Water plays an important role in our lives. All living things need water to live. 70% of the earth’s surface is water. Most of the water is salt water that is less likely to be used in our daily life. Less than 2% of earth’s water is freshwater that can be utilized by humans (Western Upper Peninsula Center for Science, Mathematics and Envorimental Education & Sustainable Futures Institute). Hence, freshwater resources are very limited. Moreover, such water resources are not evenly distributed across the areas. For instance, in China, north region only has 5% of the fresh water resources which supports around 40% of the population. Moreover, water is increasingly scarce in China due to population growth and rapid industrialization during the past decades. It is inevitable that total water use will grow along with China’s economy while the water scarcity is getting more severe, and therefore, the topic of water use and conservation is worth of discussing.
In this paper, I will discuss China’s water use and conservation with a focus on industrial sectors and will come up with an intervention program with its evaluation. Basically, the body of the paper can be divided into three parts as follows: background and policy issue, my intervention program, and the evaluation of the program.
Background and Policy Issue
China has largest population around the world. In recent years, the water demand has grown rapidly to 4.13*1012m3 while the overall supply of water in China keeps falling every year. Based on climate scientists’ estimation, China’s total water supply drops by more than 90 trillion gallons annually (Cho, 2011). More than 450 cities in China suffer severe water shortages problems. The problem has been getting increasingly sever...
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...rences or changes are statistically significant. Multiple regression analysis will be conducted to test the cause-effect relationship between the program outcome variables and financial incentives of the program.
5) Summarize the findings and make a conclusion
6) Feedback to Program Improvement
Lastly, after reviewing the findings and results, we can make some recommendations about the program. If the program does not reach my expectation, extra questions should be asked to diagnose the failure of the program such as “Are the subsidies, grants and refunds appropriate that the companies are willing to adopt the water recycling?” and “Is the study time long enough to spot any changes and effects of the program?”
Benefit-Cost Analysis
Before discussing Benefit-Cost Analysis in detail, the basic steps and the framework of Benefit-Cost Analysis are shown in Figure 1.
China economy has been falling for many years. Part of this downfall is lack of clean water. You know this, but know one in this world can’t live without water ,so that means water is very important. Climate change, Industrialization, and Government policy all contribute to the chinese water crisis. Of these, the biggest driver is the government policy. The government in China has a strict policy that does not allow the people to have water because China is not using enough money for their water.
It is true that there are factors contributing to China’s water scarcity, such as a bad government policy. However, the three biggest causes of China’s water-scarcity crisis are population growth, global warming, and especially industry. It is important because
Introduction on Water It covers 70% of our planet, makes up 75% of our body, it is necessary for survival and it is declining at a rapid rate (http://www.sscwd.org). It is water. Unfortunately, clean water is rare, almost 1 billion people in developing countries do not have access to water everyday. “Yet, we take it for granted, we waste it, and we even pay too much to drink it from little plastic bottles” (The Water Project). Use of earth’s natural resources should be seen as prosperity, although it is taken for granted, every aspect of daily life revolves around the environment, forcing water conservation to be necessary for future on this planet.
Water shortage is a growing problem for most countries in the world. For China, which has 20% of world’s population and only 7% of available water resources, this problem may become catastrophic (Hofstedt 2010, 72). Therefore some actions and measures should be performed to avoid or at least to weaken future water crisis in China. In this work the following three solutions will be proposed and analyzed in terms of efficiency and applicability: water usage efficiency improvement; adopting the local agencies on controlling water resources; reasonable water pricing.
Fourthly, water waste worsens water scarcity. Water is cheap in China by international standard which is much cheaper than its real cost. Industry uses 4 to 10 time more water per units of production than the average in industrialized nations. Since the price is low, people do not save the water. Also, water leakage in water distribution networks is seriously in China. The total loss of 5 × 106 m3 of water per year (Chen et al., 2008). It also leads to water
Over the past fifty years, the U.S. population has doubled in size. During this time, total water usage per person has almost tripled. Since the end of World War II, there has been a steady increase of people moving out of rural areas and into cities. As a result, the domestic self-supplied population has greatly decreased and the need for public-water supply systems has intensified. These factors, in conjunction with certain economic trends, precipitation, and global climate changes, pose difficult challenges in the years to come.
