IWRM in the Hai he river basin - China
The project started in 2011 within the framework of the Franco-Chinese cooperation agreement on water management signed on 21 December 2009. It is being implemented in the Hai River basin, which covers 318,000 km² in North-East China and includes the municipalities of Beijing and Tianjin. The project partners are : for the Chinese part, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Hai River Water Conservation Commission, as well as the Water Offices of Tianjin Municipality and Hebei Province and, for the French part, the Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition (MTES), the Seine-Normandy Water Agency (AESN), main financer of the action, the Interdepartmental Syndicate for the Sanitation of the Paris Agglomeration (SIAAP), the Interdepartmental Institution of the Great Seine Lakes, the French Embassy in China and IOWater which is in charge of coordination.
The first phase (April 2011 - March 2012) allowed a mutual understanding of the functioning of basin institutions in China and France through expert missions, training and field visits as well as the identification of principles and methods to be tested in China.
The second phase (October 2012 - December 2015) mainly dealt with the Zhou River Basin (2,114 km², 2.4 million inhabitants) with the setting-up of a Coordination Group, the inventory of the basin and support to the implementation of a basin management plan and a program of measures.
The third phase started in March 2016, with the replication of the approach on a much larger basin, that of the Luan River (55,500 km²). Methods were developed and improved throughout the planning process, also including a data management component.
The Zhou River and the Luan River are under the jurisdiction of the Ha River Water Conservation Commission.