The Yellow River is the second-longest river in China after the Yangtze and the sixth-longest in the world at an estimated length of 5,464 kilometres. Water from the river serves 140 million people and irrigates 74,000 km² (48,572 mi²) of land. It often runs dry before it reaches the sea due to increased agricultural irrigation.
The workshop was organized by the Yellow River Research Council, GWP Yellow River, GWP China, and co-sponsored with the Planning Projects Agency of the YRCC, the Water Resource Management and Scheduling Bureau of the YRCC and Yellow River Engineering Consulting Co, and fully supported by the GWP global secretariat.
The workshop concluded that the IWRM approach has contributed to:
- Maximizing the efficiency of the Yellow River so as to solve the problems of water shortages, the uneven distribution of water resources as well as conflict between water supply and demand.
- Sustainable water development. Based on a decision by the Central Government in 2011, sustainable water development ranked as top priority in view that it was directly related to the development of society, the economy and the environment.
- Ensuring a regular flow of the Yellow River. The cross-sectional flows of its main inter-provincial streams are up to the basic standards and there has been improved sediment transport and ecological water consumption which alleviates the drought of the middle and lower reaches of the winter wheat regions and upstream in spring and summer seasons.
Since the integrated approach in the Yellow River Basin is in a pilot phase, there is still a long way to achieving the final targets of IWRM.