Whilst all eyes are gravitating toward the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, and China’s contribution to reducing carbon emissions that are changing the earth’s ecosystem, little is being said about the huge disruption to life and society in North China due to dramatic water shortages. Northern China makes up 19% of China’s water resources, with a little less than half all China’s population. What with Beijing sinking at 8mm per year because its sucked dry its own underground aquifers, and the farmers and fishermen of surrounding provinces stomping around on cracked, dessicated soil that was once farmland and fishing holes, rationing of water is becoming more commonplace.

China has just one-quarter the amount of water per person compared with the world average, and uses 65% of its water irrigating farmland that only yields 15% of the countries GDP. Yet, US$.31 per cubic meter, the cost of water in China is amongst the lowest in the world, at less than half the cost of the United States, and a tenth that of Germany. The cost of agricultural use of water in 2000 in China was a mere US$.01, compared to US$.15 for city dwellers and US$.16 for industrial use. The agricultural sector in the US uses water at US$.23 – still considered cheap by international standards. Cheap water has only encouraged farmers in the north to use water in abundance – and to waste accordingly: only 45% of this water allocation ever reaches the farm plots. Farmers waste nearly three-quarters of the water they use to irrigate their farms.

So, though, efforts to raise water prices will help somewhat with conservation, sustainable models of agriculture need to be developed and implemented. Quickly. Piping water from the south to north will simply buy the north some time – but not much, given the wasteful ways of northern farmers – and the climate catastrophe to its west.

The glaciers that provide the water to China’s greatest rivers are melting at an alarming rate. Indian and Chinese scientists estimate China (and India, as well) have merely 20 to 30 years more their societies can rely on melts from ice sheets. They are working together to see what can be done to stem the glacial recession. The Dalai Lama mid-November implored the Chinese government to set political differences aside to tend to the issue. According to Reuters, he said, ”
“A political solution (for Tibet) may take time, but that’s okay, we can wait.”

Much of the success of a sustainable model of water usage is in educating farmers on how to use the water, appropriate amounts and kinds of fertilizer and the kinds of crops that are appropriate to a geography that is rapidly changing.

Water – or rather, the lack thereof – is rapidly becoming the Chinese leadership’s greatest challenge. Not energy. Not even carbon emissions. Try to float your boat on that priority.

Further reading: Reuters, Daily Reckoning, WSJ, Green Leap Forward