The “EU-China Cooperation on Water project” is a 3-year (15/01/2024-14/01/2027) EU-funded initiative aiming to continue promoting a mutually beneficial EU-China water policy dialogue by facilitating exchanges at policy, technical and business levels between EU and China stakeholders.
The final objective the project contributes to is to “advance the EU’s external policy on water security and contribute to enhanced effectiveness of implementing water-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to address global challenges ensuring the engagement of China”.
The project has 3 key interrelated results:
- Policy recommendations for the sustainable management of water resources are developed to support both the EU and China in designing new and improving existing policy documents relevant for EU-China water cooperation and the work-plans of the China-EU Water Platform (CEWP)
- Cooperation between EU Member States and China in the area of sustainable water management is enhanced to create enabling conditions for further strengthening policy interactions.
- Exchange of knowledge and experience at policy, technical and business levels is enhanced.
These are to be achieved through the implementation of two interrelated components, developed under the strategic guidance of the EU Delegation to China and the European Commission Directorate-General for Environment (DG-ENV) and implemented by the Project's Team:
- Component A refers to the support to the EU-China Policy Dialogue on Water as well as to the support to the China-Europe Water Platform (CEWP) activities, including the organization of CEWP events, drafting of relevant articles and newsletters for their websites and other relevant websites.
- Component B includes the technical support to the implementation of cooperation activities on selected water topics and policy priorities, including i) Climate resilient integrated river basin management, covering, inter alia, urban resilience to floods and droughts, river basin management and governance, Nature-based solutions, ecosystem restoration services, and digital water management; ii) Circular water and economy, including groundwater management; iii) Corporate water responsibility (CWR); iv) Water finance, and v) Water-Energy-Food Ecosystems (WEFE) nexus.
The project builds on more than 20 years of policy and technical cooperation between the EU and China on water management issues. In more detail, the project is founded on the work by the China EU Water Platform (CEWP) and on the strategic guidance and mandates of the EU-China High Level Dialogues on Water, launched in 2017 within the framework of EU-China High Level Policy Dialogues on Environment.