The contradiction between man and water in urban development is prominent: 111 cities have over-extracted shallow groundwater, and 193 cities have squeezed out water for the ecological environment

The "Urban Blue Book: China Urban Development Report No.14" recently released by the Institute of Ecological Civilization of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Social Science Literature Publishing House recently pointed out that China's water supply structure tends to be reasonable, but there are many problems of overdevelopment and utilization of water resources. In particular, the contradiction between man and water in urban development is prominent, among more than 600 cities in China, there are 111 cities with shallow groundwater over-exploitation, 61 cities that develop and utilize deep groundwater, and 193 cities that squeeze out the ecological environment.

According to the Blue Book, after years of ecological and environmental protection construction, industrial structure adjustment and optimization, and the implementation of water-saving actions, China's water supply structure tends to be reasonable. The annual water consumption in the country is about 600 billion cubic meters, and after reaching the peak in 2013, it showed a slight decline trend, and the total national water consumption in 2020 was 581.29 billion cubic meters. Among them, the water used for agricultural production fell from a peak of 392.15 billion cubic meters in 2013 to 361.24 billion cubic meters in 2020, and the water used for industrial production fell from the highest value of 146.18 billion cubic meters in 2011 to 103.04 billion cubic meters in 2020. Domestic water and ecological water use showed an increasing trend year by year, from 63.09 billion cubic meters and 7.95 billion cubic meters in 2003 to 86.31 billion cubic meters and 30.70 billion cubic meters in 2020, respectively, and the proportion of domestic water consumption and ecological water consumption increased from 11.86% and 1.49% in 2010 to 14.9% and 5.3% in 2020.

However, China has more people and less water, uneven distribution of water resources in time and space, prominent contradictions between supply and demand, difficult to guarantee the ecological flow of some rivers and lakes, and problems such as river interruption and lake shrinkage are still severe, becoming stubborn diseases of the local ecological environment. The development and utilization rate of water resources in the Yellow River, Haihe River, Huaihe River and Liaohe River basins far exceeds the ecological warning line of 40%, and more than 80% of the rivers in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region during the flood season have the phenomenon of drying up and stopping, and the length of dried up rivers accounts for about 1/4. As a coal chemical industry with high water consumption, 80% of the country's enterprises are concentrated in the Yellow River Basin. In 2020, the effective utilization coefficient of farmland irrigation water in China is 0.565, and the water consumption of 10,000 yuan of GDP and 10,000 yuan of industrial added value is 57.2 cubic meters and 32.9 cubic meters, and the water use efficiency is still significantly lower than that of advanced countries.

Taking North China as an example, since the 1970s, North China has begun to exploit groundwater on a large scale, with an annual extraction volume of more than 50 billion cubic meters at most. Compared with 1980, the cumulative over-extraction of groundwater is 180 billion cubic meters, forming the world's largest "funnel area", causing a series of problems such as ground subsidence, lake shrinkage, and ecosystem degradation. According to satellite remote sensing monitoring by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, of the 352 rivers in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in the autumn of 2018, 292 had dried up and stopped flowing, accounting for 83% of the total number of rivers, and dried up and broken rivers accounted for nearly 1/4 of the total length of the river.

For another example, the annual groundwater in the Xiliao River Basin of Inner Mongolia is as high as 1 billion cubic meters, the local main stream has been cut off for a long time, and the reservoirs in the plain area have almost all dried up.

In the water-rich southern region, a large number of chemical enterprises are built near the water, and 30% of the environmental risk enterprises in the Yangtze River Economic Belt are closer to the periphery of drinking water sources, and there are hidden dangers in drinking water safety. The accumulative risk of heavy metals in the mud of rivers and lakes cannot be ignored, and there are potential safety hazards in areas where heavy metal mines such as mining and smelting are concentrated in heavy metal mines in the upper and middle reaches of the Yangtze River and the Pearl River.

In addition, in all river basins across the country, the ability to control new pollutants such as environmental hormones, antibiotics, microplastics and so on is insufficient.

The Blue Book points out that China is one of the countries with the most complex water conditions and the most arduous water control tasks in the world, and the extreme weather brought about by global climate change in the future will greatly increase China's urban and rural water control tasks. At the same time, the actual needs of high-quality development in the era of ecological civilization and the high-quality life of the people also put forward higher requirements for urban and rural water management in the new era. The Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the goal of "basically achieving the goal of a beautiful China" by 2035, water is the material basis and component element for China to promote the construction of ecological civilization, and the river basin is the spatial carrier and basic unit for building a beautiful China. Therefore, the reform of ecological civilization needs to be further deepened, and the water ecological environment governance system of the overall synergy of above ground and underground, land and sea needs to be improved. Water ecological protection and restoration has just started, and monitoring and early warning capabilities need to be strengthened. The relevant laws, regulations, standards and norms for the protection of the water ecological environment still need to be further improved, and the water ecological environment management and control system in the river basin needs to be further improved. Economic policies, scientific and technological support, publicity and education, and capacity building need to be further strengthened.

Column Editor-in-Chief: Fan Jianghong Text Editor: Fan Jianghong Caption Source: Figureworm Creative Photo Editor: Xiang Jianying

Source: Author: Fan Jianghong