Sarah Rogers

Sustainability: Transfer project cannot meet China's water needs.

Almost one year ago, Beijing began to receive water channelled by the South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) project. The biggest inter-basin transfer scheme in the world, the SNWD project has the capacity to deliver 25 billion cubic metres of fresh water per year from the Yangtze River in China’s south to the drier north by two routes — each of which covers a distance of more than 1,000 kilometres. The project connects four major river basins, three megacities, six provinces and hundreds of millions of water users and polluters. Its success is already in question. Reservoir and canal construction costs have reportedly reached US

The South–North Water Transfer Project: remaking the geography of China

80 billion, and more than 300,000 people have been displaced. Pollution and environmental fallout, as well as high maintenance costs and water prices, make the project unsustainable both ecologically and socially. And the transfer of water does not address the underlying causes of water shortages in the north, namely pollution and inefficient agricultural, industrial and urban use — the effects of which we have been studying over the past decade. North China could be self-sufficient in water without the transfer of water from the south. But the necessary steps — among them, improving local pollution monitoring and building better irrigation infrastructure — are inadequately implemented. Increasing supply is viewed as the main solution to water scarcity because of the conflicting roles of the Chinese government as both entrepreneur and regulator. Incentives for economic growth in China still outweigh incentives for pollution control and limits on water extraction, despite ever stricter

How Local Landholder Groups Collectively Manage Weeds in South-Eastern Australia

ABSTRACT The South–North Water Transfer Project: remaking the geography of China. Regional Studies. This paper uses a technopolitical approach to analyse China’s South–North Water Transfer Project. The project promises to channel 25 billion cubic metres of water a year from the Yangtze River northward, connecting four river basins, three megacities, six provinces and hundreds of millions of water users. The paper argues that the project embodies a particular, engineering-heavy approach to water management; that, even so, it poses fundamental challenges to existing regional structures of governance; and that it promises continuing detrimental environmental impacts in source regions even as it invites similar future interventions in China’s hydrological environment.

Everyday practices and technologies of household water consumption: evidence from Shanghai:

For two decades researchers and policy makers have been arguing that community-based collective action is needed to effectively control weeds. Yet there has been little social research into the ways that collective weed control emerges at local scales. The aim of this paper is to investigate the mechanisms through which three local landholder groups in south-eastern Australia collectively manage weeds and the measures they use to evaluate success. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of three Landcare groups—Jerrawa Creek/Upper Lachlan, MacLaughlin River and Towamba Valley—as well as government staff external to the groups. The results reveal that for all three groups collective weed control is about supporting individual weed control efforts as well as proactively engaging landholders with the worst infestations. The groups were seen to be successful because they focused on the common challenge that weeds pose to all landholders, thereby removing the shame associated with having weeds, and because they organised community events that were as much about building and maintaining social relationships as improving weed control. Groups were positive about what they had achieved as collectives of landholders, but also saw an important role for government in providing funding, engaging with landholders who were unwilling to engage directly with the group, and controlling weeds on public lands.

Erratum to: Estimating urban water demand under conditions of rapid growth: the case of Shanghai

A social practice approach to household consumption examines socially produced patterns of practice, and understands these to be composed of technology, knowledge and meaning. This approach challenges many of the assumptions made about how consumers who are supposedly economically rational behave in large-scale municipal water supply systems. Yet for an emerging body of scholarship that is sensitive to the effects of context, research on social practices is notably short of studies beyond wealthy liberal democracies. In this paper we examine the key practices of daily water consumption for households in Shanghai, China. We identify boiling water, filtering water, and buying water as the three key practices associated with daily water consumption in the home, and explain the way each is the result of combinations of knowledge, meaning and technology. We also consider short-term and longer-term shifts in practices, and explain the influence of the materiality of pollution, information and trust on these changing practices.

Adaptation science and policy in China's agricultural sector

• On page 4 the first line in the first paragraph should read as follows: of 4.10 9 10 m a. These are located in remote and rural. • On page 4 the second line in the second paragraph should read as follows: supplied 3.12 9 10 m a in 2013, and which are mostly. • On page 4 the numbers on the y axes of both Fig. 1a, b should be reduced by a factor of 10. • On page 4 lines 11 to 16 in the third paragraph should read as follows: period 1978–2013 increased from 0.97 9 10 m a to 3.10 9 10 m a; of this, the water for residential and public open space increased from 0.36 9 10 m a to 1.97 9 10 m a, a fivefold increase and therefore a rate obviously greater than that of industrial water (0.62–1.15 9 10 m a over the same period) (Fig. 1a). • On page 4 lines 20 and 21 in the third paragraph should read as follows: water pumping grew from 1.17 9 10 m a in 1978 to 4.10 9 10 m a in 2013 (Fig. 1b). • On page 6 the numbers on the y axis of Fig. 5 should be reduced by a factor of 10. The online version of the original article can be found under doi:10.1007/s10113-016-1100-6.

Environmental resettlement and social dis/re-articulation in Inner Mongolia, China

In recent years, Chinas central government has begun to articulate its adaptation policy and to identify measures to adapt the nations agriculture to changing precipitation patterns, higher temperatures, and extreme events. These developments are occurring at a time when the agricultural sector is in flux: while the major grain crops—rice, wheat, and corn—are still central to food security, many smallholder farmers have shifted away from land-intensive production to growing higher-value, labour-intensive horticultural products, such as fruit and vegetables. In addition, new forms of agriculture are emerging because of out-migration and land transfers. This review introduces the adaptation policy context for agricultural adaptation in China and reviews existing research on impacts and adaptation. It then discusses how well existing research and policy actually reflect the challenges of adapting Chinas farms to climate change. Four issues are discussed which together suggest that current science and policy very poorly reflect challenges on the ground: the framing of agriculture as a relatively homogeneous sector; the absence of any vulnerability assessments attuned to local contexts; a bias toward large-scale engineering solutions; and insufficient consideration of local government capacity. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.