Action Asia - February-March 2018

26 

— March/April 2018

FOR MANY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES,

maintaining water quality is a huge challenge.

Micro-contaminants stream off city streets and

farmland, while macro-scale garbage is dumped

indiscriminately. The government bodies who

ought to have oversight stand mutely by, siloed

and ineffective.

This is especially true for China – a

water-scarce nation with 1.41 billion mouths to

feed and a hierarchy keen on maintaining a GDP

growth of around the current 7% per annum.

Despite water quality being mentioned in

the last Five-Year Plan that ran between 2011

and 2015, at least 14 provinces in China failed to

meet their water quality improvement targets,

according to the latest Greenpeace East Asia

report. Over 85% of water in Shanghai’s major

rivers and 95% of Tianjin’s surface water, for

instance, were deemed unsuitable for human

Thanks to seeds planted by an environmental crusader more than a decade ago,

China puts its foot down to improve water quality via nation-wide citizen vigilance.

Policing the PRC’s water quality

contact. Close to 40% of Beijing’s surface

water, was thought to be unsuitable even for

agricultural or industrial purposes.

Undeterred, China has since set new goals

for 2020 (dubbed ‘Water Ten’ for the number

of major amendments). This time it is hoping

to achieve them with the help of a national

bottom-up River Chief scheme – a programme

that aims to minimise red tape and calls upon

the public to lend a hand.

The project is a scaling-up of one born 10

years ago after 1.5 million residents were affected

from foul-smelling blue-green algae across Lake

Tai. Now the scheme aims to set up independent

offices that will undertake assessments for rivers

and lakes in every provincial region by the end

of this year.

These River Chiefs – chosen from

government cadres ranging from municipal