China's water-saving irrigation project area reaches 407 million mu
Economic Daily, Beijing, September 29 dispatch (Reporter Zhang Xue) “With the central and local governments introducing a series of policy measures and continuously increasing investment, China's water-saving irrigation development has entered an unprecedented fast track. As of the end of 2013, the national effective irrigation area reached 952 million mu, of which the water-saving irrigation project area was 407 million mu, accounting for about 43% of the effective irrigation area. The high-efficiency water-saving irrigation area was 214 million mu, accounting for about 22% of the effective irrigation area, of which low-pressure pipeline water conveyance was 111 million mu, sprinkler irrigation 45 million mu, and micro-irrigation 58 million mu.” Li Guoying, Vice Minister of Water Resources, said this at a press conference held today by the State Council Information Office.
Li Guoying said that the way out of the water resource crisis is first to increase supply and second to reduce demand; given China's current stage of development and level, reducing demand should be the primary approach. Agriculture is the largest water user and also the sector with the greatest potential for water saving. Vigorously developing water-saving irrigation has become an inevitable choice for alleviating the contradiction between water supply and demand.
The implementation of water-saving irrigation has achieved the goal of saving water resources. Since 2000, China's average irrigation water use per mu of farmland has dropped from 420 cubic meters to 361 cubic meters, the effective utilization coefficient of farmland irrigation water has risen from 0.43 to 0.52, and the proportion of farmland irrigation water use in total social water use has decreased from 63% to 55%; grain output has increased, and since 2000, grain output per cubic meter of irrigation water has increased from 1.33 kg to 1.75 kg.
Although water-saving irrigation has achieved remarkable results over the past 10-plus years, on the whole, China's water-saving irrigation is still in a stage of accelerated development, and there are still some prominent problems, mainly as follows: First, the overall development of water-saving irrigation is relatively slow and unbalanced, and there is a gap with some advanced major irrigation countries. Second, the reverse forcing mechanism and incentive mechanism are still not sound. Total agricultural irrigation water use control and quota management have not yet been fully implemented, a reasonable agricultural water price formation mechanism is also not sound, and the policies, laws, regulations and systems conducive to the development of water-saving irrigation are still not complete, so the appeal to social capital to enter this field has not yet been formed. Third, technical support and specialized services need to be improved.
Next, China will further intensify water-saving renovation of existing irrigation districts, develop high-efficiency water-saving irrigation on a large scale, establish a reverse forcing mechanism, an incentive mechanism, and a long-term operating mechanism for water-saving irrigation, and strive to increase the proportion of the national water-saving irrigation project area in the effective irrigation area to more than 60% by 2020, increase the proportion of the high-efficiency water-saving irrigation area in the effective irrigation area to more than 30%, and raise the effective utilization coefficient of farmland irrigation water to more than 0.55.
Li Guoying said that while fully giving play to the government's leading role, it is necessary to better give play to the market's role. Through formulating a series of preferential policies such as pricing policies, tax policies and financial policies, a “policy depression” and an “investment depression” for the development of high-efficiency water-saving irrigation will be formed, so that social capital and private capital can be channeled more into the cause of high-efficiency water-saving irrigation.
Li Guoying introduced that in the future it is hoped that water source projects and main projects will still be invested in and built by the state, but social capital should be attracted to invest in field project construction, and market means should be used to build high-efficiency water-saving irrigation projects. “We will press ahead with pilot work, summarize experience and models by next year, and promote them on a larger scale, with the government and the market ‘using both hands’ to jointly advance the development of China's high-efficiency water-saving irrigation cause.” he said.