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<\/a>The Yellow River flows through several provinces and its water is used for cities, industry, and agriculture. The basin’s water challenges are also linked to energy: significant coal and shale gas reserves lie within the basin.<\/p><\/div>\n
China\u2019s major institution responsible for dealing with water allocation in the north is the Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC).\u00a0 Although only one of several water conservancy commissions covering China\u2019s major river basins, the YRCC is uniquely powerful and important.\u00a0 In fact, it predates the current government, having been originally established in the 1930s under the Nationalist government.<\/p>\n
Today, the YRCC reports directly to the Ministry of Water Resources (MWR) in Beijing, and is responsible for a wide range of planning and policy coordination activities.\u00a0 It prepares basin-wide development plans and develops flood control, irrigation, and major infrastructure development strategies in the nine provinces and autonomous regions which share the Yellow River basin.\u00a0 However, despite its name, the YRCC is a commission in name only\u2014its members are bureaucrats rather than representatives of different agencies or regions.<\/p>\n
In theory, the YRCC is supposed to supervise and coordinate water use in all the regions under its jurisdiction.\u00a0 Most notably, it oversees a plan for allocating the Yellow\u2019s waters to each province.\u00a0\u00a0 However, in reality many local officials simply ignore their allocations, or find ways to conceal their actual water use.\u00a0 In many cases, enterprises fail to apply for new water use licenses, instead relying on groundwater which because of hydrological inter-connectivity ends up depleting surface waters as well.<\/p>\n
Indeed, tensions between central and local levels of government represent one of the biggest challenges to responding to water scarcity in the Yellow River basin.\u00a0 For example, an Asian Development Bank report blamed the \u201coverwhelming protectionism exercised by local governments<\/a>\u201d for the Yellow River\u2019s ecological and water quality problems. Such political conflict continues to hamper water resource management and allocation, is likely to only increase as the pressures on the Yellow River\u2019s waters grows.<\/p>\n So far, the Chinese government has attempted to respond to these challenges by improving its supervision of local governments.\u00a0 A massive effort known as the \u201cDigital Yellow River\u201d aims to install near-real-time flow monitoring stations along much of the length of the river to better monitor provincial water use, for example.\u00a0 Regulations have also been progressively strengthened.\u00a0 But ultimately, it\u2019s unclear whether these efforts will succeed in addressing the political conflict which has so far impeded responses to the water-energy nexus in the Yellow River basin.<\/p>\n There are several steps the government can take to prevent political conflict from undermining attempts to address water management challenges.\u00a0 These include better stakeholder involvement, steps to facilitate negotiation and build consensus, and actions that would accelerate the setup of water rights trading systems and promote marked-based mechanisms that prevent protectionist jurisdictional bureaucracies from hindering implementation of the national policies at the local level.\u00a0 Ultimately, meeting the challenges of the water-energy nexus in the Yellow River basin will require these kinds of reforms.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n