China’s drive to clean up lakes and rivers starts to bear fruit as pollution levels fall
- New study shows chemical levels in surface water fell significantly between 2003 and 2017
- However, researchers warn that agricultural waste is still a significant problem and waterways in the country’s north and northeast need improving
Water quality in China’s rivers and lakes has shown signs of improvement amid a major drive to tackle pollution, a new study has found.
The research looked at surface water quality between 2003 and 2017 and found significant improvement in two key measures.
Chemical oxygen demand – which indicators how much oxygen is consumed by chemical reactions in the water – dropped by 63 per cent, while ammonium nitrogen levels dropped by 78 per cent over that period.
“Water quality has been improved markedly or was maintained at favourable levels over the country because of reduced discharges in the industrial, rural, and urban residential sectors,” the study, by a team from Chinese Academy of Science’s Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, said.
But the researchers warned that increased discharges from the agricultural sector were hampering efforts to control pollution and there were still serious problems in the north and northeast of the country.