{"id":{"repo_id":"cambridge","oai_identifier":"oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/382429"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/cambridge/oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/382429","repository":{"repo_id":"cambridge","name":"Cambridge University","base_url":"https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/oai/request"},"display":{"title":"EVALUATING ‘SOFT PATH’ APPROACHES IN CHINA’S WATER MANAGEMENT: THE CASE OF THE DONGJIANG RIVER BASIN","abstract":"Water resources are essential for human life and development. River basins provide an essential basis for quantifying and managing water resources, but other spatial units for human organisation rarely map helpfully onto river basins. As water resources are utilised, conflicts can emerge between different jurisdictions. These may involve upstream-downstream relationships within one basin, or differential access to water in adjacent basins. Solutions have often involved managing water supply by ‘hard’ engineering, through construction of storage reservoirs and water transfers. In China, canal transfers from areas of surplus water to areas of shortage have been part of the country’s history and continue to be developed by its modern technocratic governments. Hong Kong is a populous and affluent city-region and an economically important special Administrative Area. Its capacity to satisfy its own water demands is limited; there are no large rivers and catchments, and few locations for reservoir storage. It has come to rely on a water supply transferred from the adjacent Dongjiang River basin, which stretches across Guangdong Province to the north and into Jiangxi, and as a tributary of the Zhujiang (Pearl) River, is partly managed by the Pearl River Commission. Thus, it offers a case study that embodies the potential for upstream-downstream and trans-boundary conflicts, overlaid with differential levels of development and institutional power, and increasing demands for clean water from the whole growing population of the Dongjiang. This increasing demand reflects socio-economic development across the whole Pearl River Delta region (e.g. Shenzhen, Gaungzhou), but there is now also increasing recognition that development in headwater areas of the Dongjiang basin has been foregone in order to supply downstream users (e.g. in Hong Kong) with the clean water that underpins their developed economy. This implies either that more of the benefits of water availability should be retained by headwater users, or that some form of fiscal compensation should be transferred from downstream water users (including those outside the basin, in Hong Kong) to those upstream. Coupled with this should be a change in public attitudes to water resources to sustain water quality, to limit the necessity for expensive downstream treatment, and to understand and promote integrated management of the water resources. Such changes all contribute to ‘soft’ approaches to water management that address the need to manage demand as much as supply, through increased social awareness and responsibility and changing valuation of water resources - a radical shift away from the supply-oriented hard engineering of the past. This study attempts to analyse these issues in the Dongjiang River Basin by focusing on three regions, namely Xunwu, Heyuan and Hong Kong S.A.R., which are all strategically located in or connected with the Dongjiang River Basin. A study of the institutional management shows that the headwater region Xunwu is being neglected by both Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces in terms of its water resource management; while Heyuan, the mid catchment region, is under an overly controlling water quality policy limited to the reservoir level, while neglecting the water flow downstream. The mismatch in water policy control between the two regions in China may be resolved by a new strategy known as the River Chief system now being implemented. The River Chief system nominates a local leader who oversees a designated section of a river and is wholly responsible for the water resource management of the section assigned. This shows recognition that a top-down system may not be the most efficient water resource management in the Dongjiang River Basin, and that a more distributed management may be needed. Amongst the three regions studied, linked by the Dongjiang water transfer scheme (Xunwu, Heyuan and Hong Kong S.A.R), varying interests amongst different parties and beneficiaries cause problems of cooperation in the implementation of policies and projects. The purpose of this research project is therefore to examine these attitudes and their differences within the region, in order to assess the potential for demand-reduction strategies to complement the traditional management of supply. Political and socio-economic asymmetries cause a spatial mismatch in policy implementation usually leading to the dominant influence of those with greater affluence and more political influence. The Dongjiang River Basin Commission serves as an example of a body created to improve water allocation and management, but which has ended up accentuating disparities amongst participants. The less than favourable outcomes of adding the mid-level organization of the Dongjiang River Basin Commission arise from the fact that the agency has the agenda to promote Guangdong’s interest first while marginalizing upstream participants like Xunwu and Heyuan as well as the downstream user Hong Kong S.A.R in the planning and management of water allocation. The research accordingly has involved mixed methods, since