Impact of China’s impending water catastrophe will be felt around the world

“China can print money, but it cannot print water.” This remark by Charlie Parton, a former British diplomat, highlights a dramatic series of problems for that country’s economic and social life presented by prolonged drought and water shortages this summer.

It shares these problems with parts of India, Europe, the US, eastern and southern Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. They are identified in the theme of this year’s World Water Week in Stockholm, “Seeing the unseen: the value of water”. Groundwater and soil moisture are two of its big concerns.

Recent research shows that when this “green water” is properly quantified, water becomes the sixth of nine processes to have crossed the sustainability threshold set out in the planetary boundaries framework – a concept identifying processes that have remained remarkably steady in the Earth system over the last 11,700 years.

These include a relatively stable global climate and an intact biosphere which have allowed civilisations based on agriculture to thrive. Researchers say each process has a boundary that, once crossed, puts the Earth system, or substantial components of it, at risk of upset.

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‘Potential water-driven disruptions beginning in China will reverberate around the world’, inducing food and industrial materials shortages on a far greater scale than the Covid-19 and Ukraine emergencies

Parton’s remark is quoted in a graphic account of China’s water crisis in the latest issue of the US policy journal Foreign Affairs by Gabriel Collins and Gopal Reddy. They argue that the country is “on the brink of a water catastrophe”. And because of its overriding importance to the global economy, “potential water-driven disruptions beginning in China will reverberate around the world”, inducing food and industrial materials shortages on a far greater scale than the Covid-19 and Ukraine emergencies.

Northern and southern China are affected by the water shortages. The production of corn, rice and wheat has been maximised on the North China Plain over the past four decades to promote self-sufficiency, with groundwater being pumped from aquifers at a rate far faster than nature can replenish it. Huge transfers of water to the north from the Yangtse River system do not compensate for the loss.

And now droughts are also affecting the southwest, where many international firms such as Toyota, Foxcomm and Tesla are located. The Yangtse system is drying up, affecting their production and supply chains. And because China relies so much on hydropower for energy, there is a compound effect on supply of energy to factories, and on air conditioning.

This week has seen several important initiatives by regional governments to mitigate these problems in food supply and industry – including a return to coal fired energy plants. Longer-term technical supply-side solutions including desalinisation, reseeding clouds or greater use of Tibetan or Russian water; all have cost and feasibility problems. Behavioural changes in agriculture and consumer uses of water will take time and pose difficult political choices as the era of cheap water comes to an end.

Shared with India

Many of China’s groundwater and soil moisture problems are shared with India, where agriculture employs 40 per cent of the population and many aquifers are nearing exhaustion. Conflicts between these two nuclear-armed states and with Pakistan loom from their common reliance on the Himalayan plateau for water supplies. There is little evidence they are interested in common and shared solutions to climate breakdown effects on those supplies.

Water can no longer be treated as unseen, undervalued or casually appropriated by intensive agriculture and fast fashion

In Europe this summer there have been similar effects of drought on river systems, food production and supply chains. Water levels on the Rhine are down dramatically, affecting barge traffic and their loads in Germany, Switzerland and the Benelux countries. Likewise the Po in Italy is parched, while parts of the Iberian Peninsula face encroaching desertification. In England, most water areas have declared a drought and there is a rapidly developing political row about how water privatisation has affected quality and supplies.

That water is a public good and should be so treated by policymakers and citizens is a strong theme in the Stockholm World Water Week. It is a central factor in the climate crisis. Water can no longer be treated as unseen, undervalued or casually appropriated by intensive agriculture and fast fashion using and polluting huge volumes of water. Globalised trade systems privilege the rich world by separating production and consumption of water-based vegetables and clothes.

We can no longer take water for granted.