Transforming Urban–Rural Water Linkages into High-Quality Investments

By Asian Development Bank

This publication describes the urban–rural water linkages (URWLs) approach to restoring river health in degraded environments, such as the Tuan River in Henan Province of the People’s Republic of China. The URWLs approach tackles issues affecting urban and rural areas through a focus on land use, water withdrawal, and pollution. This publication demonstrates how this approach can be effectively embedded into the project design to maximize the benefits of investment projects, which are aimed at restoring degraded river environments and uplifting the livelihood of the people dependent on such ecosystem. It makes a case for how the approach can be applied generally across the Asian Development Bank’s developing member countries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asian Development Bank
• Release date: Aug 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9789292623326

Book preview

TRANSFORMING URBAN–RURAL WATER LINKAGES INTO HIGH–QUALITY INVESTMENTS

AUGUST 2020

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO license (CC BY 3.0 IGO)

© 2020 Asian Development Bank

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Some rights reserved. Published in 2020.

ISBN 978-92-9262-331-9 (print), 978-92-9262-332-6 (electronic), 978-92-9262-333-3 (ebook)

Publication Stock No. TCS200228-2

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22617/TCS200228-2

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Notes:

In this publication, $ refers to United States dollars.

ADB recognizes China as the People’s Republic of China.

On the cover: The schematic diagram presents the important elements of urban-rural water linkages (cover graphics by Claudette Rodrigo).

Contents

Tables, Figures, Boxes, and Maps

Foreword

At the time of writing this foreword, the global health crisis stemming from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is causing unprecedented human suffering and economic losses, affecting disproportionally the most vulnerable. The lessons learnt from this pandemic will hopefully reshape the relationship of humans with the natural environment to be more symbiotic or harmonious than in the past.

Nowhere has recent economic growth been more rapid than in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Significant improvements in human well-being and quality of life have taken place at the expense of the health of rivers, lakes, and fisheries. Many rivers across the PRC are highly degraded, transporting high loads of pollutants and nutrients from industries, agriculture, and urban centers. Some 30% of water resources along the main rivers in the PRC is unsuitable for human use due to poor quality. Climate change pressures on drying river flows cause additional environmental health impacts and increase the likelihood of transmission of waterborne diseases due to poor sanitation and wastewater management.

The PRC has anchored its path toward ecological protection and high-quality development to its vision of ecological civilization, a concept first introduced in 2007 and increasingly emphasized in the country’s subsequent 5-year plans. The growing awareness and political commitment to conserving and protecting the nation’s water resources are reflected in recent institutional reforms (including the three red lines policy and the ecological redline policy, which focus on strengthening regulatory frameworks), along with implementation mechanisms to protect ecosystem services. By also recognizing the need to tackle climate change, these reforms and measures provide the basis for more innovative, holistic, and sustainable approaches to development under the 14th Five-Year Plan, 2021–2025.

This report sheds some light on the PRC’s approach to restoring the eco-environmental conditions of the seriously degraded Tuan River in Henan Province. Referred to as the urban–rural water linkages (URWLs) approach, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) designed four clusters of interventions to simultaneously address (i) inappropriate land use, (ii) depletion of river flows and groundwater, (iii) sources of pollution, and (iv) institutional constraints. ADB and the Government of the PRC both recognize the direct connection between urban and rural areas through rivers and groundwater aquifers, together with the interdependency of urban and rural land use, water use, and sources of pollution. The URWLs approach also has the advantage of improving services and opportunities, consistent with the PRC’s rural vitalization strategy.

The Tuan River is a second-order tributary of the Han River, which is a major tributary of the Yangtze River. The UWRLs approach is implemented through the Henan Dengzhou Integrated