Half the rivers in China have dried up in the past two decades (ZHOU KE)

Over 130 million people are now living on the North China Plain, a national center for food production and industry. Nearly 70 percent of North China's irrigated areas currently depend on groundwater as their main source of water. The polluted water used for farmland irrigation in some rural areas could cause food safety issues.

When the investigation of the north China Plain finished, several ministries cooperated to make a water treatment plan. In fact, China has been developing advanced water treatment technologies to fix its water pollution problems, but these efforts have been undermined by constant pollution input. 

"The concept of water protection should be spread to our whole society," said Li who emphasized that treatment is much harder and more expensive than early protection and pollution prevention. According to China's National Development and Reform Commission, making and strengthening laws on groundwater pollution and overexploitation has become a government priority.

Open information

In 2006, Ma Jun established the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing. For the past seven years, the institute has been dedicated to building databases for information on water and air pollution in China. It has collected 119,000 records from enterprises in 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions around the country.

Ma believes that the problem holding back advances in environmental protection in China is neither technological nor financial, but the lack of an inherent driving force. Keeping the public aware of pollution issues will effectively force enterprises to become more environmentally friendly. 

In the time since air pollution issues first became a major topic of public concern, government controls over data and statistics have loosened. During a State Council work conference in March, China's new Premier Li Keqiang supported information openness on "hot issues" like environmental pollution and food safety. 

Earlier in March, three lawyers in Beijing wrote to the Ministry of Land and Resources, seeking the disclosure of groundwater quality data. Within 15 days, a time limitation required by government information publicity regulations, they received a reply attached to a 400-page report.

Environmental experts claimed, after reading the report, that the results are not reliable because the standards used in formulating the report were set up 20 years ago. But many still praised the ministry's quick response. Before the relevant solutions are implemented, the public expects to see the government's resolve to confront the issue head on through increased sharing of related information. 

Huang Leping, one of the three lawyers, suggests that the Ministry of Land and Resources put the report on its official website to inform the public about groundwater conditions.

Learning a lesson

Li Fengting of Tongji University also works at the UNEP-Tongji Environmental Institute for Sustainable Development, a cooperative endeavor between Tongji University and the United Nation Environment Program. Currently, his team is focusing on a program aimed at helping African countries confronted by water supply problems.  

Li worries that Africa will follow in China's footsteps and create serious environmental problems as it develops and moves toward economic prosperity. According to Li, Lake Victoria, the biggest lake in Africa, is suffering from an increasingly serious algae problem. If the economy in the region grows at a rate of 10 percent annually, and brings with it uncontrolled industrial pollution, it is very likely that the lake will have a similar outbreak of algae as seen in China's Taihu Lake.

"China has many advanced technologies that Africa can import, and they can also learn from our lessons to avoid similar problems," said Li.