Booming China food demand ‘is worsening water scarcity’

Booming demand for food in China’s southern and eastern cities is worsening water shortages in arid northern provinces, adding to the country’s environmental problems, new research shows.

“Consumption in highly developed coastal provinces is largely relying on water resources in the water-scarce northern provinces, such as Xinjiang, Hebei and Inner Mongolia, thus significantly contributing to the water scarcity in these regions,” an international group of researchers write in the latest edition of the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

“Rich coastal provinces gain economic profits from international exports at the expense of ecosystem quality in the less-developed regions,” the researchers from the University of Maryland and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis concluded.