LeakBird

(March 22, 2009, GreenCarCongress)
Xinhua. North China’s Hebei Province, the major water supplier to Beijing, has over-extracted its groundwater, causing major subsidence according to a water conservancy official.
“Water shortage has become a big problem facing the province’s social and economic development,” Li Qinglin, director of Hebei’s water conservancy department, told a forum marking the 17th World [...]

(March 9, 2009, Reuters)
From cotton farms to factories that make high-tech computer chips, companies face huge risks from droughts like those searing California and Australia and that recently parched the U.S. Southeast.
Climate scientists say droughts will become more common as higher temperatures evaporate water supplies and overuse drain aquifers faster than they can be replenished [...]

I think that David Zetland is onto the zeitgeist, only it hasn’t happened yet. What do I mean, or what is Mr. Zetland saying essentially?
Price water according to its scarcity, and water shortages will become a thing of the past.
This is the axe we hear Mr. Zetland grinding again and again, and it appears that [...]

(March 10, 2009, China Daily)
The authorities need to push ahead with a price hike, reflecting accurately the growing shortage of water in China and help plug further depletion of the resource, an official has said.
“We must set up a rational water pricing system adapted to the country’s severe shortage of water. So some cities will [...]

(March 8, 2009, The Fresno Bee)
It is China’s latest grand attempt to tame nature. Three canals will bring water hundreds of miles to Beijing and other thirsty cities in the north. More than 350,000 people in the way will be forced to move.
For many in Zhangyigang, a village of 942 people in brick and mud [...]

(Feb. 26, 2009, Ceres)
Global climate change is exacerbating water scarcity problems around the world, yet few businesses and investors are paying attention to this growing financial threat, according to a report issued today by Ceres and the Pacific Institute.
Water is crucial for the global economy – driving every industry from agriculture to electric power to [...]

(Feb. 16, 2009, Tara Lohan, The Nation)
If you’ve read anything about the global water crisis, you’ve likely read a quote from Dr. Peter Gleick, founder and president of the Pacific Institute, and one of the world’s leading water experts. His name has become as ubiquitous as drought itself, which is suddenly making major headlines. [...]

(Feb. 20, 2009, TimesOnline)
A carpet of snow blanketing the Forbidden City and the ancient halls and courtyards of the Lama Temple has transformed China’s capital into a fairyland. Hundreds have played truant from offices to sneak a peak of the first snowfall of the winter.
But nature has been given a helping hand. The heavy snowfalls [...]

(Feb. 17, 2009, CentralAsia, ForeignPolicyBlogs)
In contrast to its neighboring countries with vast oil and gas resources, Tajikistan has the most important resource in the world; large reserves of fresh water. Some of this water is now being used for a single dam, the Nurek, which provides the country’s electricity. Unfortunately, the dam alone cannot provide [...]

(Feb. 15, 2009, Jack Rosebro, Green Car Congress)
Xinhua. Faced with widespread drought and water shortages, China’s Water Resources Minister Chen Lei has announced a national goal of reducing the country’s water use, as measured by the amount of water used per unit of GDP, to about 55% of current consumption by 2020. The target is [...]

(Feb. 15, 2009, Reuters)
China, faced with widespread water shortages exacerbated by its worst drought in decades, aims to cut the amount of water it uses to produce each dollar of national income by 60 percent by 2020, state media said.
The target, unveiled by Water Resources Minister Chen Lei, underlines Beijing’s growing concern over chronic water [...]

(Feb. 12, 2009, The Economist)
AS CHINA’S 15-day lunar new year holiday began, Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, was in the plush Swiss resort of Davos, hobnobbing with other global powerbrokers. Towards the end of the holiday on February 8th, he appeared in a very different setting. Sporting a pair of smart white trainers, he strode [...]

(Feb. 12, 2009, Ken Pomeranz, The China Beat)
The Chinese droughts have just begun to move onto the front pages of the world’s newspapers, but the droughts are just the latest sign of much more dire warnings of water woes in China. Some China experts are talking about this (see, for instance, today’s event at the [...]

(Feb. 8, 2009, Michael Bristow, BBC News)
A multi-billion-dollar project to divert water from southern China to the arid north is already four years behind schedule.
The news comes as parts of northern and central China struggle to cope with severe drought.
Officials recently admitted that water would not flow along the project’s central route – a total [...]

(Feb. 7, 2009, AFP)
BEIJING (AFP) — China will divert water from its two longest rivers to help farmers hit by the country’s worst drought in decades, state media said Sunday.
Water from the Yangtze River, the country’s longest, will be diverted to the northern areas of eastern Jiangsu Province, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing Zhang [...]

(Feb. 6, 2009, China View)
Beneath a cloudless blue sky, the withered wheat grass barely 2 inches high slumped over gray, parched ground in Wei Liuding’s field.
A mere spark would set the field alight at this time of the year when the field should be green.
“I haven’t seen such a severe [...]

(Jan. 30, 2009, The Green Leap Forward)
Christine is a doctoral candidate in University of North Carolina’s program in environmental planning and policy and recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship at the Chinese Academy of Science’s Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy. Her doctoral dissertation examines the changing nature of irrigation governance in northern China.  Her expertise is [...]

(Jan. 13, 2009, Pacific Institute)
Are we running out of water?
“Is there such a thing as ‘peak water’? There is a vast amount of water on the planet—but we are facing a crisis of running out of sustainably managed water,” said Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute. “Humans already appropriate over 50% of [...]

(Jan. 20, 2009, CleanTech)
Researchers at Frost & Sullivan say the water treatment industry is going to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of China’s plan for RMB 4 trillion in government spending in 2009 to stimulate the economy.
The government already spent RMB 120 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, with about 10 percent of [...]

(Jan. 20, 2009, BDNews24)
China is to embark on a water-diversion scheme it calls the most difficult in history, bringing water to nearly half a million people in drought-prone mountains of the southwest, state media said on Monday.
The “unthinkable” hydro scheme in the province of Guizhou would include a curved, 63-km (40-mile) canal and a [...]

(Jan. 18, 2009, Treehugger)
China’s “Dead Lakes” Keep Reappearing
Two years ago, an algae outbreak in China’s renowned Tai Lake sounded a global environmental alarm. Now, despite China spending billions of dollars on lake cleanup efforts, some algae has returned. And similar poisonous blue-green algal blooms that have been cropping up in other lakes across the country [...]

(Jan. 17, 2009, ENS)
Eight water conservation and control projects along China’s longest river, the Yangtze, will be underway by 2011 to improve water use and protect the environment, a water conservation official said Tuesday.
Cai Qihua, director of the Yangtze Water Resources Commission, announced the projects during the commission’s annual work meeting in Wuhan, the [...]

(Jan. 12, 2009, China National News)
China must overhaul its water management systems to provide better legal protection and more open competition for the increasingly scare resource, the World Bank said Monday.
‘For years, water shortages, pollution, and flooding have constrained growth and affected public health and welfare in many parts of China,’ the bank said in [...]