The Challenge of Managing Groundwater Sustainably: Case Study of Tianjin, China

Economic growth has produced great benefits for China, but it has also given rise to mounting environmental problems that threaten the country's sustainable development. Managing groundwater resources effectively is crucial because of the integral role of water in daily life, the economy, and the environment. The situation of water scarcity in China is severe, especially in the northern part, where unchecked exploitation of groundwater has resulted in problems such as dropping water tables, declining infiltration, expanding areas of land subsidence, intrusion of seawater, and salinization of the soil. The amount of water available per capita is only one-quarter the world average and is predicted to drop to severe stress conditions by mid-century. In the late 1990s, there were 3.6 million wells in the northern municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin and the provinces of Henan and Shandong, with most of the water used for crop irrigation. In 1997, however, 99,900 wells were abandoned because they had run dry, and 221,900 new ones were drilled. Deep wells drilled around Beijing now have to go as far down as 1,000 meters to reach fresh water, which is dramatically increasing the cost of water supply. Added to this is the occurrence of widespread land subsidence and concerns about water quality. Among the efforts made to respond to the problem, the Tianjin municipal government was able to increase the industrial waterrecycling rate from 40 percent in the 1980s to 74 percent in the 1990s by implementing water conservation measures, and water withdrawals per yuan of industrial production went down by one-third as a result. And in order to protect groundwater resources and control ground subsidence, besides setting quotas, the government set the price of groundwater in 2002 at 1.90 yuan per cubic meter (m3) and 1.30 yuan per m3 in areas with no tap water service, compared to the previous 0.5 yuan per m3. This paper explores some issues of sustainable groundwater management on the basis of a case study of Tianjin. It provides an overview of the severe imbalance between water supply and demand, and then analyzes policies and socioeconomic backgrounds related to groundwater management, such as institutional framework, management policies, population growth and urbanization, as well as the pricing of water.

Remarks:

http://pub.iges.or.jp/modules/envirolib/view.php?docid=445
Full text is available on EBSCOhost database: http://www.ebscohost.com/