Enhancing the Legal Standing and Quality of Water Conservation

In recent years, notable progress has been made regarding law-based water management with the promulgation of laws and regulations, such as the Yangtze River Protection Law, the Yellow River Protection Law, and Regulations on Groundwater Management. We have also made breakthroughs in the reform of water conservation investment and financing and advanced the reform of market-based trading of water-use rights.

On the new journey ahead, we must maintain a goal- and problem-oriented approach and continue to remove institutional barriers and introduce policy innovations, in order to raise the governance capacity and standards related to water conservation.

We will improve water conservation laws and strive to study, publicize, and implement the Yangtze River Protection Law and the Yellow River Protection Law. We will quickly develop supporting systems, improve the system of laws and regulations related to water conservation, and strengthen links between administrative law enforcement and both criminal justice and handling of public interest litigation. We will carry out targeted law enforcement in key areas, promote law-based administration, and continuously improve our ability to use law-based thinking and methods to solve problems in water conservation.

We will strengthen management of river basins, apply systems thinking to river basins, and enhance unified planning, governance, control, and management of river basins. We will improve the river basin planning system, promote the coordinated protection and management of river basins, implement river basin water projects for joint and unified control, and promote joint prevention, control, and management involving upstream and downstream sections, left and right banks, and mainstreams and tributaries.

We will further reforms in key areas, ensure both the government and the market play their respective roles, and make breakthroughs in innovative and diversified forms of investment and financing and in greater use of the role of the market and financial instruments. We will also improve the mechanism for determining costs of water supply from water conservation projects and actively yet steadily promote the comprehensive price reform of water for agricultural purposes.