World Water Day focuses on cities

World Water Day focuses on cities

• Source: Global Times
• [08:57 March 22 2011]
• Comments

A woman buys water from a vending machine in Tuanjiehu Monday. Photo: Wang Zi

By Fang Yunyu

On this year's World Water Day, which is Monday, the theme of "water for cities: responding to the urban challenge" is one that resounds deeply with parched Beijing.

Urban residents may not spend much time pondering the city's water situation as long as it still flows from the tap, but actually what water Beijing has is already very precious, according to James Chen, assistant dean of the Hult International Business School.

Chen spoke at a World Water Day press conference at Oriental Plaza in Beijing Monday to introduce a competition being held by his school that will give a prize of $1 million to the business school student who can propose the most feasible solution to providing water for 100 million people in South Asia and Africa in five years.

More than 150 teams from business schools worldwide are participating in the competition, for which the final winner will be named on April 28.

"If a city continues to be urbanized with an increasing population, whether it has a water supply plan to support the newcomers is an essential question that needs the authorities' consideration," Chen said.

"Moreover, if drought occurs more often, or even becomes normal, whether the authorities have a plan B to supply enough water is very important to people who live in water-deprived areas," Chen told the Global Times.

Earlier this year, statistics provided by Beijing municipal water authorities showed that the capital used 3.57 billion cubic meters of water last year, which is only enough for 11.9 million people, according to UNESCO's figure of 300 cubic meters of water per person per year as a basic criterion for urban development.

But the capital's population is a significantly higher 19.72 million, according to official statistics released last July.

"Our authorities haven't seen the problem clearly!" Zhang Junfeng, founder of Happy Water Journeys, a non-governmental water resource watchdog, told the Global Times Monday. Zhang said that to date, authorities have failed to provide any plans to raise awareness of dwindling water resources, and that no effective plan has been announced to address the capital's water shortage.