March 18th, 2009

Honorable experts, leaders, ladies and gentlemen:

Good afternoon！

We are very happy to gather in Turkey in this vital and promising season, and on the occasion of the 5th World Water Forum, to hold this EU-China Dialogue on the Integrated River Basin Management. As the host of this meeting, we feel sincerely happy. Hereby, on behave of the Yellow River Conservancy Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources, I warmly welcome all experts and representatives, and sincerely appreciate your sustained attention to the management and development of the Yellow River.

This meeting is a kind of dialogue workshop co-organized by the Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC), the EU-China River Basin Management Programme and the International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO), the main purpose is to build a platform for the dialogue on EU-China river basin management, to promote the share and exchange of experience achieved on the river basin management in China and EU, to discuss together how to adopt more effective regional actions, to confront the water crises occurred in the river basins in China and EU.

Water is the lifeline of human’s existence and development, and also the important material base of achieving the sustainable development of economic society. At present, with the increasing impact of climate change, how to coping with the intense pressure on water resources, to further improve the integrated river basin water resources management, to effectively use the limited water resources, to well develop the trans-boundary cooperation, and share the information, experiences and benefits, to furthest achieve the sustainability of environment and the development of human economic society, have already become the common challenge of global people. This dialogue will focus on the topics of which China and EU are concerned, such as the integrated river basin water resources management, river basin ecological environment and adaption to the climate change, etc., to develop high level discussion and deep communication，so as to promote the exchange and in pursuit of the newest information and technology on integrated river basin management. In addition, it also has a great significance to facilitate the sustainable and healthy development of water industry in China and EU.

Taking the Yellow River in China as an example, the Yellow River is the mother river of Chinese nation; she nurtured the growth of Chinese nation, fostered and inherited the effulgent Chinese civilization. Presently, the Yellow River uses its river runoff which only accounts for 2% of the total river runoff of the whole nation, to support 12% of population and the development of 15% of arable lands of the whole nation, which plays an important role in the national economic development. Meanwhile, as the world famous river with the features of high sand-laden, less water and more sediment as well as unbalance of water and sediment, the training, development and management of the Yellow River are severely restricted by these factors. With the development of economic society, water resources shortage and water environment become serious problems of what the Yellow River management, development and protection are facing in the new period. Based on the importance of the Yellow River and the arduous task of what the integrated management of the Yellow River faces, the YRCC puts forward a river management concept of “maintaining the healthy life of the Yellow River”. Taking the information as technical support, the optimist scheme was taken to serve the management and development of the Yellow River, and carried out a series of river management exploration and practices, such as the integrated Yellow River water allocation and Yellow River water and sand regulation, etc., with good results and application. We are quite happy to be here to share these experiences with you, and relative experts will make corresponding presentations in the following sessions.

For many years, the YRCC followed the principles of improving the river basin management level, enlarging the trans-basins cooperation and sharing the benefits, actively facilitated the cooperation and communication between the YRCC and International water institutions and organizations, and also built the platform of International Yellow River Forum (IYRF) for water conservancy exchange and cooperation. The IYRF has been held successfully for three times, which has already become a mature international forum. It is also a large-scale international workshop based on the Yellow River, for promoting academic exchange and cooperation on international water aspects, especially on the river basin training and management. Here, I am very glad to inform you that the 4th IYRF with the theme of “Ecological Civilization and River Ethics” will be held in Zhengzhou in October this year; we sincerely invite you to participate.

In order to cope with the new challenges together, the enforcement of the international cooperation on water affairs has become the impending requirement of water conservancy experts and managers. Although the economy, culture and social background in China and EU are different from each other, they confront the similar problems, such as weak ecological environment, water pollution and flood disasters, etc., which need to be solved through the cooperation among countries, it also needs the coordination between countries and regions, and the various cooperation such as technical workshops, staff communication, joint research and so on, to realize a win-win situation of cooperation on water affairs.

At this moment，we are gathering in Turkey, where the Europe and Asia are connected, to have this dialogue, which is exactly “Bridging Divides for Water”, we are building a bridge on integrated water resources management between China and EU. We sincerely hope that all delegates could communicate freely, express penetrating judgments, and share the advanced water conservancy knowledge, information and experiences, so as to contribute to the improvement of the water resources management in the river basins of China and EU.

Finally, I wish the dialogue successful. Thank you very much!