October 16, 2007

Your Excellency Vice Governor Jia Wanzhi of Shandong Province,

Your Honorable Chairman Mr. Loic Fauchon of the World Water Council (WWC)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In this golden harvest season, the 3rd International Yellow River Forum is opening at the beautiful Dongying city on the delta of the Yellow River. On behalf of the Ministry of Water Resources, I congratulate the opening of the forum and warmly welcome experts and friends from all over the world attending this great water event!

International Yellow River Forum had already been held twice successfully. On the previous forum in 2003 and 2005 respectively, "modern basin management"and "keeping the healthy life of river" was discussed and gained plentiful and substantial fruits. It influences water field in the world and becomes an important platform for colleagues and friends from all over the world to carry out academic discussion, technical exchange and cooperation. Based on this, the main theme of this forum is defined as "sustainable water resources management and Delta Ecosystem Maintenance", which is the succession of the former two forums.

With the global climate change, population increase, rapid industrialization and urbanization, the protection of rivers faces severer challenge. Through exploring approaches to sustainable water resources utilization and river ecosystem, the healthy life of rivers could be finally realized and maintained and benefit generation after generation. This is a common issue faced not only by rivers in China but also rivers in the world. As an important part of rivers, the estuary and delta play a key role in the development of economic of the whole basin even the country where the river in. For example, New Orland, Rotterdam, Shanghai, Cairo lying on the Mississippi River, the Rhine River, the Yangtze River, the Nile River respectively are the economic center of these regions or counties. But delta of river's estuary lying at the intersection of sea, river and land is vulnerable in environment, which puts higher demand on the harmonious development of river management and economic society of delta. It is also one of the important topics to be discussed in this forum.

China is a county of water resources rich in total amount and short in per capita value. The total quantity of water resources is 2,841.2 billion m3, among which runoff of rivers is 2,737.5 billion m3 and is the 6th in the world. But water quantity per person is ranked the 110th in over 180 countries. Irrational use and excessive abstraction on water resources destroyed natural development of rivers. Shortage of water resources, frequency of flood disaster, protruding of water pollution, water and soil erosion, etc. exist in many rivers in China and become one of factors restricting sustainable development of economic society of China.

The Yellow River is one of the most well-known yet most complicated river in China and the world. River training in China starts from the Yellow River. It is the forerunner in water development in China and an example in the history of river management in China. Through effective measures of constructing standardized embankment, integrated water resources management, integrated water quantity regulation, water and sediment regulation, water and soil conservation emphasizing on construction of warping dam, etc. are taken surrounding the objectives of "no embankment breaching, no running dry, no excessive standard of pollution and no further riverbed rising" according to river training idea of human being living in harmony with nature. Great achievements have been gained in guarantee sustainable use of water resources and maintain healthy life of the Yellow River. Through integrated water quantity regulation, no running dry in successive 7 years has been realized to effectively ensure the resuming of wetland in the Yellow River delta, development of oil field and water demand of economic society development of Dongying city.

We just start the research on environment protection and coordination development of economic society of the delta of the Yellow River. The delta of the Yellow River is the youngest land in China, which has great development potential with rich natural resources, oil and gas resources, land resources. At the same time, how to coordinate the relationship of flow way programming into the sea of the Yellow River, wetland ecosystem protection, oil and gas field development, local economic society development, etc. to ensure the sustainable development of the delta is the problem we should emphasize and research on. Now we are at Dongying. It is near enough for us to contact the delta of the Yellow River, which could supply help for us to research and discuss. Experts and scholars are expected to exchange successful experience of river management and environment protection around the subject of this forum to promote human being's harmonious living with nature and make common efforts for building our beautiful home!

Ladies and Gentlemen, "sustainable water resources management and delta ecosystem maintenance" would be promoted through conversation, research, discussion and exchange.

Wish the forum a great successful! Wish you enjoy your stay in the beautiful city!

Thank you!