Inter Press Service
September 8, 2006

China will be looking to the 5th World Water Congress, held in Beijing Sep. 10-14, to tap the latest technology and attract more foreign participation in its water industry.

Beijing: When the World Water Congress convenes this weekend in Asia for the first time, the choice of the Chinese capital would be nothing but befitting. The 1.3 billion people of the world’s most populous country have at their disposal only a quarter of the water per person that is available on average around the world. But China’s water woes go far beyond the scarcity of water resources. Pollution has left nearly half of the water in China’s rivers suitable only for agricultural and industrial use, making fresh drinking water a luxury for many of China’s 800 million peasants. It would cost China about 136 billion US dollars, close to 7 percent of its GDP, to clean up all the pollution pumped into the country’s environment just in 2004. Most of the money has to be put towards water pollution, announced the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), this week. “These are figures that are extremely alarming, and show the environmental situation is very serious,” Pan Yue, head of the national environmental protection watchdog, said in the SEPA report, released Sep. 7. China will be looking to the 5th World Water Congress, held in Beijing Sep. 10-14, to tap the latest technology and attract more foreign participation in its water industry. Foreign investment in the water sector currently accounts for only 10 percent of the total, but Beijing hopes to raise this drastically.