China plans to pour 35.2 billion yuan (US$4.2 billion) into three major programs aimed at optimizing regional water resources and ensuring sustainable economic growth in drought-prone areas in the years ahead.

The funds are the largest of their kind earmarked for the integrated administration of water resources.

Beijing will benefit from a 22.1 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion) windfall while 2.4 billion yuan (US$289 million) will be diverted to the Heihe, an inland cross-border river between arid-prone Gansu Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Another 10.7 billion yuan (US$1.2 billion) will be reserved for the Tarim, an inland river within northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, an official with the Ministry of Water Resources disclosed Tuesday.

Wu Jisong, director of the Department of Water Resources at the ministry, was confident the three plans can ensure sustainable economic growth in Beijing, solve growing disputes over water use in Gansu and Inner Mongolia and help protect endangered ecosystems downstream of the Tarim River.

Such plans showed the central government has begun to put its strategic administration of China's existing water resources in place in a bid to prevent further damaging ecosystems in surrounding areas.

Work began last year along the Heihe River to stop streams from drying up, the desertification of pastures and worsening ecosystems in downstream Inner Mongolia.

Three major water diversion schemes from water-heads upstream of the Bosten Lake - China's largest inland freshwater lake - into areas downstream of the Tarim River have succeeded in making the river flow again, rescuing dying trees along its banks and surrounding areas.

And water authorities have started regulating the diversion of water between provinces upstream and downstream of the Yellow River which has failed to reach the sea in recent years due to persistent droughts in the north and overuse in upstream lands.

In 1997, the Yellow River ran dry for a record 226 days in a 700-km-long section downstream.

The river flowed for the first time since the 1990s last year, allowing water to be supplied to urban and rural people living along its lower reaches and improving ecosystems in its estuary.

In many other regions, the ministry has also taken a series of measures to optimize water resources in hundreds of cities by integrating the administration of water-related issues into one authority.

(China Daily November 28, 2001)