On 19th November 2008, Reuters reported stating that "China to spend $3million On Water Projects". The Vice Premier of China, Hui Liangyu quoted "Our target is to enhance the safety of key reservoirs by 2010, provide qualified drinking water for all rural residents by 2013 and complete the construction of water-saving facilities for large-scale irrigation areas across the country by 2020".
This statement clearly demonstrates the steps undertaken to curb the serious issue of Water Crisis. China like most of the other emerging Asian countries is facing perennial droughts and floods. Extreme weather conditions and global weather anomaly has led to serious concerns on their food and livestock industry. Water deficits and unmanageable water consumption has impacted to the growth on grain imports in China and rest of the South Asian countries like India. Even, the ground water levels have fallen enormously in these countries due to widespread over-pumping of water using powerful diesel and electric pumps. However, China and many other nations who are facing water shortages are looking upto primary water treatments, secure septic systems and carefully analyze wastewater outfall design to minimize impacts to drinking water and to ecosystems.
Israel, Singapore, Australia and many other countries are setting up desalination plants and reverse Osmosis process to use sewage and waste water.
Many International Corporate giants like Coca Cola Company have started with water replenishment programmes all across their worldwide manufacturing units after their pledge in 2005 to save water. Coca Cola Company published their "Replenish" report on January 2008 exemplifying Coca Cola's present and future framework on water sustainability. It describes 100 water recycling projects run across 49 countries in various stages of implementations. In India and China to name a few upcoming water conservation projects, Coca Cola Company has initiated with Rain Water Harvesting, Recharge Shafts for Sustainable Groundwater and Yangtze River Conservation; which implements in best management practices for water usage and water stewardship among industries and other water users throughout the basin through venues and Yangtze Forums. Coca Cola Company is promoting Freshwater Conservation and Sustainable Water Use in Canada and North America also.
Nestle, on their annual report for 2007, claimed that it uses the water in similar ways as consumers do in kitchen. Nestle has focus to reduce amount of water needed in their operations, with reduction of volumetric usage of water from 218 billion liters in 1998, to 155 billion in 2006, despite their increase in production. Nestle also emphasized their responsibility to save and reduce water consumption on water stressed areas like production plants in Bangkok, Thailand.
However, with all the implementations there is a price which the consumers are paying. The water recycling and sustainable projects are expensive and tedious. The costs of these projects are procured as the cost of production. This leads to an increase in the prices of the products sold by these companies. Non-profit organizations cannot support these expensive projects due to lack of infrastructure and expenditure. Hence, Government looks upto these corporate companies to come up with new drafts and ideas on judicious water management; whereas they are the people who consume most amount of water to suffice there own business needs.
After the start of this century, multinational giants like Coca Cola, Johnson & Johnson, SABMiller, Levi Strauss and others have come up with plans to control water crisis but the execution of these plans and negotiations seems to be minimal. There has not been a serious concern to think on a greater magnitude about World's Water Crisis. I would like to question the corporate involvements about the poor sewage system of Zimbabwe which caused a Cholera epidemic nearly taking away 16000 lives. There would not be any serious outlook on these countries where water crisis is a grave situation and human being are unable to survive because of the unavailability of proper water management system.