different methods are needed to target different stakeholders. Methods include semi-structured interviews with responsible officials at different levels of government (province, municipality, township) and in different government departments (Water Resources, Environmental Protection), and questionnaire surveys aimed at households in upstream and mid-stream parts of the Dongjiang basin, and in Hong Kong. These surveys have adopted sampling methods appropriate for the scale of the population (school-based surveys in towns and a telephone survey in Hong Kong). The data collected through these interviews and surveys provide an improved understanding of the varied attitudes of water managers as well as attitudes of the general public. The results show that the fragmented and potentially conflicting responsibilities of provincial and river basin management institutions create an environment in which water demand management is rarely addressed, and the population lacks a basic understanding of the integrated functioning of river basins in general, and the Dongjiang in particular, and of the implications for their own responsibilities in respect of environmental management. Nevertheless, there is a nascent environmental movement that is beginning to address these shortcomings.","abstract_html":"Water resources are essential for human life and development. River basins provide an essential basis for quantifying and managing water resources, but other spatial units for human organisation rarely map helpfully onto river basins. As water resources are utilised, conflicts can emerge between different jurisdictions. These may involve upstream-downstream relationships within one basin, or differential access to water in adjacent basins. Solutions have often involved managing water supply by ‘hard’ engineering, through construction of storage reservoirs and water transfers. In China, canal transfers from areas of surplus water to areas of shortage have been part of the country’s history and continue to be developed by its modern technocratic governments. Hong Kong is a populous and affluent city-region and an economically important special Administrative Area. Its capacity to satisfy its own water demands is limited; there are no large rivers and catchments, and few locations for reservoir storage. It has come to rely on a water supply transferred from the adjacent Dongjiang River basin, which stretches across Guangdong Province to the north and into Jiangxi, and as a tributary of the Zhujiang (Pearl) River, is partly managed by the Pearl River Commission. Thus, it offers a case study that embodies the potential for upstream-downstream and trans-boundary conflicts, overlaid with differential levels of development and institutional power, and increasing demands for clean water from the whole growing population of the Dongjiang. This increasing demand reflects socio-economic development across the whole Pearl River Delta region (e.g. Shenzhen, Gaungzhou), but there is now also increasing recognition that development in headwater areas of the Dongjiang basin has been foregone in order to supply downstream users (e.g. in Hong Kong) with the clean water that underpins their developed economy. This implies either that more of the benefits of water availability should be retained by headwater users, or that some form of fiscal compensation should be transferred from downstream water users (including those outside the basin, in Hong Kong) to those upstream. Coupled with this should be a change in public attitudes to water resources to sustain water quality, to limit the necessity for expensive downstream treatment, and to understand and promote integrated management of the water resources. Such changes all contribute to ‘soft’ approaches to water management that address the need to manage demand as much as supply, through increased social awareness and responsibility and changing valuation of water resources - a radical shift away from the supply-oriented hard engineering of the past. This study attempts to analyse these issues in the Dongjiang River Basin by focusing on three regions, namely Xunwu, Heyuan and Hong Kong S.A.R., which are all strategically located in or connected with the Dongjiang River Basin. A study of the institutional management shows that the headwater region Xunwu is being neglected by both Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces in terms of its water resource management; while Heyuan, the mid catchment region, is under an overly controlling water quality policy limited to the reservoir level, while neglecting the water flow downstream. The mismatch in water policy control between the two regions in China may be resolved by a new strategy known as the River Chief system now being implemented. The River Chief system nominates a local leader who oversees a designated section of a river and is wholly responsible for the water resource management of the section assigned. This shows recognition that a top-down system may not be the most efficient water resource management in the Dongjiang River Basin, and that a more distributed management may be needed. Amongst the three regions studied, linked by the Dongjiang water transfer scheme (Xunwu, Heyuan and Hong Kong S.A.R), varying interests amongst different parties and beneficiaries cause problems of cooperation in the implementation of policies and projects. The purpose of this research project is therefore to examine these attitudes and their differences within the region, in order to assess the potential for demand-reduction strategies to complement the traditional management of supply. Political and socio-economic