China is running out of water

Some economic booms grind to a halt, others run out of steam, but in China the biggest risk is that growth will dry up. Water, the country's scarcest resource, is running out. Pollution, waste and over-exploitation have combined with the expansion of mega-cities to foul up wells and suck rivers dry.

Signs of a crisis are apparent everywhere. In the arid north, four-fifths of the wetlands along the region's biggest river system have dried up. In the west, desert sands are encroaching on many cities. In the south, the worst drought in 50 years has ruined crops and prompted water shortages even along the banks of the Yangtze, the nation's biggest waterway...

Water has always been China's Achilles heel. The world's most populous country has per capita water resources of 2,200 cubic metres - less than a quarter of the world average. The shortfall between supply and demand is estimated at 6bn cubic metres. The gap is likely to widen as the population grows from 1.3 billion people to an estimated 1.6 billion by 2030...

In short, China's development model is unsustainable. For the past 30 years the government has emphasised the quantity rather than the quality of growth. Spectacular expansion figures of almost 10% a year mask dire inefficiency and environmental damage.

For most of the past 30 years, financial resources have been invested in new factories rather than treatment plants, water recycling facilities or replacements for leaky pipes. Only 52% of the country's 2bn cubic metres of sewage is treated before it goes into rivers and lakes. This has expensive health implications. Each year, filthy water is a big factor in the 800m cases of diarrhoea, 650,000 cases of dysentery and 500m cases of intestinal worms.

Industrial pollution creates political as well as physical concerns. Suspicions are rife that factory owners collaborate with government officials to cover up toxic spills in the interests of social stability and economic growth...

There are signs that the government is taking these warnings more seriously. President Hu Jintao - who has a post-graduate degree in water conservancy engineering - has made sustainable development one of the goals of his administration. Last month, the government promised to spend a trillion yuan (£67bn) over the next five years on waste treatment and water recycling. In Beijing and other cities, water charges have been increased to encourage more efficient use of supplies.

Yet the prevailing ethos is that the problems of growth and science can be solved by more growth and more science. Cloud seeding is being used to induce precipitation artificially. Despite the increasingly evident environmental impact of giant hydroelectric plants such as the Three Gorges Dam, the nation's thirst for energy has pushed policy makers to announce plans for dozens of dams along the tributaries of the Yangtze, the Yellow and the Nu rivers...

Environmentalists argue that China needs a fundamental change of philosophy. Although Hu's administration has promoted sustainable development for three years, local governments do not appear to be listening. Why should they? With no elections and no free media, cadres are more worried about their superiors than the people they are supposed to serve...