Water Availability and Quantity in China

836 Words4 Pages
Water Availability and Quantity China faces serious water challenges from constraints on water supply as well as deteriorating quality. China’s per-capita annual renewable water availability is around 2,140 cubic meters compared to 1,720 m3/p/yr in India and over 10,000 for the United States (Table 5.1). Seasonal variations of water availability, causing floods and drought, are a major problem. China has several of the world’s largest rivers, bringing water from the Tibetan Plateau and western China to coastal cities. Table 5.2 shows the major rivers in China along with their average annual runoff. These rivers are unevenly distributed, with large rivers and flows in the south. China has also long suffered from extremes of floods and droughts. Some of the worst floods on record, in terms of loss of human life, have occurred in China, including a flood in 1930 that claimed 3.7 million lives. Half a million more people died in floods in 1939 and another 2 million died in floods in 1959 (Cooley 2006). And periodic droughts are worsening China’s water-supply challenges, as described. The distribution of water in China, as in other countries, is highly variable in both space and time. While parts of China have abundant natural water resources, other regions are naturally arid and water scarce. For example, in Northern China, the water crisis is apparent. At the same time, large rain storms increase the risk of flooding during the rainy season. Still the dry season seems to be increasingly drier in many areas of southern Asia. For all of China the water availability is only 25% of the world average. Northern China Plain, which produces about half of China’s wheat and corn, is steadily dropping. Perhaps 100 million Chinese eat food grown with groundwater that the rains are not replacing. This uneven distribution, combined with China’s extensive population,
Open Document