Xinhua. "Record Rainfall Replenishes Beijing Water Supplies." Xinhua. N.p., 23 July 2012. Web. 1 Apr. 2014. .
Caused by climate change and urbanization, water shortages are a major concern of the Mexican government at both the local and federal level. Mexico City, the third largest city in the world with more than twenty million inhabitants, struggles with water scarcity because of the potential risk it poses to the wellbeing of its citizens. Similar to the situation in other megacities, such as Jakarta and Bangkok, Mexico City’s water supplies are being depleted because of a growing urban population. (CBC News , 2009 ) Unable to sufficiently supply the increasing population size of the city, the water in the Mexico Valley aquifer is being drawn out faster than the aquifer’s recharge rate. Exacerbated by the fragmented nature of Mexico’s political culture, the exploitation of Mexico City’s water resources due to a growing urban population is detrimentally degrading the environment and creating a self-perpetuating problem that places the city and its inhabitants at risk.
Cost-benefit analyses help us to decide whether to undertake a project or decide which of several projects to undertake, look at the objectives of the project, identify before and after actions of the success of the project and look at the estimates of the resources required to carry out the project.
Developing our national economy, especially industry, requires a great amount of natural resources, such as land, water, oil, coal, gas and iron. However, the natural resources are limited and decline very quickly when a large population exploits them everyday. Take fresh water as an example, in 1990, 58% of Chinese cities (http://www.cass.net.cn/y_sjr/y_cn_sjr_334.htm) suffered from the insufficiency of water. It not only brings great disadvantages to people's daily life, but also has a passive influence on the economic development. Released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the economic loss caused by the insufficiency of water is 250 billion RMB per year, including 230 billion lost industrial output and 20 billion agricultural losses.
Freshwater in the world makes up only a small portion of the water on the planet. While the percentage of water in the world is nearly 70%, only 2.5% is consumable. Even further, only 1% is easily accessible to basic human needs. According to National Geographic, “by 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will live in areas plagued by water scarcity, with two-thirds of the world's population living in water-stressed regions as a result of use, growth, and climate change.” With this current trend, water will become more immersed in environmental, economic, political, and social changes.
Freshwater is quite scarce, but it is even scarcer than one might think: about seventy percent of all freshwater is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland and is unavailable to humans. Most of the remainder is present as soil moisture or lies in deep underground aquifers as groundwater. It is not economically feasible to extract this waster for use as drinking water. This leaves less than one percent of the world’s fresh water that is available to humans. It includes the water found in lakes, reservoirs, groundwater that is shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost. These freshwater sources are the only sources that are frequently replenished by rain and snowfall, and therefore are renewable. At the current rates of consumption, however, this supply of fresh water will not last. Pollution and contamination of freshwater sources exacerbate the problem, further reducing the amount of freshwater available for human consumption. Something must be done if humans want to even survive in the near future: the lack of clean drinking water is already the number one cause of disease in the world today. The first step is worldwide awareness of the water crisis: governments and the citizens they govern worldwide need to know about this problem and be actively involved in solving this problem.
One main causes of water scarcity is water mismanagement worldwide. Water mismanagement has become a crisis of governance that will impact heavily ...
“Water is the lifeblood of this planet. Every time a good is bought or sold there is a virtual exchange of water. Every time we interact with water, we change it, redirect it, or otherwise alter its state. We have never learned how to efficiently manage water.”(Cluckie, 2009) Ian Cluckie, Professor of Hydrology and Water Management, emphasizes the fact that humans can’t survive without water. Although water is a renewable resource that can replenish under hydrological cycles, our intervention has interrupted its natural cycle causing its supply to decrease.(Cluckie, 2009)
Cherain, T., Unni, K., and Sophie, L. 2010. China – India water shortage. Bloomberg News. http://www.grailresearch.com/pdf/ContenPodsPdf/Water-The_India_Story.pdf (accessed November 1, 2010).