China: The South–North Water Transfer Project—is it justified?

Abstract

The South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP), if fully developed, could divert 40-50 km3/yr from the Yangtse basin to the North China plain, alleviating water scarcity for 300-325M people living in what even then will be a highly water-stressed region. Construction of the next stage, diverting up to 20 km3 at a cost of about $17,000M (including $7000M in ancillary costs), is to start in 2002/3. A recent World Bank study suggests that the project is economically attractive. This conclusion has been disputed by the World Wildlife Fund (now the Worldwide Fund for Nature). This paper concludes that little confidence can be placed in either of these analyses. It therefore seeks to throw light on how the project fits within a broader regional and agricultural development setting. The project is hugely expensive, and would at the margin tend to preserve water in low value agriculture and require the resettlement of upwards of 300,000 people. On the other hand, the pace and scale of socio-economic change in China are without precedent, and adjustment problems on the North China plain are greatly exacerbated by water scarcity. Reallocation of water from irrigation to municipal and industrial uses or to the environment is socially divisive and in some instances physically impracticable. The transfer project would greatly alleviate these difficulties. It is these arguments (which are ultimately political and pragmatic), rather than those based strictly on economic or food security concerns, that make the Government's decision to proceed with the project fully understandable.

Towards groundwater neutral cropping systems in the Alluvial Fans of the North China Plain

“…Future external water input may come from the South to North Water Transfer (SNWT) Project (Berkoff 2003;Cao et al, 2013;Yang et al, 2010). This $62 billion project aims at diverting water from the southern Danjiangkou reservoir through the NCP to Being through a 1264 km long canal.…”

The potential impact of an inter-basin water transfer project on nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorous) and chlorophyll a of the receiving water system

“…To alleviate water shortage problems in arid regions and promote development, a number of inter-basin water transfer projects have been launched in Australia, United States, Canada, China and India (Ghassemi and White, 2007), such as the Central Valley Project (Dunning, 1993), the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric scheme (Erskine et al, 1999), the Great Lakes Basin diversions (Becker and Easter, 1997) and the Southto-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) (Berkoff, 2003). Any interbasin water transfer system can result in complex physical, chemical, hydrological and biological implications for the receiving system (Davies et al, 1992).…”

Bioassessment of a Drinking Water Reservoir Using Plankton: High Throughput Sequencing vs. Traditional Morphological Method

“…Its drainage area includes the upper Hanjiang and Danjiang rivers, with a total area of 95,000 km 2 ( Figure 1). The Danjiangkou Reservoir has a variety of functions, such as flood control, electricity generation, irrigation, shipping and drinking water supply [36][37][38]. practices.…”

“…With uneven water distribution, the North China Plain is highly water-stressed, while water resources are relatively more abundant in the south [5,36,37]. Based on the strategic demands for China's regional sustainable development, the Chinese government has launched the South-North Water Diversion (SNWD) Project to transfer water from the Yangtze River and its tributaries to the more arid and industrialized North China Plain [36][37][38].…”

“…With uneven water distribution, the North China Plain is highly water-stressed, while water resources are relatively more abundant in the south [5,36,37]. Based on the strategic demands for China's regional sustainable development, the Chinese government has launched the South-North Water Diversion (SNWD) Project to transfer water from the Yangtze River and its tributaries to the more arid and industrialized North China Plain [36][37][38]. As the largest drinking water source in China [38], affecting more than 53 million people in Beijing and other receiving-water regions, the water quality in the Danjiangkou Reservoir, source water for the middle route of the SNWD, is required to be in good quality, be stable long-term, be continuously improved, and be able to adapt to further changes such as climate, and hence the establishment of a continuous ecological monitoring database on the reservoir is particularly important.…”