In February, China pays the price for decades of wasteful water use. After 100 days without precipitation in northern China, the government has declared a “Level 1” emergency for the worst drought in 50 years.

The three consecutive months without precipitation made the drought so terrible that nearly everything in the fifteen provinces of northern China are longing for water. Winter wheat, livestock, farmers, industry, urban residence, etc, are all in great trouble because of lack of water.

Suddenly, water becomes the most important thing in northern China; or at least, much more important than before.

“The problem of water resources has become a main hurdle for China to reach the strategic goal of building a well-off society in an all-round way. It also brings negative influence upon the sustainable development,” said Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei in the National Water Resource Working Conference.

On February 12, some parts of northern China finally saw some rain.

But the effect of releasing the drought is tiny. Vice Minister of Agriculture Wei Chao’an said: “Generally speaking, most winter wheat areas suffering drought in China have not been released from the longing for water. The situation of fighting against the drought is still very serious.”

Waste in Using Water

“When the drought happened, the most difficult problem was the lack of water sources. The problems of the water sources in the middle and terminal part of the irrigation areas are more prominent,” said E Jingping, Vice Minister of Water Resources. He was also the leader of the “battle” against the drought.

According to the report from the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters of the Ministry of Water Resources, the annual total volume of water resources in China was 2.8 trillion m3, of which the flow capacity of the rivers accumulates to 2.7 trillion m3 and the volume of underground water is 0.83 trillion m3. China is ranked No.4 in the total volume of water resources; however, the per capita share is only 2,160 m3 because of the huge population, ranking No.121 in the world. It is less than one quarter of the world average level. The United Nations has already listed China as one of the thirty countries deficient in water.

Wu Yucheng, who is responsible for the solutions to drought in that office, said that the distribution of water resources in China was inharmonious with its population and arable land.

The survey shows that the area in the Yangtze River catchment, Pearl River catchment, Zhejiang, Fujian and Taiwan only takes 36.5% of the total area of the whole country; the area of the arable land in those areas only takes 36% of the whole country and the proportion of population is 54.4%. But those areas have 81% of the water resources in the whole country. The per capita share of water is 1.6 times of the national average level and the water share of one-acre arable land is 2.3 times of the average level.

In contrast, the area of the catchments of Liaohe River, Hailuanhe River, Yellow River, Huai River equals 18.7% of the total country, which is half of the areas mentioned in last paragraph. But the ratio between the total volumes of water resources in these two areas is 1 to 10. The uneven distribution is more easily seen in the Hailuanhe River catchment where the water share per capita is only 16% of the average level of the country.

If we compare the hydro sequence from 1980 to 2000 with the one from 1956 to 1979, we will find that the precipitation in the four catchments of Huaihe River, Yellow River, Haihe River and Liaohe River decreased by 6% and the volume of surface water decreased by 17%. The situation that there is much more water in southern China than in northern China pricked up. Presently, the volume of deficient water is 40 billion m3. Nearly two thirds of cities in China are more or less deficient in water. At the same time, farmland stricken by drought reached 230 million mu (153 thousand square kilometers) every year.

China is a country which suffered a lot from the drought and flood disaster in the history. But why those “water crisis” happen more and more frequently in recent years? The experts would rather attribute this to the human activities than climatic changes.

As we all know, agriculture is a big consumer of water. Simultaneously, a lot of water is wasted in agriculture. According to the data from the Ministry of Water Resources, the volume of water for agricultural irrigation in China is 370 billion m3 per year, taking 67% of the annual total water consumption of China. However, due to the behindhand technology and management, the utilizing rate of water is only 30% to 40%. In comparison, the utilizing rate of water in many countries reached 70% to 80%.

According to Chen Lei, the utilizing coefficient of water for agricultural irrigation in China is only 0.46. The production capacity of one-cubic-meter water is only 0.85 kilograms of crops, much lower than the two kilograms in the developed countries. The volume of wasted irrigation water every year is equivalent with the natural runoff of three or four Yellow Rivers.

Industry is also a big consumer of water. The volume of water for industry takes 21% of the total used water. To produce 10000-yuan value in China, 163-m3 water will be used, which is 10 to 20 times of the one in developed countries. In China, the repeated utilizing rate of water is 40% while in the developed countries it is 75% to 85%.

Though the Law of Water has been carried out for 16 years, the chaos of the water usage, especially agricultural water usage, never vanishes.

Wu Yucheng said: “In China, different management systems are exerted over underground and surface water, upstream and downstream of a river, urban and rural water and water volume and quality. During the low water period, so much water is consumed in the upstream areas that quite little water is available in the downstream areas. Some local governments or departments, for their own interests, build the projects which will consume a lot of water, or build factories in the protection area of river course, causing serious pollution to the water.

