
World's Largest Water Diversion Plan Won't Quench China's Thirst - DoreenMichele
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-10/world-s-largest-water-diversion-plan-won-t-slake-china-s-thirst
======
nshepperd
> Still, in many cases there’s little incentive for farmers to save water.
> Agriculture uses 62 percent of China’s water, but crops have a relatively
> low marginal value. So the government bans the sale of agricultural water to
> industry, which pays 10 times the price, to ensure food supply.

This discount on water is effectively a cash subsidy for agriculture that
increases with the _amount of water wasted_ instead of useful goods sold.

Seems like every country everywhere has the same issue: they don't want to
sell water at the price it is actually worth, so it gets wasted and people
complain about water security issues. (Then if it's a city residential area,
they introduce rules like "no watering your lawn" in the hope that it will
reduce waste, instead of canceling the _90% off all-year-round water sale_.)

~~~
danmaz74
Did it ever occur to you that pricing _hundreds of millions_ of poor Chinese
farmers out of their ability to grow food to eat, so that much richer
exporting industries can have more water, while being a "market solution",
might not be an acceptable - even a humane - solution?

~~~
Lazare
Did it ever occur to you that a cash subsidy might be a lot more acceptable
and humane answer that the current water subsidy?

You're framing this as a question of "should we give these peasants free
water, OR just let them starve?" That's not what's being debated, and is
disingenuous at best.

~~~
danmaz74
This is what I understood was being debated: industry requires a lot of water,
and they can pay it 10 times what the peasants pay for it. But, currently,
they aren't allowed to buy the water that is needed for farming, which is the
same as giving a subsidy to peasants. Instead, we should let the market
decide, ie, let industry buy the water and leave the peasants without it. What
will the peasants do then? Why, they are free to move to the cities and become
industry workers; perfect market solution.

Did I get it wrong?

~~~
Lazare
> which is the same as giving a subsidy to peasants.

Correct. It is a large subsidy to the peasants.

> Instead, we should let the market decide, ie, let industry buy the water and
> leave the peasants without it.

Yes, but with the money, which as earlier discussed is worth several times
more than its value in subsistence agriculture. The person you were originally
replying to was complaining that a 90% discount on the sale of water was
essentially an extremely inefficient cash subsidy; the obvious solution is
replacing it with an _efficient_ cash subsidy. That's hardly humane.

> What will the peasants do then? Why, they are free to move to the cities and
> become industry workers

If that was a practical solution at the required scale, they'd have already
done it. Hence why a subsidy is needed.

> Did I get it wrong?

It does look that way, yes.

------
Arbalest
Water security is an issue everywhere. Here in Australia, we have the Murray
river. It is a major lifeline to Adelaide. However upstream farmers have been
identified as stealing water, and their parent states aren't doing anything
about it. I'm sure there's many farming practices that could be improved to
reduce water consumption, but with lax policing, it's not happening.

~~~
catmanjan
I'm in NSW and I can guarantee you that if the upstream farms were more
efficient with their water they would use the same amount, but grow more...

It's a bit like the mining industry, government doesn't want to even risk
damaging the top 2 industries this country has.

~~~
femto
The problem in NSW is some farmers taking more water than they are legally
allowed to, to the detriment of all other users of the river system, and then
the law not being enforced. In the 4 Corners report that exposed the
(mal)practice, there were reports of rivers flowing backwards due to the
amount of water is being sucked out of them.

It's not a state vs. state thing, as even the local NSW communities are
screaming about it. It's a small corrupt group vs. the nation, and it stinks.

------
mattfrommars
From what I've read in the past, it's not the crop is very water intensive,
but rather the technique used to irrigate are water intensive. Take in
comparison, "flood irrigation" vs techniques developed to irrigate in desert
condition using "drip irrigation".

------
spodek
Dozens of high-tech and massive public works solutions.

None address the root problem: population growth. Globally, not just in China.

Everyone will knee-jerk respond about their one-child policy. It doesn't
change that population growth is the root problem and all the other solutions
only enable more population.

The article doesn't even suggest the possibility of lowering the birth rate.
It's long past time we put the topic back into civil discourse.

~~~
sremani
No, population growth is not the biggest problem for China, the median age of
China is about 38 years old, their growth has already petered out. The
population growth problem is right now mostly Africa and South Asia.

China already has less than replacement ration (2.1) child births, what do you
want ? People to not have children?

~~~
spodek
The issue is not what I want.

The issue is that there is not enough water per person.

Efficiency gains and technology will help with the numerator somewhat, though
probably swamped by increased material consumption.

We can talk about the denominator or not, but we probably can't do anything
about it if we don't.

------
smartbit
Beautifull documentairy _Sud eau nord déplacer_ [0] on Nan Shui Bei Diao –
North South Water Transfer [1]

[0]
[https://www.idfa.nl/en/film/34d44e48-0092-4d5e-abdf-d501b524...](https://www.idfa.nl/en/film/34d44e48-0092-4d5e-abdf-d501b5247d6c/south-
to-north-cine-concert) &
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3755604/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3755604/)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Tran...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Transfer_Project)

~~~
tmoneymoney
My family is from near the Danjiangkou reservoir. My family's ancestral land
were flooded in the 1960s to create the reservoir.
[http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/26/ghosts-by-the-water-
line...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/26/ghosts-by-the-water-line-china-
north-south-water-transfer-project-beijing-consequences-chinafile/)

------
mc32
This is quite a feat. It's tunneled under rivers, passes through cities and
travels nearly a thousand miles north.

I do wonder tough, about contamination given floods can easily breach the
levies and in the cities runoff is pretty polluted. And wonder if any gets
syphoned off --unless they have the very long fencing guarded 24x7.

------
jimmywanger
[https://www.amazon.com/Water-Knife-Paolo-Bacigalupi-
ebook/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Water-Knife-Paolo-Bacigalupi-
ebook/dp/B00NRQOR26/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512973178&sr=8-1&keywords=water+knife)

Eerily relevant.

