During Feb. 26 of 2008, the international workshop of addressing China?s water scarcity: strengthening water institutional and policies was held in Beijing. The workshop is to discuss the synthesis of recommendations for selected water resources management issues proposed by the World Bank?s China Water Scarcity Analytical and Advisory Activities (AAA). The main themes of the workshop are water governance, water pricing, water right, watershed ecological compensation and water pollution control and prevention. About 100 participants of officials, experts, NGO representatives, enterprises representatives etc. attended the meeting.
The workshop includes plenary meeting in the morning and 4 thematic sessions and the concluding meeting in the afternoon. During the morning, experts from the programme team delivered the outcomes of the programme. Their presentations brief China?s present situation on water governance, water pricing, water rights and pollution control etc, and more important, they propose countermeasures including institutional arrangement, policy, activities etc. to respond the severe water scarcity facing in China and. Some other related officials and experts also delivered reports on their latest researches or projects outputs to provide reference for refining the report proposed by World Bank programme team. In the afternoon, experts delivered more details on the reports and carried out discussion on these issues.
Water governance is thought of important and urgent for the present situation of water scarcity, water pollution etc. in China. In the preliminary report proposed by the programme team, it suggests the renovation in the ministry level and river basin agency level. A national water committee is proposed to integrate and implement all functions related to water management. The team thinks it is better to have an independent high level agency to implement water governance to avoid management gap or overlapping. However, experts presented in the workshop also pointed out the institutional setting up is not the key of improving management and how to achieve better coordination is the final solution. That water is governed by more than one department has its advantages instead of only disadvantages.
In order to respond to severe water scarcity, water pricing is thought of a useful tool to improve water using efficiency and water saving. However, improving water price have to taken into consideration of equity. When water price is relatively low, government subsidy is necessary for cost recovery. It is purpose it to offer help to poor people to realize equity. However, in practice, according to some analysis, most benefit from the government subsidy is not enjoyed the poor. It shows low water price and government subsidy is not the solution for equity. Therefore, improving water price and identifying methods to help poor people to realize equity is the key issues during water pricing improvement.
In addition to water governance, water pricing, experts also discussed water rights, environmental compensation etc. These discussions will provide reference for the world bank?s programme team to update the report.
However, there are still some issues which have room to be updated.
The involvement of Chinese side participation. Since the report is to provide reference for China, the opinions of china side are quite important. Although it is stated that some high level officials from MWR, SEPA etc. already get involved during the preparation of the report, it seems it is far from enough. Most consultancies are held in the form of workshop. Workshop is good for identifying ideas of the team. However, it is not a convenient tool to receive response from high level officials due to the short time and lack enough understanding of the report of high level officials.
In addition, the increase of representative of river basin agencies is a good advice to realize more public participation. However, how to achieve the point is need to be addressed. The present river basin agencies are not any kind of loose organization. They have fixed working places and full time work. The suggestion of having representative of provinces etc. in the river basin agencies is not easy to be realized under present institutional arrangement. It is possible representative of provinces etc involved in some decision-making conferences are much easier.
In general, the report makes a summary of the present situation of China and will provide better reference when these recommendations are better designed for feasible reason.
