Water quality is a pressing issue in China.

Water quality is a pressing issue in China. China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection says that only half of the water in China’s rivers and lakes is safe for drinking. Pollution is so bad that one-quarter of the country’s water is not safe to be used in industry or agriculture.

Even without pollution, China would have a water crisis. There’s simply not enough of it. We got a hint of this when authorities diverted water from surrounding areas to Beijing to ensure the capital had plenty during the 2008 Olympics. Farmers in some places saw their crops die for lack of water. With 20% of the world’s people, China has just 7% of the world’s water. Because even those supplies are not evenly distributed, the country is in the midst of a massive $62 billion water diversion project to bring water from the wetter south to the parched north. In addition to engineering 1,800 miles of canals, plus tunnels, and reservoirs, officials are relocating hundreds of thousands of people to make way for the project.

The US averaged almost 10,000 cubic meters of available water per person in 2003-2007, China averaged 2,125 cubic meters.

Even if this project succeeds, the ultimate source of much of the water filling the Yangzi River is already shrinking and could be greatly diminished within twenty-five years. Global warming is melting the glaciers and snow pack of the Himalayas. More than a billion people in China and India depend on rivers fed by the Himalayan ice and now.

On 4 pm Monday, David Breashears comes to USC to vividly illustrate the shrinking of Himalayan glaciers.

Top: Photo by E.O. Wheeler in 1921 (Royal Geographical Society); Bottom: David Breashears; West Rongbuk Glacier and Mount Everest. Click the photo to see a larger version at the USCI website.

Breashears first climbed Mt. Everest in 1983 and has for three decades produced some of the most stunning and influential photographs and film of the Himalayas. He produced the first IMAX film of the region. His most recent film is Storm over Everest (2008). He’s received four Emmys for his cinematography. Breashears is also the author of several books, including an autobiography, High Exposure (1999). In recent years Breashears has been tracking down early photographs of Himalayan glaciers. Comparing these images with ones he’s taken allows viewers to see how climate change threatens the Himalayan supply of water to 20% of the world’s people. We hope you can join us for Breashears’s multimedia presentation.

China and India are both engaged in efforts to maximize dwindling water resources at the “top of the world.” They are engaged in extensive dam building so as to expand clean energy generation. One project in Tibet on the Yalong Zangbo River will divert water that currently flows into India into China’s South – North water diversion project. This is another source of tension in the complex China-India relationship. Recently, Rong Ying, vice president of the China Institute for International Studies, and one of China’s top scholars on India, examined issues between the two Asian giants in a USC presentation. Click here to see video of his presentation at the USC US-China Institute website.