China, People's Republic of : Strengthening Capacity, Institutions, and Policies for Enabling High-Quality, Green Development in the Yellow River Ecological Corridor

Agriculture, natural resources and rural development / Agricultural policy, institutional and capacity development - Agricultural production - Land-based natural resources management - Rural water policy, institutional and capacity development - Water-based natural resources management

The proposed knowledge and support technical assistance (TA) cluster will support the achievement of resilient ecological protection and high-quality development goals in the Yellow River Basin in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The TA cluster will design and implement approaches to support natural, human, social, and physical capitals required to enable high-quality growth and ecological protection via (i) informing strategic institutional, policy and governance reforms on key development issues; (ii) demonstrating innovative technologies and integrated solutions; and (iii) promoting knowledge sharing and strategic partnerships for multi-stakeholder and private sector engagement.

There are 13 subprojects under the TA: (i) TA 6642-PRC: Strategic Research of Promoting Ecological Protection and High-Quality Development in the Yellow River Basin through

Economic and Intensive Water Use, (ii) TA 6633-PRC: Developing Legislative and Planning Mechanisms for Ecological Protection in the Yellow River Basin, (iii) TA 6626-PRC: Green

Farmland Construction and Agricultural High-Quality Development in the Yellow River Basin; (iv) TA 6605-PRC: Yellow River Eco-Compensation Mechanism, (v) TA 6656-PRC: Ecological

Valuation and Compensation Mechanism in the Kubuqi Desert, (vi) TA 6616-PRC: Research on Comprehensive Management Planning Policy of Huangshui Basin in Qinghai Province, (vii) TA

6657-PRC: Improving Policies and Planning for Nature-Positive Development in the Huangshui River Source Area, (viii) TA 6777-PRC: Strategic Research on Environmentally Sustainable

Development of Paper Mulberry Ecological Agriculture and Pasturage in the Yellow River Basin, (ix) TA 6758-PRC: Policy Research and Technical Study on Ecological Restoration and

Biodiversity Conservation in the Yellow River Basin in Henan Province, and (x) TA 6757-PRC: Sustainable Forest-Grassland Management in the Middle Reaches of the Yellow River Basin; (xi) P54026-013-PRC: Research of Ecological Water Security for Healthy River and Biodiversity Protection in the Lower Yellow River and Delta (Subproject 12),3 (xii) TA 6948-PRC: Building Climate Resilience Through Adaptation Planning in the Yellow River Basin (Subproject 13), and (xiii) P54026-015-PRC: Piloting Environmental Information Disclosure in the Yellow River Basin to Promote Green Standards in the People's Republic of China (Subproject 14).

Yellow River supports multipurpose development in a fragile human-nature system. Granting its name from the 'loess fine-grained sediments coloring its waters, the Yellow River runs for 5,464 kilometers, from its source in Bayan Har mountains on the Tibetan Plateau to the Bohai sea. It is the second largest river in the PRC, after the Yangtze, and the sixth longest river in the world. The river covers a basin area of 752,400 square kilometers, crosses nine provinces, is home to around 120 million people, agriculture output contributes to feeding about 12% of the PRC's population, irrigates about 15% of arable land, accounts for 8% of national gross domestic product and supplies water to 66 prefectural-level cities and 340 counties. The river is an important ecological corridor and arterial connection among the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, the Loess plateau and the Northern Plain, playing an irreplaceable role for national ecological, water and food security. Considered one of the most hydrologically complex rivers in the world, its waters carry and deposit about 1.6 billion tons of sediments on the riverbed yearly. This generates the phenomenon of the 'hanging river , with the bed reaching 10 meters above the adjacent plain in the downstream valley. Accounting for only 2% of the country's water resources, the region is severely water scarce and faces extreme climatic conditions, causing destructive droughts and floods. In the past 30 years, the total water resources have reduced by 13.4% (footnote 3). With permafrost ice in the Hindu Kush Himalayas region rapidly melting due to global warming, the Yellow River's long-term freshwater availability, vital for drinking water and socio-economic development in the basin, is highly under threat. The increase in frequency and intensity of devastating floods, destroying land and livelihoods, is an immediate and visible consequence of climate change impacts in the short-term. Water stress and scarcity have been further exacerbated due to extensive human development and associated land cover change and extreme soil erosion. Agriculture accounts for about 69.6% of total withdrawal and is the largest consumer of water in the basin. Water resources are further strained due to pollution from agricultural runoff, township and village enterprises, and rural and industrial wastewater discharged into the water streams. In terms of ecological security, more than three-fourths of the total basin area is defined as ecologically fragile.

