China plans to pour 35.2 billion yuan (US$4.2 billion) into three
major programs aimed at optimizing regional water resources and
ensuring sustainable economic growth in drought-prone areas in the
years ahead.
The funds are the largest of their kind earmarked for the
integrated administration of water resources.
Beijing will benefit from a 22.1 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion)
windfall while 2.4 billion yuan (US$289 million) will be diverted
to the Heihe, an inland cross-border river between arid-prone Gansu
Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Another 10.7 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) will be reserved for the
Tarim, an inland river within northwest China's
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, an official with the
Ministry of Water Resources disclosed Tuesday.
Wu
Jisong, director of the Department of Water Resources at the
ministry, was confident the three plans can ensure sustainable
economic growth in Beijing, solve growing disputes over water use
in Gansu and Inner Mongolia and help protect endangered ecosystems
downstream of the
Tarim River.
Such plans showed the central government has begun to put its
strategic administration of China's existing water resources in
place in a bid to prevent further damaging ecosystems in
surrounding areas.
Work began last year along the Heihe River to stop streams from
drying up, the desertification of pastures and worsening ecosystems
in downstream Inner Mongolia.
Three major water diversion schemes from water-heads upstream of
the Bosten Lake - China's largest inland freshwater lake - into
areas downstream of the Tarim River have succeeded in making the
river flow again, rescuing dying trees along its banks and
surrounding areas.
And water authorities have started regulating the diversion of
water between provinces upstream and downstream of the Yellow River
which has failed to reach the sea in recent years due to persistent
droughts in the north and overuse in upstream lands.
In
1997, the Yellow River ran dry for a record 226 days in a
700-km-long section downstream.
The river flowed for the first time since the 1990s last year,
allowing water to be supplied to urban and rural people living
along its lower reaches and improving ecosystems in its
estuary.
In
many other regions, the ministry has also taken a series of
measures to optimize water resources in hundreds of cities by
integrating the administration of water-related issues into one
authority.
(China Daily November
28, 2001)