro perspective of water issues in Asia as a whole and then more specifically, the PRC. The session looked at the issue of best practices in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), PRC's national water plan and the challenges the country is likely to face over the coming years. Particular attention was also given to some of the key issues facing PRC's southern provinces.
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WATER & POLLUTION AND WATER & HEALTH
The PRC today is facing severe water quality challenges with water contamination a leading factor behind the country's water shortages. The figures are startling. According to Qiu Baoxing, Deputy Minister of Construction, some 90 per cent of the PRC's cities and 75 per cent of its lakes suffer from some degree of water pollution with already limited resources under immense strain.
Southern China, though having greater water resources than the rest of the country, is facing extensive water pollution. In Tahe Anhuo province, for example, the Huai River and its tributaries, and the Yangtze River's tributaries are facing severe pollution as in Chaohu Lake, one of PRC's largest, located near the provincial capital of Hefei.
The Yangtze River receives the largest quantity of wastewater in China, at 14.2 billion tons per year - accounting for 42 per cent of the country's total sewage discharge. The industrial southern cities of Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou add to more industrial water pollution. And there are health implications as well with arsenic contamination of groundwater and increased incidences of schistosomiasis (carried by freshwater snails) in rural areas.
This session examined the water quality challenges the PRC - particularly its southern provinces - are currently facing, its effect on people's health and what measures can be undertaken to improve water quality. Particular attention was paid to the revision of the law on water pollution control and the work that is currently being carried out on the Huai River and the Tai Lake and Shanghai's Suzhou Creek Rehabilitation Project.
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WATER AND AGRICULTURE
Agriculture is the biggest consumer of water in the PRC using around 75 per cent of all water. In the PRC, a thousand tons of water produces merely one ton of wheat, worth perhaps US$200.
Today, water is coming under increased pressure in the agricultural sector. Over the last two years, farmers in the south of the country have faced the twin problems of floods and droughts. A prolonged dry spell in 2004 ravaged the southern and eastern provinces, including Guangdong, Hainan, Jiangxi and Anhui provinces and the Guangxi autonomous region. And yet 2005 has seen serious flooding with water levels on the Pearl River at record highs. Pollution is also an issue. In April 2005, farmers rioting in the coastal province of Zhejiang - their grievance being that their crops, they claimed, were being ruined by water pollution.
This session looked at the various challenges facing the PRC's farmers and how to achieve 'more crop per drop' in agriculture as well as how best to alleviate the impact of floods and droughts.
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WATER CONSERVATION - IMPROVING WATER EFFICIENCIES AND LOOKING FOR ALTERNATIVE WATER SOURCES
With the PRC's water shortages becoming ever more severe, there's no doubt that there will be an increased focus on improving water efficiencies and tapping new fresh water sources over the coming years.
Innovations are already taking place. In the industrial southern city of Shenzhen, for example, officials have introduced measures to use seawater to flush toilets. And in July, Tongji University in Shanghai announced that it is to begin recycling water from student showers next month, to refill a man-made lake on campus, irrigate grass and plants, save money.
And in coastal areas of Southern China, desalination of seawater has become a source of freshwater.
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) PRC will soon finish a special planning program with the State Oceanic Administration to freshen seawater for drought-hit coastal areas. The PRC has currently 10 seawater desalination plants in coastal cities and more are to be built in Shandong, Tianjin, Zhejiang with a daily capacity of 100,000 to 200,000 tons each.
Steps toward water conservation are also taking place. Investments are being seen in water-saving technology for farmers and industry, urban residents are being charged higher water fees and rationing systems are being adopted along certain rivers.
This session looked at some of the innovative techniques currently being used to combat water shortages as well as what progress is being made on water conservation. Areas covered included wastewater recycling and water desalination.
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DAMS AND OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS
The linkage between large-scale infrastructure projects and water has become one of the most contentious issues in the developing world over the last 20 years. And there are no countries that have embarked on large water infrastructure projects on the same scale as the PRC.
In order to solve the problems of drought in the north and flooding in the south, the government is constructing a gigantic south to north diversion project to take water from the Yangtze River to the dwindling Yellow River. At an initial cost of nearly $15 billion, the first phase is supposed to be completed in 2007. In addition, the PRC remains one of the most active dams building countries in the world today with an estimated 20,000 large dams across the country.
For supporters, large-scale projects such as these:
- improve irrigation
- provide cheap and clean energy
- enhance food security
- ward off droughts and flooding
For opponents, these projects:
- are the height of engineering folly
- have huge environmental consequences
- deteriorate relationships with neighboring countries
- often result in the compulsory resettlement of people
Furthermore, human-enabled water diversion is causing rivers and streams to disappear at an alarming rate.
This session looked at the pros and cons of large infrastructure projects and whether there is room for compromise. It also examined the premise that large infrastructure projects can never be successful unless they are accompanied by measures to encourage more economical use of water.
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RURAL & URBAN WATER SUPPLY & SANITATION
Providing clean water to rural and urban areas and providing effective sanitation is one of the greatest challenges the PRC currently faces. Premier Wen Jiabao promised to prioritize guaranteed adequate supplies of clean drinking water in his 1995 annual report to the PRC's legislature on government plans for the year.
While not facing the same level of droughts and water shortages of the north, the PRC's southern provinces have faced severe problems in providing clean drinking water and sanitation over the past few years.
In 2004, Eastern Guangdong was struck by its worst drought in 51 years, severely affecting water levels in the Dongjiang River - the source of drinking water for more than 36 million people. In neighbouring Guangxi province, 1,100 reservoirs went dry. And with Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta area's population increasing fast, more water shortages are likely to come. In 2004, fresh water supply to Shanghai hit a record low - mainly due to a salt tide flowing into the Yangtze River.
Sanitation also remains a key challenge for the PRC. As more people move into cities, the problem of household waste is becoming severe with only 20 percent of the PRC's 168 million tonnes of solid waste per year being properly disposed of. In Shanghai, about 37 per cent of its daily sewage of 5.3 million cubic meters is discharged into its waterways without being treated and only 20 per cent of the water from the city's rivers is drinkable.
This session examined the key challenges facing rural and urban water supply and sanitation in the PRC southern provinces. Areas that were discussed included the:
- need for water conservation measures
- importance of having institutional mechanisms to allocate water
- case for pricing
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THE 4TH WORLD WATER FORUM, MEXICO CITY, MARCH 2006
The 4th World Water Forum will take place in Mexico City in March 2006, with "Local Actions for a Global Challenge" as its theme. The forum argues that local actions are keys for generating concrete results that, when combined across sectors and regions, will move the world closer to meeting the water-related targets set by the Millennium Development Goals.
In this short session, a member of the Secretariat or Global Water Partnership provided an overview of the forum, its objectives and what results are hoped to be gained from it.
Sectors and Themes 
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