China must bring together different agencies to address water shortages, policy paper says

In a policy paper published in Science on Thursday, researchers praised China's January 2011 plan to address water shortages and conservation in the nation, but "the researchers said this commitment won't be enough unless disparate agencies learn to communicate and coordinate with each other," Reuters reports. "They described a web of government entities with seemingly contradictory missions, and actions that appear to go against one policy as they promote another," the news service writes, adding, for example, "The government encourages urbanization, the report said, but protection of water supplies gets less attention compared to energy issues, even though water is absolutely essential to human life." Reuters continues, "To solve these problems, the authors recommended focusing on increasing water efficiency along with work to understand the complex relationships among agencies and people with competing claims on water" (Zabarenko, 8/9).