Water

Vietnam’s Prime Minister has approved a master plan for the building of an extensive drainage and waste water treatment system in residential areas and industrial parks in the Nhue-Day river basin, part of Red rivers system, by 2030.

Two Singapore universities top the world in water research while a set of geographically widespread players are specialized in key subsets of the water space as water efficiency attains global priority.

Following the news on environmental issues here in China can be a grim business. The first months of 2013 alone brought coverage of January’s “airpocalypse,” when air pollution in Beijing reached historic levels; news of thousands of dead pigs floating in the Huangpu River, a primary source of Shanghai’s drinking water; and a new report indicating that China sees 1.2 million premature deaths each year due to outdoor air pollution – almost 40 percent of the world’s total of such deaths. Amid such bleak headlines, it can be easy to miss any kind of progress.

Nepal, India and Bangladesh are to jointly develop and finance hydropower projects in the Ganges river basin while Bhutan, India and Bangladesh have also agreed to co-operate on maximizing hydropower potential of the Brahmaputra Basin.

China has earmarked 1 billion yuan (USD161.5 million) to ramp up the environment at the source of the country’s three biggest rivers.

Following a blessing by the State Council China will move ahead with plans to build three more large-scale reservoirs on its troublesome Yellow River – the country's second-longest.

China’s top five power companies are facing a hefty bill and a potential loss of capacity in order to fit in with the country’s plan to cap total water consumption by 2030, according to a new report. The implication is that, despite plans to build hundreds of new coal-fired power plants, there is simply not enough water to accommodate them in the China’s most populated and economically developed regions. According to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), Huaneng, Datang, Huadian, Guodian, and China Power Investment are heavily exposed to water supply disruptions due to the concentration of their portfolios in moderately to severely water-scarce regions, in particular the dry and industrial northeast.

Beijing’s water resources can supply only 40 percent of the city's population, according to a blue book by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

China’s water resources are increasingly being pitted against economic development, and losing. Water is vital to all aspects of the economy, especially for agricultural and power production, making it a strategic resource. However, China’s position as the world’s factory, and its ‘develop-first clean-up later’ mindset, has resulted in much of its water resources being compromised. This is problematic as the country suffers from a lack of potable water. It has to support 20 percent of the world’s population on only 5 percent of the worlds renewable freshwater and the UN has classified China as one of 13 countries suffering from extreme water shortages.