Water Pollution in China Fresh

Water Pollution in China

Fresh water is the most important natural resource for human beings second only to oxygen. The average person requires approximately five gallons of water per day for drinking and bathing to maintain minimum acceptable standards of living with respect to normal metabolic and other biological functions and hygiene (Schulte, 2007).

However, more than one billion people out of six billion plus worldwide lack adequate access to clean drinking water and almost half of the entire global population lack access to enough water for essential sanitation.

The global shortage of clean, safe drinking water and basic sanitation is associated with a tremendously elevated incidence of human disease, mortality at every age group, infants in particular (Schulte, 2007).

Future estimates from acknowledged scientific authorities and multinational governing organizations like the United Nations includes dire predictions that the situation caused by overuse of available water resources for commercial purposes and unregulated pollution of natural water sources could become critical in the second decade of the 21st century (Barber, 2007).

In that regard, dozens of countries in the African and Asian continents are facing ever-increasing fresh water shortages that is substantially attributable to reduced rainfall caused by aspects of global warming and shifting population demographics, respectively. (Barber, 2007). Similarly, throughout India, extensive populations living in poverty have absolutely no access to fresh drinking water at all and must rely on perpetual supply of water transported over land by truck, and a at a premium price that makes minimum acceptable levels of health and hygiene impossible to sustain.

Even industrialized nations like the United States are facing imminent water shortages throughout several Southeastern and Western states. However, some of the most unfortunate examples of water shortage anywhere in the inhabited world are occurring across China. What makes the situation even more unfortunate than its number of victims is the degree to which, unlike the rest of the world, fresh water shortages in China are preventable because man-made industrial pollution is their primary cause (Zhang, 2006). Pollution and Water Resource Issues in China:

Certainly, several elements of Chinese geography and population density distribution contribute to delicate circumstances in connection with water resource issues.

Namely, while China's population accounts for one-fifth of the entire global population, it has only a little more than one-twentieth of its natural water supply. Moreover, the majority of natural fresh water resources are geographically inaccessible to the majority of the Chinese population

Consequently, as many as 170 million Chinese living in approximately half of all of the country's cities currently suffer from acute water shortages. Nevertheless, until the influence of post-industrial revolution commercial evolution, China was not experiencing significant water shortages despite epidemic poverty levels and even starvation periods (Schulte, 2007).

In the second half of the 20th century in particular, large regions of China became part of global commercial enterprises but unlike in the Western World's major water resources, essentially without any effective regulation of pollution. Seventy percent of all of China's river and lake water has already been severely polluted as well as half of all of its groundwater. As a result, by the dawn of the twenty first century, almost three- quarters of a billion Chinese have no choice but to drink water contaminated with man- made pollutants, much of which is from waste products known to be toxic, even potentially deadly, to human beings (Zhang, 2006). The fact that most of China's water comes from two main eat-west rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow Rivers, contributed to the over-saturation of commercial industrial plants along concentrated regions near the two rivers. Just in the petrochemical industries alone, almost three-quarters of China's 20,000 industrial chemical facilities are situated on the banks of these two primary water sources; of those, 2,000 are located in heavily populated areas or at direct sources of drinking water (Zhang, 2006). The current count stands at 2,500 individual polluting entities include several of the country's largest food and automobile manufacturers and industrial factories (Zhang, 2006). Industrial factories in China currently account for as much as 60 billion tons of wastewater and raw sewage dumped directly into lakes and rivers annually (Pacific Environment, 2006).

The Chinese government failed to acknowledge the extent of the water pollution (and consequent water shortage) until 2005, when it was forced to after violent protests resulted from a large petrochemical plant explosion in Northeastern China that released 100 tons of benzene into the Songhua River. In the year following that incident, China's State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) announced a five-year plan to address the widespread water pollution issues, committing a budget of 125 billion dollars to that national effort (Pacific Environment, 2006). In 2006 alone, the SEPA responded to 161 emergency environmental pollution incidents, almost two-thirds of which pertained to water pollution (China Daily, 2008).

Solving the Water Pollution Problem in China:

According to Ke Zhang (2006), a senior journalist with China Business Network Daily, Chinese environmental authorities report that "one water pollution incident takes place every two to three days, on average." Most experts agree that the key to addressing the water pollution problem in China lies in increasing law enforcement efforts and penalties for offending entities. Toward that end, the government has initiated a country- wide database designed to identify all pollution sources attributable to violations of environmental regulations (Pacific Environment, 2006).

In June 2008, the highest national legislative authorities passed the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law was passed at the 32nd session of the Standing Committee of the Tenth National People's Congress (NPC), held in February 2008. That law is composed of ninety-two provisions in eight chapters and includes much harsher fines in conjunction with legislative statements indicating a substantial change from previous governmental approaches relying primarily on administrative fines. According to the 2008 Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law:

Enterprise heads directly responsible for causing severe water pollution incidents and others with direct responsibility will be fined up to half of their income of the previous year,"

Enterprises would be held responsible for 30% of the direct losses of any serious water pollution incident they cause and 20% for incidents of medium consequences," and the amount of fines should be imposed according to the severity of violations..." (China Daily, 2008).

Critics of the Chinese government's previous failure to address the water pollution problem acknowledge that the new regulations are a substantial, if overdue, first necessary step toward protecting the safety, health and welfare of as many as 700 million Chinese citizens. Local authorities have also gone on record strongly encouraging both the reporting of water pollution violations and also strongly encouraging practicing attorneys to provide as much assistance as possible to citizens in connection with filing law suits for civil monetary damages caused by corporate practices that violate the new law or that have already caused pollution-related illness and damages (China Daily, 2008).