International Experience in Water Network Construction from a River Basin Management Perspective and Its Implications for China

Against a backdrop of global climate change and growing regional tensions between water supply and demand, both high-quality development and high-level protection require better allocation of basin water resources and stronger water security. Cross-regional water-network construction has become an important way to improve coordinated basin allocation. As the basic unit for integrated water-resources management, the basin needs water projects to be deeply integrated with its management system. This is a key condition for sustainable water use. This article reviews four international experiences: cross-regional collaborative governance, full-chain legal control, market-based operation of water projects, and integrated ecological restoration. It then examines China's current basin-planning system, backbone projects, tiered coordination, and smart operation and maintenance. Four practical problems are identified: barriers to integrated basin governance, weaknesses in the legal control system, incomplete market-based allocation mechanisms, and slow ecological upgrading of water projects. Drawing on international practice, the article proposes pathways in four areas: basin governance, water-network layout, market-based operation, and basin ecological security. Specific measures include improving basin-specific laws, building cross-regional coordination mechanisms, coordinating water projects at different levels, improving water-rights and tiered-pricing systems, creating a basin-wide smart dispatch platform, upgrading water projects ecologically, and building climate-adaptive water networks. These findings add to the theory of national water-network construction from a basin-management perspective. They also offer a reference for integrated water-network construction and modern basin water governance in China.