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Page added on March 10, 2012
The Water Sector
We’d like to start you off here with some statistics about China. And H2O.
China accounts for 30% of the world’s population but has only 7% of the world’s freshwater supply.
Since 2008, China has added more than 50 million people. Stop for a moment and think about that.
That’s like adding two Australias. Or ten Greeces. In just a few years!
While China has been adding these people to its population, the freshwater resources available to this expanding population have dropped by over 11%. There’s a danger for China that their annual consumption of 600 billion cubic meters will leave a deficit of more than 200 million cubic meters by 2030. The government has taken note of this. According to a current article in China Daily, the government’s Ministry of Water Resources says that it will invest more than US$22B on water conservancy projects this year alone – and a stunning 1.8 trillion yuan (US$190 billion) by 2015 (again, in just a few years).
That’s a lot of projects – and loads of project managers, who are best off understanding sustainability issues from the ground (water) up.
Take desalination as an example. Another article in the same issue of China Daily says that current capacity for desalination in China is 660,000 cubic meters. By 2015, that number is planned to increase to 2.6 million cubic meters, nearly quadrupling their capability.
Opportunity abounds. Here is a snippet from the article:
Private equity and venture capital firms have been spearheading the “green gold” rush in China. PE and VC investment in China’s water sector has surged more than nine times to $406 million in 2011 from $44.16 million in 2010, according to consultancy firm China Venture.
“In terms of the water sector, China is not one of our company’s priorities in the world. It is our top priority,” says Jorge Mora, Asia CEO of Veolia Environmental Services.
“There is no country in the world that would have sustainable development without water. If you don’t have enough water, it affects every aspect of your life. Your GDP growth and your development can be challenged or even stopped due to a severe shortage of water,” Mora says.
The problem with water in China is exacerbated by the huge manufacturing industry there. Often, and as recently as January, 2012, water pollution incidents take place that don’t even make the news in the West.
For example:
According to China’s Ministry of Water Resources, as many as 300 million people in China’s rural areas lack access to safe drinking water. Ma Jun, whose environmental organization has been naming and shaming water polluters in China, says that about one-third of the water that is consumed in the urban areas are supplied by impure water sources in China. Ma says the number of companies that illegally emit wastewater in rivers and lakes in China has increased from 2,500 in 2006 to about 60,000.
The most recent case of water pollution: an estimated 20 metric tons of cadmium was discharged by a mining company in the Longjiang River in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Jan 15, with cadmium content 80 times higher than the prescribed safe limits.
Check out this video by futurist Patrick Dixon, who covers the China water problem and beyond.
Not good. Not good at all. On the other hand – it’s a big opportunity for growth.
And folks – this is just about China, whose water problems are obviously gigantic. But have a look at the map at the top of the posting. It’s not just China. Water resource problems are global.
The opportunity for project managers is immense – in line with the problems outlined above. Get smart about sustainability, project managers – within your own projects, and about sustainability in general. The demand, as does water, will seek its own level. And that level will be high.
10 Comments on "The Water Sector"
Kenz300 on Sat, 10th Mar 2012 5:38 pm
Too many people and too few resources.
We have a water crisis, a food crisis, an oil crisis, a fish stocks crisis, a financial crisis, a jobs crisis and an over population crisis. Every problem is made harder to solve with the worlds growing population. The world added a billion people in the last 12 years. Where will all the resources come from to support this massive population?
Lisa on Sat, 10th Mar 2012 5:57 pm
Wrong. Too many people using too much water. There are an estimated quadrillion ants in the world at any given time – why is that not a problem? Because they are not using a lot of resources. 500 million people would be a problem if those people had a resource consumption 10-fold that of an average American.
Bob Owens on Sat, 10th Mar 2012 6:15 pm
For the past 50 years the Green Revolution has allowed us to feed everyone. Did we bother to get our population numbers under control? Hell NO! It won’t happen in the future either. No mater how many water projects we develop. Humans are basically stupid. Wake up!
dsula on Sat, 10th Mar 2012 11:38 pm
>> Humans are basically stupid
I’m not. I proposed at a local town meeting to use the nukes that were so expensive to build and reduce the world population instead of sending more food aid.
They just stared at me.
SimplifyIt on Sun, 11th Mar 2012 12:25 am
dsula: You must be Dick Cheney’s golfing buddy.
sunweb on Sun, 11th Mar 2012 12:36 am
This related. I think some followers of this site would be interested the set up for a well that can be done manually (by 7 year old small boy) and has very little to go wrong with it. It is pictured in the cited URL and starts as below:
If you have your own well, I can tell you how I have had my wells. Below you see a farm pump set up that is operated by hand. At the bottom is a cylinder that is the actual pumping part.
With images: http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/11/onthewaydown-1.html
Kenz300 on Sun, 11th Mar 2012 12:40 am
Every country needs to move toward a path of sustainability. There needs to be a balance between population, water, food, energy and jobs. There are countries of the middle east where the unemployment rate of young people is 40%. This is a recipe for disaster. Overpopulation will only lead to more poverty, suffering and despair as resources and jobs become scarce. Over population is the elephant in the room.
Norm on Sun, 11th Mar 2012 3:08 am
Dsula is on the right track. :o) There are 2 categories of people, smart & stupid. The out of control population growth is due to people so stupid, they dont know what group they are in. They are incapable of reading this type of news article but they breed exponentially.
Solution is to put Bush Jr back in the white house, he will take the last of the jobs & money from the middle class, and then they will be too poor to feed their offspring.
BillT on Sun, 11th Mar 2012 3:27 am
Ah, but…Mormons are not stupid (not much at least) and they have huge families…as do Catholics…as do Muslims. Maybe it is religion and not stupidity that has lead to our over population? Even now, the Catholic Church is fighting the Philippine government that wants to make family planning part of the education system and to give out condoms to the poor. In how many other countries does the Catholic Church also promote breeding?
Yes, we have too many people, but the problem is we have 5% of the world;s population using 30% of the world’s resources…the US of A. We are a spoiled people and need to downgrade our resource use to 5% not 30%.
Carl on Sun, 11th Mar 2012 1:41 pm
BillT–I know that it is fashionable in some circles to always blast the USA but look at the water scarcity map attached to the article. No where in North America is there such a shortage. Those that exist politically (such as the diversion of the Colorado River to golf courses in Las Vegas or Rice paddies in California are largely political problems that will be resolved.
The key is that unlike China and many othet devloping countries th USA is comparatively lightly populated–and except for immigration not growing—unlike most of the developinf world. Moreover our water supplies are basically quite clean–and getting cleaner with EPA regulations. So unless you propose that the USA export water to China this particular concern seems misplaced