In Minqin County, Gansu Province, all the villagers adopt the way of flood irrigation, in which the utilizing rate of water is very low. All the water the villagers use is from underground. It costs nothing to drain water from underground but a few electronic charges. And Minqin County is the most desertified area in China.

“In China, water is considered to be valueless. The water price is always cheap. There is huge waste in water resources and the utilizing rate of water is very low,” said Luo Jianhua, Secretary-general of China Environmental Service Chamber of Commerce.

Luo Jianhuan and some other experts are trying to make out a “model for calculating the average cost of regional water supply”, which can function as a reference for the decision-making department to fix a rational water price.

Disputes in Transferring Water

To fight against the drought, local governments of different places in China started the projects of transporting water. People in the provinces along Yellow River opened the sluice gate to drain the water from Yellow River. By February 12, Shandong had transported 32-million-cubic-meter water from Yellow River and Henan transported 420 million cubic meters.

However, what’s frustrating is that the runoff of Yellow River since July 2008 is only 70% of the year before. By February 9, the amount of water that can be regulated in the reservoirs and hydropower stations in Yellow River was 14.54 billion cubic meters, with a year-on-year decrease of 3.6 billion cubic meters.

Some reports said that the amount of water conservation in the large reservoirs in Shanxi, Shandong, Henan and Shaanxi at the end of 2008 was less than 2007. And the amount of water conservation is deficient. In Shanxi, about 400 reservoirs have no water conserved.

According to E Jingping, the central government plans to deal with the water problem in Shanxi, Shaanxi and Gansu whose impoundage is small through the improvement of the regulation of the reservoirs in the Yellow River catchments.

However, the water from Yellow River can only do a small favor to that matter. “If we want to fight against the drought in northern China and the draught-up of Yellow River, we must need at least 200 billion m3 of water every year,” said an expert.

In this expert’s opinion, the unprecedented drought in 2009 may accelerate the process of South-to-North Water Transfer project. And it is quite possible that a certain part of the 4-trillion-yuan investment can be put into this field.

Difficulties in Saving Water

Nevertheless, the most urgent problem to be solved at this time is how to save more crops when the amount of available water is quite limited.

“We need to irrigate with water to fight against the drought. But we should pay attention to saving water. The utilizing rate of water is the most important,” said Wei Chao’an. However, the agricultural departments of China have not given the detailed method of saving water.

With the advent of drought, the experts who antagonize the flood irrigation mostly advocate the advanced irrigation methods like drip irrigation, sprinkling irrigation and micro irrigation, which can save a lot of water.

According to an expert from the Ministry of Science and Technology, presently there are 810 million mu (about 540 thousand square kilometers) of effectively irrigated areas. The traditional flood irrigation is adopted in 98% of those areas. Due to the behindhand technology, the water wasted in the water transportation canals above the sub-lateral canals takes 60% of the total amount of irrigation water. In addition to the water wasted in the canals across the fields and so on, 70% of the irrigation water has is wasted. It means that there is a huge waste of water in the agricultural irrigation; and, as well, a great potential in saving water.

“Actually, China’s shortage of water is just the shortage of technology instead of shortage of resources. The less advanced irrigation technology is the main reason of the huge waste in water,” said the expert mentioned above. In his opinion, the fundamental method of fighting water crisis is the self-motivated innovation of the irrigation technology. This expert is trying to popularize a new drip irrigation technology whose project cost is one fifth of the method developed in Israel and it is applicable for irrigating every kind of plants.

The expert also said: “Presently, the popularization of that technology needs the sponsorship from the government. It is impossible that the farmers can afford this by themselves at this time.”

Though there are many disputes in saving water, people share the same opinions in the problem of water conservancy facilities. According to E Jingping, the water conservancy facilities in China, especially the ones for agricultural use, were mostly built in the 1950s and 1960s. After decades’ operation, those facilities have fallen into ageing and disrepair.

According to the statistical data of the Ministry of Water Resources, about 40% of the structures in large irrigation areas need repairing while in the middle and small irrigation areas 50% or so of the structures need repairing.

Deng Lvwen, a famous current affairs commentator, said that the key point of fighting the drought hence was to accelerate the construction of anti-drought projects and to improve the projects’ ability to fight against the drought.

“There were some good harvests after severe drought in the history, because we have already had good conditions for irrigation. To deal with the agricultural problem, we must try to trigger the motivation of farmers. Neither the policies nor technologies can function without the support of farmers.”

In the present serious situation, the most urgent task is to manage the limited water resources well. According to Chen Lei, this year China will implement the strictest management system of water resources ever since. Three “red lines” will be used in the deployment, saving and protection of water resources, aiming at controlling the total water volume, preventing water pollution and restraining the wasteful water use.