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| May 13, 2000 | atimes.com | ||
|  | China Water scarcity in China threatens world food prices By Danielle Knight WASHINGTON - Falling water tables in China may soon raise food prices throughout the world, warns a prominent environmental think-tank here. While China is hardly alone in facing increasing water shortages, it has the potential to disrupt world grain markets because the nation has to meet the growing water demands of its 1.3 billion people, according to Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute. As China's economy expands at a projected annual rate of 7 percent, as it adds 12 million people a year, and as Chinese eat more grain-fed meat, the country's need for grain will continue to grow. ''This, coming at a time when grain production will be falling in key producing regions as water shortages intensify, could quickly make China the world's leading grain importer, overtaking even Japan,'' he says. In 1999, the water table under Beijing fell by 2.5 meters, according to Worldwatch. Since 1965, the water table under the city has fallen by some 59 meters. This should serve as a warning to China's leaders ''of shortages that lie ahead as the country's aquifers are depleted,'' says Brown, an international expert on population and the environment. The northern part of the country - with two-thirds of the nation's arable land and only one fifth of its water - is drying out rapidly because the demand for water is outstripping the supply, he warns. In the North China Plain region which stretches from just north of Shanghai to well north of Beijing, the water table is dropping by an average of 1.5 meters per year. This region produces 40 percent of the nation's grain. ''Wells are going dry, streams are drying up, and rivers and lakes are disappearing,'' he says. And irrigation is important to China's ability to produce grain. ''Whereas less than 15 percent of the US grain harvest comes from irrigated land, in China it is close to 70 percent,'' says Brown. Besides aquifer depletion, farmers in the north are also facing losses of irrigation water from the diversion of water to cities and industry. Urban demand is only expected to increase as China's population is projected to grow by 126 million people between now and 2010. The World Bank estimates that the nation's urban water demand will increase from 50 billion cubic meters to 80 billion, a growth of 60 percent, says Brown. At the same time, industrial demand is projected to increase from 127 billion cubic meters to 206 billion, an increase of 62 percent. Faced with competition for water with cities and industry, agriculture usually loses out because it does not bring in as much money, says Brown. A thousand tons of water produces one ton of wheat, worth perhaps $200. The same water used in industry will expand output by $14,000 - about 70 times as much. ''In a country desperately seeking economic growth and, even more, the jobs it generates, the gain in diverting water from agriculture to industry is obvious,'' says Brown. The result of increasing demand for water over the past several decades has led to a steady decrease in the flow of the Yellow River, the northernmost of the country's two major rivers. Because of overuse, it ran dry in 1972 - failing to meet the sea for 15 days - after flowing uninterrupted for thousands of years. In following years, it ran dry intermittently until 1985. Since then, it has run dry for part of each year. In 1997, when there was a drought, the Yellow River failed to reach the sea for 226 days. During much of 1997 the river failed to reach Shandong Province, which produces a fifth of China's corn and one-seventh of its wheat. ''Half of the province's irrigation water used to come from the Yellow River, but this supply is now shrinking,'' says Brown. The other half comes from an aquifer that is falling by 1.5 meters per year. As more and more water is diverted to industry and cities upstream, less is available downstream, he says. ''The growing upstream claims on the Yellow River mean that one day it may no longer reach Shandong Province at all, depriving the province of roughly half of its irrigation water,'' he adds. Among the hundreds of projects to divert water from the Yellow River in the upper reaches is a canal that will take water to Hohhot, the capital of inner Mongolia, starting in 2003. This additional water will help satisfy swelling residential needs as well as those of expanding industries, including the expanding wool textile industry. Another canal will divert water to Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi province, a city of some 4 million people that has recently been forced to ration its water. Immediately to the north of the Yellow River basin is the Hai River basin, which has more than 100 million people and includes Beijing and Tianjin, two large industrial cities. While water use in the basin currently totals 55 billion cubic meters annually, Brown says the sustainable supply totals only 34 billion cubic meters. The annual deficit of 21 billion cubic meters is being satisfied largely by ''over-pumping'' water out of the aquifers. ''Given rapid urban and industrial growth in the area, irrigated agriculture in the basin could largely disappear by 2010, forcing a shift back to less productive rain-fed agriculture,'' says Brown. Often water shortages can at least be partially ameliorated by using water more efficiently. But in China, Worldwatch argues that this will be very difficult. A recent government paper indicates that increasing efficiency would involve raising water prices to a level much closer to market value. ''For Beijing, this option is fraught with political risks because the public response to raising water prices in China is akin to that of raising gasoline prices in the United States,'' says Brown. (Inter Press Service) | |||||||||
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