The Yellow River Basin is an important economic hub for the PRC, but it has been facing ever increasing constraints to maintain its current economic function as well as striving to meet its sustainable development potential. Balancing economy, ecology, and community in the Yellow River Basin is becoming more challenging which is often further compounded by climate change. The complex and integrated relationship between ecosystems, natural resources, climate change, biodiversity, and human interaction is fragile, and imbalance can result in extreme situations such as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Balanced health of people, animals, and environment are important and crucial precursor for sustainable development. Investing in and promoting high productivity of natural, human, social, and physical capitals, as the building blocks for sustainable development, are crucial to enabling high-quality growth and ecological protection.

Water underpins social and economic development. Achieving water security, through balancing the resource as a human basic need and a socio-economic good, is the entry point for sustained green development and equitable growth across the basin and within the PRC. Despite progresses made in the last 20 years, complex development issues remain unaddressed and have contributed to ongoing severe pressures on the basin's ecology, including pollution and overexploitation of ecosystem services; inadequate provision of clean water supply and sanitation services posing the most vulnerable groups (i.e., urban poor, women, and elders) at risk of contracting water-borne diseases; and widening of rural-urban disparity in the less developed provinces. The underpinning causes can be grouped into three macro areas: (i) lack of strategic basin-wide scale planning, policy incoherence, poor coordination mechanisms across institutions and regions, compounded by lack of economic and financial incentives; (ii) untapped potential for innovation, skills development and integrated approaches for sustainable and inclusive rural-urban development; and (iii) inadequate 'knowledge spillover of national, regional, and international best practices.

Government strategy. Recognizing these development challenges, the government has promoted its vision of 'ecological civilization to reinforce the symbiosis between economic development and environmental protection. Ongoing national programs such as the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) Development Plan, Rural Vitalization Strategy and the upcoming 14th Five-Year Plan (20212025) are the main pillars to keep shaping the PRC's objective for ecological civilization and overall green transformation. This form of green transformation has a stronger focus on high-quality development, people's broader well-being, innovation, urban-rural development cooperation, improved natural resources management and policy reforms for balancing environmental protection and economic growth. Yet river basins remain a development challenge due to their complexity and requirement for integrated approaches that are multisectoral and inclusive. While the Yellow River has been earmarked as a strategically important core region for supporting long-term sustained green development in the PRC, the health of the river and its ecosystem need prompt action to enable the desired long-term sustained green development in the PRC.

Learning from the YREB programmatic approach and rural vitalization. Building on over $10 billion investment demonstration projects in the YREB during 20002015, ADB has historically played a catalytic role in the Yangtze River. In order to maximize its limited resources and institutional advantages, ADB set up the YREB programmatic approach (phase one 20172020) to support the PRC's YREB Plan with cross-sector and knowledge-driven integrated projects. The fundamental innovation of this approach is its geographic concept of 'corridor encompassing economic, social, and ecological multidimensional linkages. This is a step beyond traditional watershed catchment management towards a more holistic protection of regional public goods. This approach was expanded to support the rural vitalization strategy and is ongoing both in the YREB and other regions. The core principles of these interventions provide highly relevant lessons for addressing the Yellow River Basin's complex challenges. These include the adoption of a whole-of-ecosystem approach by planning across the basin; multi-stakeholder engagement to carefully identify and address impacts on communities and livelihoods; the design of institutional frameworks to incentivize long-term financial sustainability for eco-compensation programs and facilitate creation of an enabling environment to achieve the desired social, economic, and environmental outcomes across the basin.

Resilient ecological protection and security in the Yellow River Basin achieved

High-quality development opportunities in the Yellow River Basin increased

Strategic institutional, policy and governance reforms on key Yellow River development issues promoted

Innovative technologies, approaches and solutions to address development constraints in Yellow River Basin proposed

Knowledge sharing, strategic partnerships for multi-stakeholder and private sector engagement supported

a participatory approach was adopted during project design to identify the needs of stakeholders.

ADB will carry out procurement following the ADB Procurement Policy (2017, as amended from time to time) and its associated project administration instructions and/or TA staff instructions.

ADB will engage consultants following the ADB Procurement Policy (2017, as amended from time to time) and its associated project administration instructions and/or TA staff instructions.