Many countries, Africa for example, have felt serious drought and the state of California is currently experiencing a pretty devastating drought as well. With water shortages causing severe losses in everything from human life to agriculture, water conservation seems like a darn good option.

With water being our most precious commodity – no life can exist without it – being conservative with it should be a no-brainer for any country, even the most water blessed on the planet. When something is as precious and essential to life, you treat it as such – waste is not ever an option.

It seems as China has found a seemingly logical way to conserve water in its extremely overpopulated country. China is #1 in the world population – as of September 2013; their population has hit 1,362,391,579. But how do they plan to conserve water for all of those people? The government is going to charge more for those who use it most.

From Reuters: China will roll out wide-reaching reforms in how it prices water by the end of next year, the government said Friday, charging higher prices for the heaviest urban consumers to conserve diminishing resources and spur investment.

The new pricing plan that will be put in place by the end of 2015 will be based on water usage of households in all cities and the biggest majority of towns, and will create a higher cost of water, dependent on their rate of their use.

The biggest consumers of water will pay three times the normal (or base) rate. The charges will trickle down to the second largest consumers paying 1.5 times and the least usage, calculated to around 80 percent of homes wouldn’t be affected at all by the change, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

China is also looking to to funnel water from the south to the north and are building a massive canal, similar to the Panama canal to transport the abundant water resources in the south up to where it is needed. The preliminary cost of this project has been estimated to be close to $65 billion dollars. However, the canal is just getting underway and water conservation needs to happen as soon as possible.

Experts claim this price increase is definitely just a temporary solution as there are some serious water problems on the horizon.

Image via Wikimedia Commons