China promised to minimize the adverse environmental impact on the area surrounding the planned south-to-north water diversion project.

"Necessary measures have been implemented, including increasing storage capacity of water and digging irrigation ditches at the lower reaches of the Yangtze River," said Yuan Guolin, member of the Ninth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

To quench the thirst of its north regions, China is launching a multi-billion-dollar project to divert water from southern China during the 10th Five-Year-Plan period (2001-05), a project the late Chairman Mao Zedong envisioned half a century ago.

"The south-to-north water diversion project is a mega-project that is strategically aimed at realizing the optimal allocation of water resources," said Chen Bangzhu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National Committee of the CPPCC.

Chen, also director of the Committee of Population, Resources and Environment of the CPPCC, said the thirsty areas have one-third of China's total population, gross national product, farmland and grain output. This requires the state to build the project as quickly as possible, he said.

In China, water is scarce not only in landlocked areas but also in some coastal regions.

A recent survey shows that 400 out of 600 major Chinese cities are suffering from water shortages, which cause economic losses amounting to more than 120 billion yuan (US$14.5 billion) annually. In Tianjin, the largest port city in north China, the price of tap water has soared 25 times in 20 years to around 2 yuan (US$0.24) per ton, up from about 0.08 yuan in the 1980s.

Even with the ambitious diversion plan, experts and CPPCC members insisted China should adopt new water preservation strategies, including water-saving agriculture, urban water pollution control and sustainable water utilization.

Studies by Beijing-based environment technology institutes have shown only 14 percent of urban waste water is now treated and recycled in China.

But China's water shortage problem is one of the world's worst and cannot be reversed through conservation efforts alone, said Wang Guangqian, a CPPCC member and director of the Institute of River and Coastal Engineering of Tsinghua University.

China will face a serious water problem with its population expected to peak at 1.6 billion in 2030, a report released by the Chinese Academy of Engineering said.

According to the draft plan of the south-to-north water project, it would annually divert some 38 billion to 48 billion cubic metres of water to the north.

When the project is finished, Chen said, the annual diversion will be equal to the annual run-off of the Yellow River, the second-longest river in China.

(China Daily 03/08/2001)