Catalog

Basin Water
ADB Review [ December 2006 - January 2007 ]

Healthy rivers. Flood management. Hydropower.

Imagine a wetland the size of France—that is the area of the basin of the three mother rivers that emerge from Russia to meet at the northeastern Chinese border in Heilongjian province and drain into the Sea of Okhotsk.

REGIONAL RESOURCE Sanjiang Plain wetlands in Heilongjiang Province, PRC

This vast river basin once supported thriving agricultural communities. But 50 years of efforts to control floods have resulted in even worse flooding upstream, more frequent droughts downstream, reduced agricultural production, and declining biodiversity.

Similar problems occur in river basins across Asia. To reverse such damage, governments and communities are introducing new ways of managing and sharing water resources. Often, this requires setting up a basic legal framework that determines who has the authority to manage the basin, which may comprise rivers, lakes, forests and wetlands, and encompass cities as well as vast agricultural tracts. For many basins, these issues are further complicated by ecosystems that cut across administrative and, in some cases, national, boundaries.

Water users across many sectors need to agree and abide by a set of rules to jointly operate flood management, hydropower, irrigation, and water supply infrastructure—or risk dissipating the limited resources available. The health of the region's river basins and the communities that depend on them will increasingly depend on people's willingness to manage each basin in ways that integrate the multiple demands on its resources.

Go back to current issue

Email this to a friend