Environmental Issues in China

As our population is growing, when we are taking it for granted to ask the nature for resource we want, environmental protection is becoming more and more important and necessary. Water protection is especially urgent now. We can see the water pollution is becoming worse. In this essay, I am going to talk about the recent situation of the water pollution, the bad effects of it and some ways help to solve the problem as well.

As we know, China is a big country as well as a developing country. Developing countries need to develop quickly so that they can catch up with those developed ones; as a result, many enterprises in china keep running days and nights, which let out effluent continuously at the same time they gain profit. Another problem is china has a population of 1.3billion, a large amount of water have to be used everyday. However, seldom of them cherish water that they own. Most people believe that the supply of water is inexhaustible. But the truth is china is short of fresh water. Ministry of Water Resources announced (2006, online) a surprising number: it is over four hundred cities that have no standard water to drink and suffer from the serious water shortage. What’s more, Ren, XY. announced that (2006, online), one third water in the whole country can not be drunk directly. We can see the water pollution index is getting higher as well as the rate of wasting water.

In what way are we polluting water? There are three sources (Anon.(2006 online)). Firstly, Domestic sewage; it includes human waste and the sewage we produce at home. Every time we wash our hands letting the water drain; every time we soak in the bathtub using large amount of water; every time we forget to twist the tab tightly … we are wasting water by not using it reasonably. Ministry of construction (2006 online) gave a statistic almost 25% of the water hydrophones now in the country are slack and the amount of losing water is more than 4 hundred million cubic meter in 2004.The more we use unreasonably the more it will be wasted. Secondly is Industrial waste. When factory is running, not only gas is let out but also sewage is discharged into rivers or seas. Although these years more companies have concentrated on environmental issues under the guide of government, still some enterprises have not enough sense of responsibility in this area. For example, on13th November, 2005, Beijing Today reported that a chemical factory had an explosion in Jilin Province, which caused thousands of mercury flown in Songhua River and threatened drinking water in Harbin, the capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. The river with mercury kept going south and went into Russia. People who live near Songhua River and in Russia suffered from this event. Had the factory operated safety, tragedy would have been avoided (2006, online).who ranks the third is Agriculture pesticide. It is very important because food comes from the farmland. However, Nie, SZ. (2007 online) maintained that farmers use too much fertilizer to plant crops also has bad impacts. It leads to Entrophication. Water has been polluted because of too much nutrition. Fishes died for chock. Worse still, some farmers can only use dirty water to water crops. For instance, Economic News reported one village in Hebei Province, even farmers dare not to eat what they grew because they know how dirty the water is. (2006, online)

All three sources that I list above are the main ways how water in china becomes dirty. No one can deny that water pollution brings us many bad results. For human beings, as we know, we depend on water to live and drink water every day. Guangzhou daily, however, said “Nowadays nearly 80% of the diseases come from drinking water because water is no longer clean now”. Fresh water makes people healthy but the dirty one may cause dizzy, stomach ache, vomit, sick and even die�2006 online）. Furthermore, for enterprises, if water has been polluted seriously, it’s not available to be used for producing, and farmers could not irrigate with clean water any more.

To solve these problems three sides should cooperate together. On one side, public, they should be educated to know about the importance of environment protection, and be aware of the crisis around us, because nature will someday give us his revenge if we continue treating him bad. Behave ourselves don’t throw garbage into rivers or on streets. In addition, people should take the doubtful and refused attitude toward those companies who don’t reach Green standards. On the other side, industries should enhance the sense of responsibility as well as to have the consciousness to protect environment. What is more, build a water purifying tank, purge waste water before let them flow out. Enterprises should also make extra efforts to reduce the use of fresh water, discipline and contribute to society, if they want to get most