FALLING WATER TABLES IN CHINA MAY SOON RAISE FOOD PRICES EVERYWHERE
Lester R. Brown
In 1999 the water table under Beijing fell by 2.5 meters (8 feet).
Since 1965, the water table under the city has fallen by some 59
meters or nearly 200 feet, warning China's leaders of the shortages
that lie ahead as the country's aquifers are depleted.
Hydrologically, there are two Chinas-the humid south, which includes
the Yangtze River basin and everything south of it, and the north,
which includes all the country north of the Yangtze basin. The south,
with 700 million people, has one third of the nation's cropland and
four fifths of its water. The north, with 550 million people, has two
thirds of the cropland and one fifth of the water.
The water per hectare of cropland in the north is one eighth that of
the south.
The northern part of the country is drying out as the demand for
water outstrips the supply. Water tables are falling. Wells are going
dry. Streams are drying up, and rivers and lakes are disappearing.
Under the North China Plain, a region that stretches from just north
of Shanghai to well north of Beijing and that produces 40 percent of
China's grain, the water table is dropping by an average of 1.5
meters per year.
Farmers in the north are faced with losses of irrigation water both
from aquifer depletion and from the diversion to cities and industry.
Between now and 2010,
when China's population is projected to grow by 126 million, the
World Bank projects that the nation's urban water demand will
increase from 50 billion cubic meters to 80 billion, a growth of 60
percent. Industrial water demand, meanwhile, is projected to increase
from 127 billion cubic meters to 206 billion, an expansion of 62
percent. In much of northern China, this growing demand for water can
be satisfied only by taking irrigation water from agriculture.
What happens to irrigation water supplies directly affects China's
agricultural prospect. Whereas less than 15 percent of the U.S.
grain harvest comes from irrigated land, in China it is close to 70
percent.
In the competition for water between cities, industry, and
agriculture, the economics of water use do not favor agriculture. In
China, a thousand tons of water produces one ton of wheat, worth
perhaps $200. The same water used in industry will expand output by
$14,000-70 times as much. In a country that is desperately seeking
economic growth and, even more, the jobs it generates, the gain in
diverting water from agriculture to industry is obvious.
The Yellow River, the northernmost of the country's two major rivers,
is being overused. After flowing uninterruptedly for thousands of
years, this cradle of Chinese civilization ran dry in 1972, failing
to reach the sea for some 15 days. In the following years, it ran
dry intermittently until 1985. Since then, it has run dry for part of
each year. In 1997, a drought year, the Yellow River failed to reach
the sea for 226 days.
In fact, during much of 1997 the river failed to reach Shandong
Province, the last of the eight it flows through en route to the sea.
Shandong, producing a fifth of China's corn and a seventh of its
wheat, is more important to China than are Iowa and Kansas together
to the United States. Half of the province's irrigation water used to
come from the Yellow River, but this supply is now shrinking. 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. Beijing is permitting the
poverty-ridden upstream provinces to divert water for their
development at the expense of agriculture in the lower reaches of the
basin.
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 wi
ll help satisfy swelling residential needs as well as those of
expanding industries, including the all-important wool textile
industry that is supplied by the region's vast flocks of sheep.
Another canal will divert water to Taiyuan, the capital city of
Shanxi province, a city of some 4 million that has recently been
forced to ration
water.
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. The resulting prospect of
massive grain imports and growing dependence on U.S. grain leads to
sleepless nights for political leaders in Beijing.
Immediately to the north of the Yellow River basin is the Hai River
basin, which has over 100 million people and includes Beijing and
Tianjin, both large industrial cities. Water use in the basin
currently totals 55 billion cubic meters annually, while the
sustainable supply totals only 34 billion cubic meters. This annual
deficit of 21 billion cubic meters is being satisfied largely by
groundwater mining-by overpumping. Once the aquifer is depleted,
water pumping will necessarily drop to the sustainable yield, cutting
the water supply by nearly 40 percent. 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 rainfed agriculture.
Meanwhile, 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.
Water shortages can be ameliorated by using water more efficiently,
but in China this is not always easy. A recent government strategy
paper indicates that this means raising water prices to an
"appropriate" level, one 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.
Recent policy decisions indicate the direction in which China is
planning to move. For one, China has officially abandoned its
longstanding policy of grain self-sufficiency. After raising the
grain support price some 42 percent in 1994 in a valiant effort to
remain self-sufficient, the leaders in Beijing have since
acknowledged that the fiscal cost was too high, and they are
permitting the price of grain to fall toward world market levels.
They have also announced that in the competition for water, cities
and industry get priority-leaving agriculture last.
China is not alone in facing water shortages. Other countries where
water scarcity is raising grain imports or threatening to do so
include India, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Mexico, and dozens of smaller
countries. But only China-with nearly 1.3 billion people, a
fast-growing economy, and a $40-billion-plus trade surplus with the
United States-has the potential to disrupt world grain markets. In
short, falling water tables in China could soon mean rising food
prices for the entire world.
CONTACT: Reah Janise Kauffman
Worldwatch Institute
1776 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20036-1904
PHONE: (202) 452-1992 x 514
FAX: (202) 296-7365
EMAIL: rjkauffman@worldwatch.org
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