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.
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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.
“Our findings suggest that China’s water quality would further benefit from more flexible strategies for mitigation measures, which respond to regional differences in the factors that influence water pollution levels in specific regions,” said the study, published in the journal Science Advances on Friday.
Figures from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment also highlight improvements in water quality.
Using a system that ranks water quality from Level I, the cleanest, to Level V, the dirtiest, it found that 78.9 per cent of water was classed under Levels I to III.
By contrast, in 2016 just 68.8 per cent reached this level and in 2011 the figure was just 48.8 per cent.
Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said the mainland authorities have made environmental protection a much higher priority over the past five years.
“Environmental monitoring is stricter these days,” Ma said.
“With tens of thousands of urban household waste water treatment facilities built, there are far fewer untreated waste discharges.”
Hundreds of thousands of waterways have now been given “river chiefs” to lead anti-pollution efforts.
These officials range from village committee chiefs to provincial governors, with the highest-ranking officials being put in charge of the most important sections.
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“It’s a good idea. But the river chief’s role is to coordinate,” said Ma. “In many places, it’s not clear how to implement this system.”
But environmentalists have warned that improving surface water quality is not enough and Ma said that 80 per cent of underground water remained contaminated.
Xu Xudong, a researcher from the Institute of Hydrobiology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote in an article published in People’s Daily in August that restoring plant and fish life would help damaged aquatic ecological systems to purify themselves and recover.