asymmetries cause a spatial mismatch in policy implementation usually leading to the dominant influence of those with greater affluence and more political influence. The Dongjiang River Basin Commission serves as an example of a body created to improve water allocation and management, but which has ended up accentuating disparities amongst participants. The less than favourable outcomes of adding the mid-level organization of the Dongjiang River Basin Commission arise from the fact that the agency has the agenda to promote Guangdong’s interest first while marginalizing upstream participants like Xunwu and Heyuan as well as the downstream user Hong Kong S.A.R in the planning and management of water allocation. The research accordingly has involved mixed methods, since different methods are needed to target different stakeholders. Methods include semi-structured interviews with responsible officials at different levels of government (province, municipality, township) and in different government departments (Water Resources, Environmental Protection), and questionnaire surveys aimed at households in upstream and mid-stream parts of the Dongjiang basin, and in Hong Kong. These surveys have adopted sampling methods appropriate for the scale of the population (school-based surveys in towns and a telephone survey in Hong Kong). The data collected through these interviews and surveys provide an improved understanding of the varied attitudes of water managers as well as attitudes of the general public. The results show that the fragmented and potentially conflicting responsibilities of provincial and river basin management institutions create an environment in which water demand management is rarely addressed, and the population lacks a basic understanding of the integrated functioning of river basins in general, and the Dongjiang in particular, and of the implications for their own responsibilities in respect of environmental management. Nevertheless, there is a nascent environmental movement that is beginning to address these shortcomings.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Chun, Cheung Ching"],"institution":"University of Cambridge","degree_name":"Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)","degree_level":"Doctoral","degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":["Richards, Keith"],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2023,"date_issued":"2023-12-22","date_published":"2023-12-22","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:24:21Z","subjects":["Dongjiang","River Basin Management","Water Resources"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":["https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/e92ed986-058e-48b3-9aff-35f4bddba199/download","http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved"],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.117239","outbound_label":"DOI","outbound_source":"dc:identifier.doi"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor.advisor","label":"Advisor","values":["Richards, Keith"]},{"key":"dc:contributor.sponsor","label":"Sponsor","values":["Edwin Leong Hughes Hall Scholarships"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Chun, Cheung Ching"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.issued","label":"Date","values":["2023-12-22"]},{"key":"dc:publisher.institution","label":"Dc Publisher Institution","values":["University of Cambridge"]},{"key":"dc:relation.isreferencedby.uri","label":"Dc Relation Isreferencedby URI","values":["https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/382429"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"dc:type.qualificationlevel","label":"Dc Type Qualificationlevel","values":["Doctoral"]},{"key":"dc:type.qualificationname","label":"Dc Type Qualificationname","values":["Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Dongjiang","River Basin Management","Water Resources"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/e92ed986-058e-48b3-9aff-35f4bddba199/download","http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved"]},{"key":"dc:rights.embargotype","label":"Dc Rights Embargotype","values":["controlled.access"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.doi","label":"DOI","values":["https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.117239"]},{"key":"dc:identifier.uri","label":"Identifier URI","values":["https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/19907912-4624-4798-b5b8-3d698bfaa44f/download"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Water resources are essential for human life and development. River basins provide an essential basis for quantifying and managing water resources, but other spatial units for human organisation rarely map helpfully onto river basins. As water resources are utilised, conflicts can emerge between different jurisdictions. These may involve upstream-downstream relationships within one basin, or differential access to water in adjacent basins. Solutions have often involved managing water supply by ‘hard’ engineering, through construction of storage reservoirs and water transfers. In China, canal transfers from areas of surplus water to areas of shortage have been part of the country’s history and continue to be developed by its modern technocratic governments. Hong Kong is a populous and affluent city-region and an economically important special Administrative Area. Its capacity to satisfy its own water demands is limited; there are no large rivers and catchments, and few locations for reservoir storage. It has come to rely on a water supply transferred from the adjacent Dongjiang River basin, which