China Reform Monitor: No. 820

[Editor’s Intro: This CRM Special Issue is focused on water security in China. Water security has quickly become one of the most critical concerns for policymakers in Beijing and average Chinese citizens alike. The proliferation of dams along major rivers and the expansion of industrial pollutants in the drinking water supply, coupled with a terrible drought in China’s Southwest have had appalling consequences for China and South East Asia. Under normal conditions, over 200 million Chinese lack access to safe drinking water. Yet Beijing’s state-run firms continue dam construction unabated in China and throughout the developing world.]

April 1:

After 29 cloud seeding operations failed to relieve drought-stricken Guangxi, the government believes Southwest China will get drier, the official China Daily reports. The drought, the worst in a century, has left 24.25 million people and 15.84 million animals short of water. Less rainfall and higher temperatures, coupled with inadequate water storage facilities, inefficient water usage, and declining river flows have caused the crisis. Dry conditions are also expanding to northern China, although conditions are better there this year than last. The China Meteorological Administration announced that the government will continue cloud seeding and building infrastructure to deliver water supplies. In an effort to redirect 60 million cubic meters of water to drought-hit areas Beijing is constructing 4,307 new water projects, 20,000 km of pipelines, digging 180,000 wells, and sending 7,615 water tankers.

April 4:

At the three-day Mekong River Commission Summit held in Thailand some ASEAN countries blamed Chinese dams for the historically low levels of the Mekong River and demanded Beijing provide information on its upstream hydropower dams. The severe drought in southern China has resulted in the river's low levels, halting boat traffic, depleting fisheries and irrigation systems on which millions of South East Asians depend for food. Many South East Asians fault Beijing, which has built four out of its total eight hydroelectric dams on the upper Mekong. "It's unfair to say this is China's responsibility," responded Pang Zhongying, of Renmin University in Beijing. "It does no good for countries involved to blame each other, or to try to politicize the problem,” he said in comments carried by the official Xinhua News Agency.

April 6:

Three men have been arrested for dumping over 4 tons of garbage in the Baimu River forcing Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, to cut off the tap water supplies for twelve hours. All three admitted having dumped solid waste into the river, the police said. A spokesman with Chengdu’s water resources department said the trash has been retrieved and tests indicate that the water is now safe, the official television station CCTV reports.

April 7:

International Rivers has accused China of selling fake carbon credits for hydropower dams resulting in the suspension of their sale by the European Climate Exchange, the world's leading carbon credit market. The NGO says the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is "failing miserably and is undermining the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol" because China’s emission reduction credits do not come from projects that actually reduce emissions. At a meeting of the CDM executive board, 38 mainland dams failed to get carbon credits and 36 Chinese wind projects were placed under review. Hydropower projects constitute a quarter of all carbon credit projects in the pipeline, and 67 percent of these, or about 700 projects, are in China. The problem, the South China Morning Post reports, is that there has been no substantial rise in hydropower development to match the numerous Chinese projects applying to sell CDM credits.

Chinese state-run firms have contracted to build two dams in eastern Sudan on the Atbara and Settite rivers. The China Three Gorges Corporation and the China Water and Electric Corporation inked the 5 1/2 year, $838 million agreement with Sudan’s Dams Implementation Unit in Khartoum. The projects will generate 135 megawatts of electricity while providing residents with irrigation and water storage facilities to improve agricultural production. The project’s two dams will extend for 15 km in total and create a lake with 2.7 billion cubic meters of water storage capacity, the China’s People’s Daily and Sudan’s state-run TV station report.

April 10:

A study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed that heavy metal contamination in about 20 percent of China’s farmland has reduced crop output by more than 10 million tons. In response, China has launched a nationwide campaign to punish companies’ illegal dumping. Nine ministerial departments, including the Ministry of Environmental Protection; the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; the National Development and Reform Commission; and the Ministry of Supervision jointly initiated the campaign, which will focus on industrial pollution. "Currently, our law enforcement and supervision for environmental protection is still in a grave situation, and the mission is arduous," said Zhou Shengxian, minister of environmental protection, in the official China Daily.