Climate Change And Urbanisation In China

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1. Introduction
The aim of this report was to discuss how the climate change and urbanisation processes affected the design and management of wastewater systems in one of the countries of choice. In this report as an example China was used to describe the influence of urbanisation and climate change on design and management of wastewater systems.
Rapidly growing human population is expected to exceed nine billion people by 2050. Urban areas in developing countries are affected by rapid growth of population and poor infrastructure development. Already half of the human population live in cities where the infrastructure is not developed enough to sustain wastewater production. As the population increases so the production of waste water. In addition, climate changes affect the weather patterns, which directly influence a hydrological cycle. As a result one area suffers from rain fall shortage and others from more intense rainfalls.
2. China
In recent decades, China’s population has rapidly grown which caused rapid economic growth and increased the rate of urbanisation. At present china has one of the fastest urban population growth rate in the world.(UNDP 2013) All this happened along with proceeding environmental destruction and serious water pollution. The growing population of China has a high water demand as well as a lack of sufficient wastewater infrastructure. Those factors result in poor water quality and severe water shortages. In 2002 the rate of municipal wastewater treatment in China was 39.9 percent. (U.S Department of commerce 2005)

Figure 1 Urbanisation and the urban population in China (CEIC 2012) “Macroeconimic Database for emerging and development markets. (source:www.stats.gov.ch)

Water resources and water c...

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Benefit/cost analysis
Environmental Impact
Legal mandates
7. Develop implementation plans, including timeframe for implementation
8. Monitor and reassess
Source: ( Rosenzweig et al. 2007 ).

Figure 6 Conceptual model of a sustainable water resource system (source Hecht et al.2012)

5. Conclusion
High rates of urbanisation and climate change in China has created many problems related to water resources. An increase in the population and a high urbanisation rate have effected and increased wastewater production. The Chinese water market is already under a huge amount of stress. The quality and quantity of water resources have been depleted due to the inefficient use of water. In terms of wastewater management China requires a long term strategy with sustainable solutions which will take into account climate change and the rate of urbanisation.

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