Chinese Officials Call for High-Level Body to Manage the Yangtze

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A construction crane several tens of meters high is operating furiously at a building site in a large valley of the Dadu River, one of the major tributaries of the Yangtze River. It is just one in a roaring cacophony of stirring machines, pile drivers, and other heavy machinery working to systematically remove a nearby mountain mass. The valley itself will disappear in a few years, replaced by a large dam and mega-sized hydroelectric power station.

The upper reaches of the Yangtze have become a battlefield for water resources between China’s major hydropower companies, which have spread their construction sites across the valley, and local governments. Meanwhile, a new report on the status of the Yangtze warns that overdevelopment will turn most of the river’s upstream portion into a series of multi-stage reservoirs, dramatically changing the hydrology and posing a long-term challenge to local riparian ecosystems.

The report, co-authored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission (YRWRC), and the conservation group WWF, was released at the second Yangtze Forum in Changsha in April and has received widespread media attention for being the first comprehensive assessment of the river’s health. All three organizations blame China’s current “water enclosure” development model for not only destroying local natural resources and ecosystems, but also creating hidden dangers in the management and control of future water projects.

Honglie Sun, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported at the Forum that the main channel and tributaries of the Yangtze are now home to some 40,000 reservoirs, with another 2,400 currently under construction. Jamie Pittock, director of WWF’s global freshwater program, noted that the Yangtze has the largest number of reservoirs of the world’s major river basins, and that some 100 dams are being built on the river.

Guishan Yang, director of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Limnology and a lead author of the report, warns that the ecological pressure facing the Yangtze will be difficult to resolve in the short run, and is likely to only worsen. “The development along the Yangtze is speeding up, as the whole country is demanding resources from it to fuel economic growth,” he said.

China’s Ministry of Water Resources (MOWR), once a leading proponent of developing the Yangtze River, has reversed its attitude almost completely. At the Changsha forum, former minister Shucheng Wang criticized the hydropower projects for taking up nearly every meter of the river. He said the Yangtze can no longer be fully developed and that more of it must be set aside for biodiversity and ecosystem reserves.

As the major initiator of the forum, the MOWR has met with local governors from provinces and cities along the Yangtze basin to discuss adopting a new river basin management mechanism, including setting up an integrated oversight body that is led directly by the State Council, China’s parliament.

Currently, more than 10 departments from the central government are authorized to manage the Yangtze, including MOWR, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), the Ministry of Construction (MOC), the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Transportation (MOT), and the Ministry of Health (MOH), along with some 11 other local provinces and cities, according to Yang. The YRWRC is only a sub-organization under MOWR and has little power to coordinate with other authorities.

Zhengsheng Liu, head of the water resources bureau under the YRWRC, had written a proposal for creating a higher-level management body for the Yangtze a few years ago. “We need an integrated commission to manage the Yangtze River Basin,” he suggests.

In a recent research report, the Chinese Academy of Engineering also indicated that a higher-level body is needed to manage the Yangtze, suggesting that the prime minister or vice prime minister should direct it and establish the office under the YRWRC. The report noted that the commission should not be managed only by MOWR, but also supervised by NDRC, SEPA, related local governments, and various stakeholders.

Lida Wen, secretary of the Forum, said that the Yangtze basin needs an integrated management mechanism to protect the river and its biodiversity. He agrees with the need to establish a more powerful management body than the current YRWRC. “The State Council has set up a specific commission for the Three Gorges Dam project, which is directed by the prime minister, as well as one for the north-south water transfer project,” he noted. “The same thing should be done to the Yangtze as well.”

“Only after the central government takes the lead will the local provinces and cities follow,” Zhensheng Liu observed. “Then the situation of ‘everyone doing things his own way’ in the current Yangtze management can be changed.”

 
Qiang Wang, Ying Yuan, and Peng Xie are journalists with Business Watch Magazine. Outside contributions to China Watch reflect the views of the author and are not necessarily the views of the Worldwatch Institute.

China Watch is a joint initiative of the Worldwatch Institute and Beijing-based Global Environmental Institute (GEI) and is supported by the blue moon fund.