Distribution of Recent Water Conservancy Projects for Development and Utilization of Water Resources in Northwest China

摘要

The climate is arid and scarce of rain in northwest China, the annual water resources totals 163 billion m~3, only 6% of the national volume, and the usable amount is less than 114.2 billion m~3. Water resources have been a crucial factor impeding both economic development and ecologic improvement. To relieve the contradiction between water demand and supply, improve ecologic and environmental conditions and maintain sustainable utilization of water resources for sustainable social and economic development, water resources projects are necessary. Since the founding of the P. R. China, key engineering works including reservoirs, dykes and river training facilities have been built to explore and utilize both surface and ground water, basically keeping the situation under control that floods and droughts alternate. But for limited understanding of the nature, the harmonic relationship between human beings and the nature has been neglected, making the economy developed at a low efficiency, large and new projects have been built without full consideration of rational distribution and efficient utilization of water resources, ecologic improvement and environmental protection, renewal and reconstruction of old projects as well as subsidiary facilities, resulting in the problems of irrational distribution, low efficiency of utilization, soil and water loss and water pollution. The paper discusses how to implement the protection works, puts forwards proposals on the overall arrangement of the works and implementation by stages to facilitate rational distribution of water resources for efficient utilization, ecologic improvement and environmental protection.