Public participation in the management of China's waterways improves their water quality

An estimated 70% of China's rivers and lakes are too polluted for human use, the result of decades of intensifying economic development that have increased the amount of pollution that winds up in the water. Fixing China's water pollution problems is an uphill battle, but citizen monitoring of remediation efforts could lead to consistent improvements in water quality, according to researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Nanjing University.