BC Booklook - The big conundrum: Water and China - Canada and China share serious dysfunctions in water management and

1/24/2019 The big conundrum: Water and China | BC Booklook BC Booklook The big conundrum: Water and China Canada and China share serious dysfunctions in water management and governance. [...] In Quenching the Dragon, Sandford starts from the premise that “as China goes, so goes the world.” He seeks to unpack what China’s water issues mean in the global context; and analyzes Canada-China water issues and relations in light of China’s economic development and water management approaches. [...] And indeed the statistics he references to this end tell a shocking tale: from the fact that ten percent of the flow of the Yellow River is sewage; that China is home to sixteen of the world’s twenty most polluted cities; to the staggering figure that 190 million Chinese get sick from contaminated drinking water each year. [...] As one example: carcinogenic toxaphene hailing from Chinese coal production has been found in the snow of the icefields as far inland as the headwaters of the Bow River in the Canadian Rockies. [...] The book concludes, however, with a glimmer of hope: a reminder of water’s power as a unifying force; of the existing capacity in Canadian and Chinese water sectors to innovate solutions; and a call for a “new hydrological society” based on cooperation from the global down to local levels, leaving no one behind.