This cartoon reminds me a true story I experienced. It happened in my dad’s birth place in eastern China. In 1980s, when I first visited the place, a river beside the village was full of fish. My cousins were used to fishing there. But in 1990s, there was no more fish in the river, because nearby silk reeling factories drained polluted water to the river. And in early 2000s, when I visited the place again, the river disappeared. The whole area was built into a new small city with nice buildings and well paved roads during the urbanization process. The income of local people including my cousins increased a lot. But the scenic rural landscape is totally changed.
I believe this was not the only river disappeared in the industrialization and urbanization process of China some 20-30 years ago. This is part of the reason why China was determined to build ecological civilization since around 2010s. And one policy related to river is the “River Chief System” .
In the “River Chief System”, the highest local official will serve as the "river chief" as well, as long as there is a river in the area he or she is in charge of. “River chiefs” are responsible for the water quality.
It was in 2007, when Wuxi municipal government of Jiangsu province, the same province of my father’s birth place, invented the "River Chief System" in response to the cyanobacterial contamination incident of Taihu lake. As the measure was proved to be effective, some other local governments nearby followed.
After several years of practice, the central government decided to implement the policy all over the country. On October 11, 2016, the 28th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Continuing Reform presided over by General Secretary Xi Jinping adopted the “Opinions on Comprehensively Implementing the River Chief System”. The the "River Chief System" invented by a local government became a nation-wide policy since then.
As of the end of June 2018, 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities had fully established "River Chief System", with a total of more than 300,000 river chiefs. And imitating the successful policy of River Chiefs, new policy of Lake Chiefs was implemented in December 2017.
Being a river chief or a lake chief, the highest local official is responsible to supervise the protection of corresponding river or lake. The purpose of establishing this system is to use the administrative power and resources to protect rivers and lakes. The policy is proved to be efficient in solving conflicts between economic development and ecological environmental protection.
With the establishment of the “River Chief System”, for the first time, boundaries of 1.2 million kilometers of rivers and 1955 lakes are clearly set. By the end of last year, some 185,000 cases of disputes related to rivers and lakes have been solved, with more than 40 million square meters of illegal constructions cleared, more than 10,000 kilometers of illegal embankments and more than 40 million tons of garbage in rivers removed, 30,000 kilometers of illegal occupation of shoreline cleaned up, and more than 11,000 illegal sand mining vessels cracked down.
Groundwater level in some areas stopped falling, and rivers that have dried up for years like Yongding River, Daqing River, Hutuo River, Ziya River were full again. Black and odorous waters became clear, and the proportion of surface water with quality from class I to III has increased by nearly 16 percent in 2020 over 2016.
As some rivers running through different municipalities, and some lakes sit on the border of different provinces or cities, it needs collective actions and cooperation of related river or lake chiefs. It is also a system of mutual supervision. If there’s pollution upstream, the river chief in charging of downstream will report to the ecological environmental department.
Along the banks of rivers and lakes, there are always signs indicating that who is the river or the lake’s chief and how to contact them to report anything wrong. I don’t know whether this policy will work in other countries, but it really did well in China.
Good to know about the success of this system. Thank you.