River Basin Planning Principles; Procedures and Approaches for Strategic Basin Planning

Growing competition for scarce water resources has driven major changes in the way river basin planning is undertaken. This has resulted in a shift away from ‘technical’ approaches designed to maximize water availability and led to more strategic approaches to basin planning. These approaches aim to optimize outcomes by reconciling the competing demands of different sectors of the economy, the natural environment, and society as a whole.

This book is the result of a collaborative effort between the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the General Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Planning and Design (GIWP), Ministry of Water Resources, People's Republic of China (PRC). GIWP has been tasked with coordinating the review and revision of a number of PRC's water policies, including PRC's master basin plans, the national water strategy, and the development of new inter-provincial water allocation plans. This book was originally conceived to provide support to these processes through the review and dissemination of modern approaches to water management challenges. The final product provides systematic analyses of the general process and methodologies for basin planning which the authors consider to have universal relevance.

The primary output from this collaboration has been three books, which together consider three fundamental water resources management issues: river basin planning, basin water allocation, and flood risk management.