On Monday 17 October the Ambassador of the Netherlands in China D.J. van den Berg and the Director of YRCC Li GuoYing signed a contract on the Netherlands financial contribution to the Yellow River Delta Environmental Flow project.
Prince Willem Alexander and the Vice-Minister for Water Resources of the People’s Republic of China Suo Lisheng were present at this ceremony, which was further attended by a select group of participants of the 2nd International Yellow River Forum taking place in ZhengZhou, Henan province. At the conference the Prince underlined the importance of the Chinese – Dutch cooperation in the area of integrated water management. The Envionmental Flow project on the Delta of the Yellow River is an example of such integrated approach. It will be carried out jointly with the Yellow River Conservancy Committee by a Netherlands consortium led by Alterra. The other Netherlands partners are WL | Delft Hydraulics, Arcadis, Radboud University Nijmegen and Technical University Delft. The Yellow River Delta, a very dynamic aggrading delta, suffers from water deficiency because of water withdrawal in its upper course. Internationally important wetland areas for migrating birds stopping over on their migration between Siberia and Australia are threatened. The project aims at defining the environmental water flow required to safeguard the functioning of these wetlands. Some 150,000 ha of these wetlands have been assigned a Ramsar Convention status. But the delta is much larger. Integrated water management demands for involvement of other stakeholders, like agricultural, domestic and industrial water users in the delta area. The challenge of this project is to develop sophisticated tools and modeling instruments to evaluate the consequences of various water management alternatives for these functions. Only through discussion of these alternatives with the stakeholders involved, sustainable use of water resources can gradually be achieved.
On the picture from left to right: Bas Pedroli (Alterra), Netherlands Ambassador Van den Berg, Prince Willem Alexander, Chinese Vice Minister Water Resources Suo Lisheng, Eelco van Beek (WL | Delft Hydraulics), Director of YRCC Li GuoYing
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