Efficiency vs Effectiveness: South-North Water Diversion Project

The China Beat blog has published a response article by Prof. Ken Pomeranz to a Financial Times (FT) article on China's South-North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP). Although I appreciate the scholarly tradition of being critical of simplistic and extreme viewpoints, I think Pomeranz's criticism of the FT article is based on questionable grounds.

In brief: China is undertaking the largest water control project known in world history. The project is known as SNWDP and is designed to solve water scarcity and pollution issues in northern China, mainly the cities of Beijing and Tianjin. As most informed people can imagine, the project has enormous social and environmental costs that are largely externalized. And so the debate goes whether this is justifiable or not. I recommend you read the FT article online. In order to avoid filling FT subscription forms, etc., do a Google search on "china blast from past" and read it from there. The FT link also has a good video story.

Pomeranz's arguments are summed up in the conclusion of his response:

"So while the water diversion scheme carries enormous risks, and is certainly very far from the optimal solution, it may, by default, become a bad idea whose time has come. It�s not, I think, that people in the government don�t realize that controlling demand (and pollution) may be more promising than increasing supply, or that they aren�t trying to do those things, or that those who support the water diversion scheme are indulging in nostalgia for Maoist gigantism. The real point is that its not at all clear that efficiency gains can be realized fast enough to keep North China, which has about 6 percent of the global average per capita water supply, from facing a devastating water crunch � especially if its people are to see their living standards improve. (Remember, for instance, that even a small increase in the amount of meat people consume increases water demand very sharply.) The project may well be too much of an environmental gamble to undertake, at least in its full-blown form; I lean towards that position myself. But it is a response to very real dilemmas: when the Financial Times article calls it a 'pharoanic gesture,' and treats it simply as an anachronistic and brutal act of a government completely heedless of its people, it distorts a much more complicated reality."

There are a couple of things with Pomeranz's thinking or what is expressed in his response that bothered me. To say that the project "may, by default, become a bad idea whose time has come" is thinking along evolutionary ideas of development. This line of thinking tends to gloss over issues of politics. What happens in the name of development is a direct result of decisions imposed by certain people, not because of certain evolutionary concept such as "time." Yes, Prof. Pomeranz does not mean it that way, but I think it is important to point that out.

The rationale behind Prof. Pomeranz's argument is that China's leaders must deal with some real and very serious (water) problems that the SNWDP, even though it is "very far from the optimal solution", "may" just have become the most efficient solution. What is not clear is if the "very real dilemmas" faced by China's leaders include, most importantly, the need for ever increasing action/profit for China's water-industrial complex. Judging from the text of the response, it seems that the dilemmas are mainly management issues of alleviating water supply/demand/quality problems. While I disagree with such an assumption, I am also skeptical of the more specific argument that the project is necessary to save North China from a "devastating water crunch." The project can be sold as an efficient short-term solution to deal with the problem, like the American invasion of Iraq, but will it be effective?