China Is Weaponizing Water And Worsening Droughts Across Asia

[Swordsmyth]

Asia, the world's driest continent in per capita terms, remains the center of dam construction, with more than half of the 50,000 large dams across the globe. The hyperactivity on dams has only sharpened local and international disputes over the resources of shared rivers and aquifers.



The focus on dams reflects a continuing preference for supply-side approaches, which entail increased exploitation of water resources, as opposed to pursuing demand-side solutions, such as smart water management and greater water-use efficiency. As a result, nowhere is the geopolitics over dams murkier than in Asia, the world's most dam-dotted continent.
Improving the hydropolitics demands institutionalized cooperation, transparency on projects, water-sharing arrangements and dispute-resolution mechanisms. Asia can build a harmonious, rules-based water management regime only if China gets on board. At least for now, that does not seem likely.
Last summer, water levels in continental Southeast Asia's lifeline, the 4,880-kilometer Mekong River, fell to their lowest in more than 100 years, even though the annual monsoon season stretches from late May to late September. Yet, after completing 11 mega-dams, China is building more upstream dams on the Mekong, which originates on the Tibetan Plateau. Indeed, Beijing is also damming other transnational rivers.
China is central to Asia's water map. Thanks to its annexation of the water-rich Tibetan Plateau and the sprawling Xinjiang province, China is the starting point of rivers that flow to 18 downstream countries. No other country in the world serves as the riverhead for so many countries.
By erecting dams, barrages and other water diversion structures in its borderlands, China is creating an extensive upstream infrastructure that arms it with the capacity to weaponize water.
To be sure, dam-building is also roiling relations elsewhere in Asia. The festering territorial disputes over Kashmir and Central Asia's Ferghana Valley are as much about water as they are about land. Across Asia, states are jockeying to control shared water resources by building dams, even as they demand transparency and information on their neighbors' projects.
A serious drought presently parching parts of the vast region extending from Australia to the Indian peninsula has underscored the mounting risks from the pursuit of dam-centered engineering solutions to growing freshwater shortages.
Asia's densely populated regions already face a high risk that their water stress could worsen to water scarcity. The dam-driven water competition is threatening to also provoke greater tensions and conflict.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...ts-across-asia

[Swordsmyth]

China aims to double the amount of water it transfers from the flood-prone south to arid northern regions, officials said on Thursday, as the government prepares to launch the second phase of its controversial cross-country water diversion scheme.The South-North Water Diversion Project was first proposed in 1952 to ease flooding in the south and drought in the north, but critics say its costs are too high and the diversion of polluted water to other regions could contaminate other lakes and rivers.
The first phase of the project, completed five years ago, linked the Yangtze and Yellow rivers through two main routes in eastern and central China, with another, more challenging route in the far west still to come.
Preliminary work is now underway on the second phase, which will raise annual delivery capacity from 8.77 billion cubic metres to 16.5 billion cubic metres, said Shi Chunxian, head of the planning office of the Ministry of Water Resources.
Shi told reporters that phase II would supply the provinces of Anhui and Shandong as well as regions around Beijing, adding that China will make full use of existing infrastructure to minimise the expansion's environmental impact.
The project has so far delivered a total of almost 30 billion cubic metres of water to the north in five years, supplying 120 million people, vice-water minister Zhang Youguang told the briefing.
However, though 345,000 have been relocated to make way for the project, critics say it doesn't address China's problems, including excess water consumption from industrial consumers as well as leaky urban pipeline systems.

Construction has also begun on an "emergency" extension that will divert another 490 million cubic metres of water a year to Beijing and surrounding regions. Beijing already relies on the project for 70% of supplies and that could rise to 95%.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/china-aims-do...040934198.html