Seven channels total length of many thousands of miles, passing through from South to North China to bring water from the Yangtze River Basin, plagued by periodic flooding, the Yellow River Basin, dry for several months a year. All to be built in just ten years. This water diversion project, like almost everything that characterizes China in recent years, is designed on a scale unprecedented in human history. A project that is unnatural and ecologically out of tune, if not out of place, in the new run-up to the current environmental climate conference in Copenhagen. Critics of the mega project, point the finger on the partly 500 thousand people to be evicted to make way for the channel will be up to the metropolis of Tianjin, on the outskirts of Beijing. Among local residents protested the potential evacuation of someone already, or ask for higher compensation for land and houses that are going to give in to government. Others argue that while the water around the Chinese capital is scarce indeed, There are many waste, seen in the area there are, for example, forty golf courses, some big hundreds of hectares, green and always Irrigated. Many other water diversion project sounds like a newer version of the Maoist gigantism that has already led to the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, engineering behemoth whose utility is still questionable. The rest, to find a precedent we must go back to the USSR of Brezhnev, he wanted to hijack the "unnecessary" Northern Rivers to irrigate plantations of Central Asia, project blocked only with Gorbachev. Chinese engineers involved in the project, however, shake their heads, Here is another story, say. "There are various problems that foreigners get confused and mix, in a kind of salad, but in elementary school we were taught that apples and pears can not be added together ", says an engineer working on the project. There is a real problem first: the South there are floods that kill hundreds of people every year, while the North, where he lives about a third of the population, is desertified and the average people have less than half the minimum of water established by the UN as a standard for "water scarcity". The most serious problems in the North are not the golf courses, but agriculture continues to use primitive forms of irrigation. The fields are flooded, and have had little success thus far the efforts of Israeli experts to introduce more efficient irrigation techniques, as drip systems. "They cost a lot in terms of facilities, and do not make sense for small lots, those of the middle peasant ", explain the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. It 'also true that by the time the project was designed, 8-9 years ago, Climate change seems. Rainfall has increased in the North and the South decreased. This seems also due to the efforts of the last 20 years to halt desertification in the north of Beijing. Thousands of hectares of trees were planted and this has improved conditions in the region around the capital. However, two problems remain, that must be addressed separately: waste and water shortages in the North. This is changing the type of agriculture, which means putting an end to the small landholding, a process that has already begun but will take decades. Meanwhile, water reserves are running out of northern cities. The diversion of water to ensure water is used precisely in the North. Also, the eastern channel of the project, which will be completed first, in 2013, for the most part follows the route of the ancient canal Imperial. This did not need to bring water but for the transport of goods. This will also feature some of the future channel, explain to the ministry of water resources and are fond of emphasizing the differences between the Three Gorges and the diversion of water: The dam project has had no international support, and the diversion has a line of collaborations from around the world, including that of the Italian Ministry of Environment. There remain many other problems for water in China. The 60% courses and water bodies are polluted to levels more or less high, in many large cities the water is not drinkable. Heavy industry, in recent 20 years the backbone of China's development, used 4-5 times more water per dollar of output relative to developed countries. And here the diversion can not do anything. Remains in the eyes of the Chinese a great stimulus of development. With its 26 billion of planned spending is a powerful injection of economic growth in the otherwise hard and lean years for the crisis.
