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China to double efforts to secure water supply for rural residents

By Liang Chao (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-10-17 19:15

China will intensify efforts to secure safe and sufficient water supply for rural residents throughout the country and seek more cooperation with the international community in other water-related issues for sustainable development, an official said today.

Chen Lei, minister of water resources, made the remarks in a key speech to a high-level international forum on water resources and hydropower, the first of its type ever held in China, with about 400 water experts and scholars at home and abroad attracted.

To ensure the sustainability of China's development in the near future, Chen said that, by the end of 2010, the ministry would reinforce key reservoirs in disrepair throughout the country to bring millions of people living downstream into protection.

"By 2013 we would ensure safe drinking water for rural residents with no access to such supply in an all-around way," he said, indicating that the problem is still affecting millions of  people in underdeveloped areas.

By 2020, water authorities would renovate water-saving technologies for key irrigation zones with up to 55 per cent of the total irrigation water supply to be used effectively for growing crops. 

And, by then, over half of the country's technically developable installations of hydropower would also be completed to ensure more renewable clean electricity supply for the sustainability of economy, he said.

During today's key speeches, chairmen from the world's five leading commissions or associations for large dams, hydraulic engineering, sedimentation and erosion research also gave their views of the world's water resources development and management in the spheres of their own.

In the next two days, experts and scholars of these organizations would discuss and exchange views of eight water-related themes including climate change and countermeasures, hydropower development, renewable energy and dam safety, water and food security, flood management and drought mitigation.