For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China — even as demand keeps rising everywhere.

What happened? The list includes misguided policies, unintended consequences, a population explosion, climate change and, most of all, relentless economic growth. In 1963, a flood paralyzed the region, prompting Mao to construct a flood-control system of dams, reservoirs and concrete spillways. Flood control improved but the ecological balance was altered as the dams began choking off rivers that once flowed eastward into the North China Plain.

The new reservoirs gradually became major water suppliers for growing cities like Shijiazhuang. Farmers, the region’s biggest water users, began depending almost exclusively on wells. Rainfall steadily declined in what some scientists now believe is a consequence of climate change.

My neoclassical inner being tells me that the reason for the water shortages is that the price of water is too low.

States should avoid conservation standards that require elaborate monitoring because they may be neither cost-effective nor successful. ...

Even though water is a valuable resource, many Americans pay more each month for their cell phones and cable television than they do for water. Indeed, residents in some cities pay nothing for water. In Fresno, California, a controversy erupted in 2003 over whether meters should be installed in people’s homes so that actual water use could be measured and paid for. Until now, city residents have been able to use as much water as they wish without any charge for it. Meters enable a city to insist that residents be responsible in their water use or pay financial consequences. The absence of meters has significance for water use. Fresno residents use about 300 gallons per capita per day but in neighboring Clovis, which has meters, water use is about 200 gallons per day. Sensible water pricing would encourage all water users to carefully examine how they use water, for what purposes, and in what quantity.

Mengele singled her out, Mrs. Babbitt recalled, in March 1944, on a day when thousands of other prisoners were being taken to be exterminated. She said that she demanded of Mengele that he also spare her mother or she would commit suicide by touching an electrified fence. She and her mother were among the 27 Czechoslovak Jews to survive from their group of more than 5,000.

The United Church of Canada may ask its members to stop buying bottled water.

The request is part of a resolution against the privatization of water supplies that has been put before delegates at the church's general council this week in Thunder Bay.

Richard Chambers, the social policy co-ordinator with the national office of the church, said that water is a human right, and no one should profit from it.

"We're against the commodification, the privatization is another way to say it, of water anyway, anywhere," he told CBC News.

"And bottled water that we see being sold in Canada is just an example of that. The thin edge of the wedge of the privatization of water." ...

Ironically, the church's delegates are drinking bottled water this week at its meeting at Lakehead University. The conference facility was not equipped to provide drinking water.

Chambers said the church had asked for tap water at all functions, but a mix-up occurred.

Delegates are scheduled to vote on the private water resolution on Thursday.

Walk into any Japanese noodle shop or restaurant and chances are you'll be eating with a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks from China. But not for long.

In a move that has cheered environmentalists but worried restaurant owners, China has slapped a 5-per-cent tax on the chopsticks over concerns of deforestation.

The move is hitting hard at the Japanese, who go through a tremendous 25 billion sets of wooden chopsticks a year: about 200 pairs per person. Some 97 per cent of them come from China.

Chinese chopstick exporters have responded to the tax increase and a rise in other costs by slapping a 30-per-cent hike on chopstick prices, with a planned additional 20-per-cent increase pending.

The price hike has sent Japanese restaurants scrambling to find alternative sources for chopsticks, called waribashi in Japanese.

"We're not in an emergency situation yet, but there has been some impact," said Ichiro Fukuoka, director of the Japan Chopsticks Import Association.

A pair of waribashi that used to cost a little over ¥1, or about 1 cent, now goes for ¥1.5 to ¥1.7. The rising costs of raw wood and transportation because of higher oil prices have also contributed to the rise, industry officials said.

But pretty soon, some fear Japan won't even be able to get expensive chopsticks from China: Japanese newspapers Mainichi and Nihon Keizai reported that China is expected to stop waribashi exports to Japan as early as 2008.

To minimize the impact, Japanese importers now buy more bamboo chopsticks and are considering new suppliers, including Vietnam, Indonesia and Russia, said Mr. Fukuoka.

Supporters of environmental causes see the new Chinese tax as a chance to get rid of disposable chopsticks, which have been linked to deforestation and a wasteful lifestyle.

Environment Minister David Benson-Pope and Agriculture and Forestry Minister Jim Anderton have prepared a Cabinet paper, which is expected to rule out privatisation but allow limited trading of water rights and establish an economic "price" for water.

... the Government did not want a regime which would prompt users to exploit their full water right, because that might encourage them to use more, not less, water.

One option could be a "cap and trade" system which could allow consent holders to trade a proportion of their water right, but not the full amount.

... The South Island river faces competing demand for hydro-generation, irrigation, industry and recreation, while the available flow is arguably "over-allocated" in dry years.

Existing users effectively have priority, on a first-come-first-served basis, which may not allow for new or more economic uses.

• Well-defined property rights.
• Dramatically lowered transaction costs

Hafiz Barghouti, the editor of the newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadeed, has written: ‘It appears we are neither prepared to change, nor admit that we have failed in running our own affairs. Everyone is busy calculating how to make the biggest possible gains at the homeland's expense. While most Palestinians find it easy to blame the occupation for all our ills, it is a fact that the occupation was not as bad as the lawlessness and corruption that we are now facing.’