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The News N° 25
FRom one conTinenT To anoTHeR
China
French-Chinese cooperation
in the Hai Pilot River Basin and Zhou Sub-Basin
The French-Chinese cooperation project
for IntegratedWater Resources Mana-
gement (IWRM) in theHai River Basin is
part of the cooperation agreement
signed in 2009 by the ChineseMinistry
of Water Resources (MWR) and the
FrenchMinistry of Ecology and Sustai-
nableDevelopment.
Its first phase (2011-2012) had allowed the
development of mutual understanding by
both countries on their respective institutions,
procedures andmeans for managingwater.
Since the WorldWater Forum in Marseilles
(2012) and the signing of aMemorandum of
Understanding for a second 3-year phase, in
the presence of Mr. Chen Lei, ChineseMinis-
ter of Water Resources, the project aimed to
test the French tools andmethods allowing to
bring solutions to the problems related to
anthropogenic pressures (untreated waste-
water, non-point sourceagricultural pollution)
exertedon theZhoupilot River Sub-Basinand
that affect the water quality of the Yuqiao
reservoir for the supply of the City of Tianjin
and causeeutrophicationandgrowthof blue-
green algae andmacrophytes.
To improve the situation,
threemainobjec-
tives are pursued across the basin:
l
Implementation of the basin’s
resources assessment,
l
Establishment of a coordination
group forwatermanagement,
l
Drafting of a Basin Management
Plan.
As part of this second phase, eight technical
assistancemissionshavealreadybeen carried
out by the French partners and coordinated
by
the International Office forWater:
the
Ministry of Ecology, the Seine Normandy
Water Agency, the Interdepartmental Syndi-
cate for Sanitation of Greater Paris and the
Interdepartmental Institution of the Seine
Great Lakes.
Their Chinese counterparts (MWR, the Hai
River Conservancy Commission and the
Water Boards of the Municipality of Tianjin
andHebei Province) participated in two study
visits organized in France.
These activities covered a wide range of
tools: planningmethods,Water Development
and Management Plans, involvement of
institutional stakeholders, the Water Inter-
servicesMission (MISE), etc.
Training sessions organized in China on spe-
cific technical issues (ecological engineering,
calculation of concentrations andwater body
balances, monitoring strategies and equip-
ment) were greatly appreciated.
Theymotivated theestablishment of
a speci-
fic project on predictive modeling of
cyanobacterial proliferation,
supported
by the Center for Environmental Monitoring
of the Hai River and implemented by the
”Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées”.
A technical diagnosis report was finalized by
theChinesepart inOctober 2014andpresen-
ted to a panel of local authorities, invited to
comment it.
The success achieved in the drafting of
this diagnosis through dialogue allo-
wed addressing, in the best conditions,
thegoal of the fourthyear of theproject
(2015): structuring of a Management
Plan for the ZhouRiver sub-basin.
4
Treatment pondwith ”floating planted filters”
Meeting of the Hai Project Steering Committee (Tianjin - September 2014)
