Resource information
This report presents the outcome of the
World Bank's analytical and advisory work to assess the
status of water resources development and the key water
issues and challenges facing the country. The Bank has also
reviewed its history of cooperation with the Government of
China in recent decades, and notes the remarkable
achievements China has made in developing the water sector.
The report proposes solutions for tackling the enormous
challenges facing China in the sector. The central priority
is to ensure sustainable utilization and management of
water, land and related resources at the national, basin,
regional and local levels. Despite relatively poor
endowments of land and water by international standards,
China's economy has developed extremely rapidly over
the last three decades, supporting 21 percent of the
world's population with 9 percent of the world's
arable land and only 6 percent of the world's water
while simultaneously lifting some 400 million people out of
poverty. It is noted in the national water resources master
plan recently completed by the Ministry of Water Resources
(MWR) and the National Development and Reform Commission
(NDRC) that China's water resources are under stress
from the combined demands of agriculture, industrialization,
urbanization, population increases and improving living
standards. The impact is evident in regional falling water
tables, inadequate flows to the environment, pollution, and
so on.
