Drought in China

Long-term problems

Some 200 million people live across the north China plain. It is home to giant cities like Beijing and Tianjin which are expanding fast. But the area has water resources comparable to a desert country and every year as the population swells the water stress grows worse.

“The harsh reality is that there is simply not enough water” Ma Jun Chinese environmentalist

China's industries are inefficient, they consume far more water than those in developed countries. The country's construction boom means water use is even more intensive. Many of the rivers in the north have dried up. Dams have blocked their normal flow, the water diverted to towns, farms and factories. The northern megacities now rely on underground water sources for two-thirds of their needs. But the aquifers beneath places like Beijing are being drained, sinking as they are used faster than the rain can replenish them. Some fear the water could be gone in 30 years in places.

Ma Jun is one of China's most prominent environmentalists. Over a decade ago he wrote a book titled China's Water Crisis. As we walk along one of Beijing's dirty canals he tells me: "In China two-thirds of our cities are short of water.

Shifting water

"But the north China plain, where many of our biggest cities and industries are found, and which is China's breadbasket, is where our water is in shortest supply. So this drought now is making our long-term problems worse."

he biggest fear of all is that China, now an engine for the global economy, could find that lack of water constrains its future growth. "There is a growing understanding," Ma Jun says, "that we need to change, that our mode of growth is not sustainable. The harsh reality is that there is simply not enough water."

The country does have huge quantities of water, but they lie far to the south, in the massive rivers that run from west to east, 1,000km away from Beijing and the cities of the north.So China is pressing ahead with one of the world's biggest engineering schemes to shift the water northwards.

Fond of massive schemes, the country's Communist Party leaders are building the North-South water project, a giant series of canals and pipes to carry water from the Yangtze and Yellow rivers to Beijing. The cost of the project is a staggering $60bn (£36.8bn).

Standing on a giant crane looking down on one of the North-South construction sites you can see hundreds of workers welding and cutting iron bars, building huge metal moulds to make sections of concrete pipe.

Each section is around 10m (33ft) high, 8m (26ft) wide and 30m (99ft) long. When complete the North-South project will deliver the equivalent of 50,000 Olympic-size swimming pools full of water to cities in the north each day.

One of the men overseeing the site tells me that it is a great honour to take part in the project, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a construction engineer.

But the scheme can only be a stopgap. The amount of water it will deliver will buy China time to change and, hopefully, become more efficient.

But it won't be enough to solve the country's water woes. China's thirst is just too great, and unless it alters its ways, millions might find one day, that their water could run dry.