China To ​Pump Water ​From Russian ​Lake and Across ​Mongolia

Urban planners in Lanzhou, China have drawn up proposals to pipe water into the chronically dry region from Siberia’s Lake Baikal, via 1,000km pipeline.

Source: The Guardian

China is reportedly considering plans to build a 1,000km (620 mile) pipeline to pump water all the way from Siberia to its drought-stricken northwest.

According to reports in the Chinese media, urban planners in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, have drawn up proposals to pipe water into the chronically parched region from Russia’s Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake on earth.

Li Luoli, an academic who is one of the plan’s cheerleaders, claimed the mega-project - roughly the equivalent of pumping water from Lake Como to London - was both theoretically feasible and “certainly beneficial” to China.

“Once the technical issues are resolved, diplomats should sit down and talk to each other about how each party would benefit from such international cooperation,” said Li, the vice president of the China Society of Economic Reform, a state-run think tank.

In a report this week the state-run Global Times said the pipeline would quench the “desperate thirst” of a province that saw just 380mm of rain last year.

It would begin at the southwestern tip of the 600km-long Russian lake and run about 1,000km, across Mongolia, to Gansu’s capital through the Hexi corridor, a desert region near the westernmost tip of the Great Wall of China.

The project would boost both Gansu’s “ecological environment” and its economy which the newspaper said had been severely hampered by the lack of water.

The drastic plan underscores the severity of the water crisis facing Beijing.

China has 20% of the world’s population but just 7% of its fresh water with the north, in particular, facing a calamitous shortage thanks to urbanisation, over-use, wastage and pollution.

Plans to pipe in Siberian water, which are likely to alarm conservationists, are not the first of their kind.

Last year Russia’s agriculture minister, Alexander Tkachev, suggested pumping water across Kazakhstan to Xinjiang, another dry northwestern region, but only “under the condition of full compliance with the interests of Russia, including environmental”.

Citing scientists in Siberia, Russia’s state news agency Tass said “fresh water supplies in China could be a promising area of Russia exports”.

Read more at: The Guardian

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Taxonomy

• Water Scarcity
• Resource Management
• Water Access
• Water Supply
• Water Scarcity In Desert area
• Water Supply
• Infrastructure
• Integrated Infrastructure
• International Cooperation
• Pipelines
• Pipes and Pipelines

1 Comment

1. Would be interesting to understand the capital, operational costs and energy footprint?