At
5,464 kilometers in length, the Yellow River contains only two percent of
China’s water resources, yet provides water for 12 percent of China’s 1.3
billion population, irrigates 15 percent of its farmland and generates about 14
percent of its GDP. “The
Yellow River lacks water resources, and the water supply currently drawn from
the river is beyond its capacity,” said Chen Xiaojiang, director of the Yellow
River Conservancy Commission (YRCC) of the Ministry of Water Resources in March
this year.
The
river runs through nine provinces and autonomous regions and empties into the
Bohai Bay off the coast of east China’s Shandong Province. For a period in
1972, it failed for the first time to reach the sea, and flow interruptions
have regularly been observed since 1987. The annual frequency of “dry days”
reached a peak at 226 days for a 704-kilometer section of river in Shandong in
1997. In
1998, the National Development and Reform Commission (formerly the State Development
Planning Commission) and the Ministry of Water Resources issued annual
water-use quotas and a distribution scheme for the river. These management
policies determined total water withdrawals on the basis of hydrology, the need
for sediment transport and other ecological factors, and established annual
provincial water withdrawals including a seasonal distribution plan for greater
withdrawal in the rainy season than in the dry season.
With
the authorization of the State Council, YRCC acts as the sole administrator for
the allocation of the Yellow River water supply to the nine provinces and
autonomous regions through which it flows. In March 1999, the Commission issued
the first water withdrawal quota directive and started the water withdrawal
control plan for the whole basin. This policy was extended from the main Yellow
River to its tributaries in 2006.
According
to planning information provided to NewsChina by YRCC, the river's annual water
resources that can be tapped is 58 billion cubic meters, and 37 billion cubic meters
are allocated to the nine provinces and autonomous regions, with the remaining 21
billion earmarked to wash away silt in the river. The quota for each province
and autonomous region is based on their population, economic structure and
water demand. A trade in water use rights between various sectors has sprung up
in some provinces.
Implementation
of these policies has ensured uninterrupted flow of the river to the sea for 14
consecutive years since 2000 and improved the water resource and ecological
health of the whole basin. Ecosystem integrity and biological diversity have
improved greatly.