stretches across Guangdong Province to the north and into Jiangxi, and as a tributary of the Zhujiang (Pearl) River, is partly managed by the Pearl River Commission. Thus, it offers a case study that embodies the potential for upstream-downstream and trans-boundary conflicts, overlaid with differential levels of development and institutional power, and increasing demands for clean water from the whole growing population of the Dongjiang. This increasing demand reflects socio-economic development across the whole Pearl River Delta region (e.g. Shenzhen, Gaungzhou), but there is now also increasing recognition that development in headwater areas of the Dongjiang basin has been foregone in order to supply downstream users (e.g. in Hong Kong) with the clean water that underpins their developed economy. This implies either that more of the benefits of water availability should be retained by headwater users, or that some form of fiscal compensation should be transferred from downstream water users (including those outside the basin, in Hong Kong) to those upstream. Coupled with this should be a change in public attitudes to water resources to sustain water quality, to limit the necessity for expensive downstream treatment, and to understand and promote integrated management of the water resources. Such changes all contribute to ‘soft’ approaches to water management that address the need to manage demand as much as supply, through increased social awareness and responsibility and changing valuation of water resources - a radical shift away from the supply-oriented hard engineering of the past. This study attempts to analyse these issues in the Dongjiang River Basin by focusing on three regions, namely Xunwu, Heyuan and Hong Kong S.A.R., which are all strategically located in or connected with the Dongjiang River Basin. A study of the institutional management shows that the headwater region Xunwu is being neglected by both Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces in terms of its water resource management; while Heyuan, the mid catchment region, is under an overly controlling water quality policy limited to the reservoir level, while neglecting the water flow downstream. The mismatch in water policy control between the two regions in China may be resolved by a new strategy known as the River Chief system now being implemented. The River Chief system nominates a local leader who oversees a designated section of a river and is wholly responsible for the water resource management of the section assigned. This shows recognition that a top-down system may not be the most efficient water resource management in the Dongjiang River Basin, and that a more distributed management may be needed. Amongst the three regions studied, linked by the Dongjiang water transfer scheme (Xunwu, Heyuan and Hong Kong S.A.R), varying interests amongst different parties and beneficiaries cause problems of cooperation in the implementation of policies and projects. The purpose of this research project is therefore to examine these attitudes and their differences within the region, in order to assess the potential for demand-reduction strategies to complement the traditional management of supply. Political and socio-economic asymmetries cause a spatial mismatch in policy implementation usually leading to the dominant influence of those with greater affluence and more political influence. The Dongjiang River Basin Commission serves as an example of a body created to improve water allocation and management, but which has ended up accentuating disparities amongst participants. The less than favourable outcomes of adding the mid-level organization of the Dongjiang River Basin Commission arise from the fact that the agency has the agenda to promote Guangdong’s interest first while marginalizing upstream participants like Xunwu and Heyuan as well as the downstream user Hong Kong S.A.R in the planning and management of water allocation. The research accordingly has involved mixed methods, since different methods are needed to target different stakeholders. Methods include semi-structured interviews with responsible officials at different levels of government (province, municipality, township) and in different government departments (Water Resources, Environmental Protection), and questionnaire surveys aimed at households in upstream and mid-stream parts of the Dongjiang basin, and in Hong Kong. These surveys have adopted sampling methods appropriate for the scale of the population (school-based surveys in towns and a telephone survey in Hong Kong). The data collected through these interviews and surveys provide an improved understanding of the varied attitudes of water managers as well as attitudes of the general public. The results show that the fragmented and potentially conflicting responsibilities of provincial and river basin management institutions create an environment in which water demand management is rarely addressed, and the population lacks a basic understanding of the integrated functioning of river basins in general, and the Dongjiang in particular, and of the implications for their own responsibilities in respect of environmental management. 