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What-If

Explore what could change.

Choose a place, a documented issue and one of its documented interventions, then set how far it goes.

ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO — NOT A SCIENTIFIC PREDICTION. Built from documented causes, impacts and solutions plus general qualitative patterns. It contains no modelled numbers.

3 · Intervention
PilotScaledTransformative

Adopted across much of the area, with dedicated budgets and enforcement.

Illustrative scenario

What if China took a scaled approach to “Inter-basin water transfer”?

Starting point · documented

WaterSeverity: High
Water scarcity on the North China Plain

Beijing sits in one of the world's most water-stressed regions, with long-term groundwater decline and reliance on water transfers.

The intervention · documented

Inter-basin water transfer

The South-to-North Water Diversion Project supplements Beijing's supply.

Increases available supply and allows some groundwater recovery; involves large costs and impacts in source regions.

Schematic direction of change

Supply and demand measures can act within years, while groundwater, rivers and wetlands often take much longer to recover.

Schematic, unitless illustration: relative pressure over time without the intervention compared with the intervention in place. Not based on measured data.NowLonger term →Relative pressure (unitless)
Without the intervention With the interventionSchematic shape only — no data, units or dates.

Causes this could address

  • Low renewable water per personThe region's rainfall and river flows are small relative to its population and economic activity.

Impacts that could ease

  • Groundwater declineFalling water tables increase pumping costs and threaten long-term availability.
  • Land subsidenceOver-extraction contributes to ground sinking in parts of the region, damaging infrastructure.

Wider reach at higher intensity is an assumption of this illustration.

How change might unfold

  1. Near term

    Operational gains such as reduced losses or new storage begin to show.

  2. Medium term

    Supply becomes more reliable in ordinary years if measures are sustained.

  3. Long term

    Aquifers and ecosystems recover slowly, if extraction and pollution stay below recharge and assimilation.

Faded stages are less likely to be reached at scaled intensity.

What this would not change

Rainfall variability and drought remain; interventions change how well the system copes, not the weather.

What it depends on

  • Sustained funding and institutional capacity
  • Consistent enforcement and monitoring
  • Local stakeholder support
  • Participation of affected communities

ILLUSTRATIVE SCENARIO — NOT A SCIENTIFIC PREDICTION. Built from documented causes, impacts and solutions plus general qualitative patterns. It contains no modelled numbers.

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