Shortage of water supply is the most serious public management challenge in Kunming Kunming has become the world’s focus these days after the violent attacks happened in Kunming train station on March 1st. Concerning this terrible event, someone may say that public order is the most serious problem in Kunming. However, this event is an extreme case which cannot influence daily life deeply and profoundly. This essay would like to say the most serious challenge in Kunming is the shortage of water supply which is closely related with human life and development of city.It will be proved by explanation of complex natural factors, artificial reasons and useless solutions. First of all, The natural factors of water shortage are complex enough that government finds it hard to handle.Kunming is in a basin which is surrounded by rivers and lacks such as the Jinsha River, the Red River and the Nanpan River. However, the plateau topography results Kunming becomes the watershed of these three huge hydrographic nets.That means these rivers become three boundary lines around Kunming but not go across city area so they cannot be the water sources of Kunming.The next natural reason is drought. Because of the special terrain,water in Kunming mainly comes from atmospheric circulation rainfall. Unfortunately, according to Oriental Outlook, since 2009, average annual precipitation of four years separately are much less than 924mm in formal years. 120 rivers and 400 little reservoirs dried up . According to Xinhua news agency,water resources per capita are only 1250 cubic meters, which is just half of per capita of China. According to these facts above, it is obvious that Kunming lacks natural water supply, which makes the challenge more serious. Furthermore, the artificial factors of the shortage of water supply have already lasted for several years and yet they are not solved. The most important one is uncontrolled urbanization. As the capital of Yunnan province, population in this small city increase quickly by annual more than 60000 people ,which directly causes the addition of water consumption. Between 2008 to 2011, total amount of water consumption improves with the speed of 20% per year. Additionally, Urban rapid development brings the rapid expansion of reinforced concrete layers of buildings and roads , blocking the surface water timely drop down to the underground.Meanwhile, underground water has nearly been exhausted because of exceeding exploitation. According to Oriental Outlook, the amount of exploited groundwater has exceeded 1818% of the allowed amount. Meanwhile,water pollution is also the main reason.The Dian Lack is the sixth largest freshwater lack in China as well as the main source of Kunming in the past. However, it now has become one of the most famous water pollution cases in Chinese text book because of emission of the polluted water from industry and family. Concerning the report of SEPA(State Environmental Protection Administration), “ the total emission amount of polluted water into the Dian Lack is 240 million steres per year.” From the above statistics, it is apparent that serious artificial reasons has brought many problems to Kunming and even threat its future development. Thirdly, the useless solutions intensify the challenge. Ten years ago government vagariously designed Kunming to be “eastern Geneva”.“At that time, Kunming urban area will expand to 460 sq.km from current 180 sq.km.population will also improve from 2.45 million to 4.50 million.”(YUNNAN Daily, 2003) With the big dream, government choose a easy and stubborn way to solve the water problem-- find sources and channel water into Kunming. Since then , government followed this logic and established many water conservation projects such as Yunlong reservoir, “2285” project and so on.But they just deal with the temporary shortage because the speed of population increasing and water consumption improvement are much faster than the facilities establishment. When the problem comes to water pollution, government tried their best to manage the water which have been polluted rather than close the factories causing pollution or educate citizens to improve consciousness of saving water. That is because these factories are important local GDP sponsors and citizen education is expensive when money mainly used to recreational activities . Facing the current shortage situation, government only passively decreases urban water supply which just solve the problem on surface.Kunming Evening has reported that the supply amount have been cut down 150000 steres and water pressure reduced from normal 0.28 mpa to 0.17 mpa. These have caused the citizens living in five or higher floors without water to use. All above shows these improper methods cannot thoroughly deal with the challenge but have done harm to citizens. Natural factors, artificial challenges and useless solutions make Kunming develop so hard .As Prof. Bart Wissink has said in lecture, “Public management is an approach which uses managerial techniques to increase the value for money achieved by public services”.(lecture slides,2014)Kunming government should change the current water resources management system from each department charging each part to all departments charge all things to increase the money value because the previous methods caused the duplication of responsibilities and difficult enforcement of laws. But Kunming has no time to wait. 6182 References: 1.新华社-瞭望东方周刊 (e.g. 2011). 昆明水危机（the water crisis in Kunming）. [ONLINE] Available at: e.g. microsoft. [Last Accessed 05/03/2014]. 2.baiyifan15 (e.g. 2011). 昆明水污染治理办法.(methods to deal with Kunming water pollution) [ONLINE] Available at wenku.baidu/link?url=cXrA6yPsr3nLq4WFqacCxSaVJrHP5swyAf8XfqiQ6QU0TF_U9gB9_GnHEoiQ6AlHJ-sm_ZKrIFDot0FTZmVU-YDxXZF1kAdEP-WQSxMv1Nu. [Last Accessed 06/03/2014]. 3.lecture slides
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 13:22:27 +0000
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