In China, eutrophication coupled with environmental degradation has been considered as one of the prices paid for the rapid economic development occurring since the “reform and opening up-policy” was introduced in the late 1970s. Today, billions of RMB Chinese Yuan are dedicated to ecosystem restoration via environmental protection actions. It is yet to be determined how these actions affect water quality and whether they have effectively reversed anthropogenically induced water quality degradation to any extent.

Supported by the National Outstanding Youth Fund and other projects, Ph.D. student Zhou Yongqiang from Zhang Yunlin research team of Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGLAS), discussed how Chinese economic development detrimentally impacted water quality in recent decades and how this has been improved by enormous investment in environmental remediation funded by the Chinese government, based on the chemical oxygen demand(COD), dissolved oxygen (DO) and ammonium (NH4+-N) in River Basin in China a total of 145 national monitoring stations in 2006-2015 week changes. The research results are published in the top journals of environmental science and water resources Water Research（Water Research, 2017, 118: 152-159）.

During the past decade, following Chinese government-financed investments in environmental restoration and reforestation, the water quality of Chinese inland waters has improved markedly, which is particularly evident from the significant and exponentially decreasing GDP-normalized COD and ammonium (NH4+-N) concentrations. It is evident that the increasing GDP in China over the past decade did not occur at the continued expense of its inland water ecosystems. This offers hope for the future, also for other industrializing countries, that with appropriate environmental investments a high GDP can be reached and maintained, while simultaneously preserving inland aquatic ecosystems, particularly through management of sewage discharge.

Paper link:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135417302981

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316145293_Improving_water_quality_in_China_Environmental_investment_pays_dividends

(Information source: Nanjing Branch of CAS)