A System to Better Protect Water Bodies

The river chief system is a management system for rivers and lakes and is linked to the accountability system of environmental protection and performance evaluations of top officials.

The Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms approved a document on Dec 11 last year to implement the river chief system across the country by the end of 2018.

The river chief system is aimed at promoting better coordination among government departments to protect the country's water bodies.

Workers remove floating objects from the Xiaojiang River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, in Chongqing in October.
[Photo by Rao Guojun/For China Daily]

The river chief system was first implemented in Wuxi, East China's Jiangsu province, in 2007 to solve the algae problem in Taihu Lake. Wuxi municipal authorities made the local chiefs at different levels the river chiefs, too, giving them the full responsibility of water and environmental management. The move proved a big success, as algae pollution is now a thing of the past.

In 2012, the Jiangsu provincial authorities extended the river chief system to cover the entire province. The next year, the Zhejiang provincial authorities implemented it. And in 2015, the Ministry of Water Resources launched pilot river chief system programs nationwide.

Although governments at all levels have made great efforts to control water pollution, the condition of China's water bodies has worsened over the past four decades.

The quality of water in one-third of China's rivers is below the third level of the national water quality standard, mainly because local governments have failed to strike the right balance between economic development and environmental protection.

Local governments used to sacrifice the environment for economic growth, and water management suffered from a lack of coordination.

At the core of the river chief system is river and lake management, which is the responsibility of government heads. The river chief system will be established at the provincial, municipal, county and township levels, and the government heads of every province, autonomous region and municipality, by default, will be the general river chiefs. Besides, mayors and county heads will be responsible for the protection of water bodies in their administrative regions.

The river chief system is a provincial-level unified management system that will facilitate better coordination among departments and thus strengthen water management. 

Source: China Daily

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Taxonomy

• River Studies
• Environment
• River Engineering
• River Restoration
• River Engineering