A report published in China’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal has predicted the intensification of China’s water shortages in part due to of government efforts to redirect water to drier provinces, The Wall Street Journal reported. Co-author of the report Guan Dabo criticized the US$81 billion effort to re-route water from China’s south to its parched north known as the South-North Water Transfer Project in particular, noting that by 2020 the additional water brought by the project would likely satisfy only 5% of the city’s overall demand.