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These may involve upstream-downstream relationships within one basin, or differential access to water in adjacent basins. Solutions have often involved managing water supply by ‘hard’ engineering, through construction of storage reservoirs and water transfers. In China, canal transfers from areas of surplus water to areas of shortage have been part of the country’s history and continue to be developed by its modern technocratic governments. Hong Kong is a populous and affluent city-region and an economically important special Administrative Area. Its capacity to satisfy its own water demands is limited; there are no large rivers and catchments, and few locations for reservoir storage. It has come to rely on a water supply transferred from the adjacent Dongjiang River basin, which stretches across Guangdong Province to the north and into Jiangxi, and as a tributary of the Zhujiang (Pearl) River, is partly managed by the Pearl River Commission. Thus, it offers a case study that embodies the potential for upstream-downstream and trans-boundary conflicts, overlaid with differential levels of development and institutional power, and increasing demands for clean water from the whole growing population of the Dongjiang. This increasing demand reflects socio-economic development across the whole Pearl River Delta region (e.g. Shenzhen, Gaungzhou), but there is now also increasing recognition that development in headwater areas of the Dongjiang basin has been foregone in order to supply downstream users (e.g. in Hong Kong) with the clean water that underpins their developed economy. This implies either that more of the benefits of water availability should be retained by headwater users, or that some form of fiscal compensation should be transferred from downstream water users (including those outside the basin, in Hong Kong) to those upstream. Coupled with this should be a change in public attitudes to water resources to sustain water quality, to limit the necessity for expensive downstream treatment, and to understand and promote integrated management of the water resources. Such changes all contribute to ‘soft’ approaches to water management that address the need to manage demand as much as supply, through increased social awareness and responsibility and changing valuation of water resources - a radical shift away from the supply-oriented hard engineering of the past. This study attempts to analyse these issues in the Dongjiang River Basin by focusing on three regions, namely Xunwu, Heyuan and Hong Kong S.A.R., which are all strategically located in or connected with the Dongjiang River Basin. A study of the institutional management shows that the headwater region Xunwu is being neglected by both Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces in terms of its water resource management; while Heyuan, the mid catchment region, is under an overly controlling water quality policy limited to the reservoir level, while neglecting the water flow downstream. The mismatch in water policy control between the two regions in China may be resolved by a new strategy known as the River Chief system now being implemented. The River Chief system nominates a local leader who oversees a designated section of a river and is wholly responsible for the water resource management of the section assigned. This shows recognition that a top-down system may not be the most efficient water resource management in the Dongjiang River Basin, and that a more distributed management may be needed. Amongst the three regions studied, linked by the Dongjiang water transfer scheme (Xunwu, Heyuan and Hong Kong S.A.R), varying interests amongst different parties and beneficiaries cause problems of cooperation in the implementation of policies and projects. The purpose of this research project is therefore to examine these attitudes and their differences within the region, in order to assess the potential for demand-reduction strategies to complement the traditional management of supply. Political and socio-economic asymmetries cause a spatial mismatch in policy implementation usually leading to the dominant influence of those with greater affluence and more political influence. The Dongjiang River Basin Commission serves as an example of a body created to improve water allocation and management, but which has ended up accentuating disparities amongst participants. The less than favourable outcomes of adding the mid-level organization of the Dongjiang River Basin Commission arise from the fact that the agency has the agenda to promote Guangdong’s interest first while marginalizing upstream participants like Xunwu and Heyuan as well as the downstream user Hong Kong S.A.R in the planning and management of water allocation. The research accordingly has involved mixed methods, since different methods are needed to target different stakeholders. Methods include semi-structured interviews with responsible officials at different levels of government (province, municipality, township) and in different government departments (Water Resources, Environmental Protection), and questionnaire surveys aimed at households in upstream and mid-stream parts of the Dongjiang basin, and in Hong Kong. These surveys have adopted sampling methods appropriate for the scale of the population (school-based surveys in towns and a telephone survey in Hong Kong). The data collected through these interviews and surveys provide an improved understanding of the varied attitudes of water managers as well as attitudes of the general public. The results show that the fragmented and potentially conflicting responsibilities of provincial and river basin management institutions create an environment in which water demand management is rarely addressed, and the population lacks a basic understanding of the integrated functioning of river basins in general, and the Dongjiang in particular, and of the implications for their own responsibilities in respect of environmental management. 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