Author(s): Jiangang Liu; Xuming Tan; Jun Deng; Yunfeng Zhu
Linked Author(s): Jun Deng
Keywords: Grand Canal heritage; Strategies; Protection and utilization
Abstract: Grand Canal is a world famous ancient water hydro-project, with a history of 2500 years or so. Its development and application reflect policy, economy, society and culture in different periods, and once it owned functions of transport, irrigation, flood control, water supply and regional ecology protection, enhancing economy and culture exchange between North and South in China. However, the current condition of river courses and heritage protection has caused an increasingly concern. Some issues are raised for its protection and utilization. From the current situation of protection, the reaches north to Jining became Regional River or Decapitation River, after termination of Grand Canal water transport. Even reaches South to Jining which remain navigable, the deterioration of aquatic ecosystems and water environmental degradation are common. And water area of the lakes linking to Grand Canal shrunk or even disappeared. From the aspect of current management, management for Grand Canal belongs to many departments, such as Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Communications, Ministry of Urban Construction, Ministry of Environmental Protection and Protection of cultural relics. And because management ownership of individual reaches is different, the management is chaotic. Based on the need of water conservancy heritage rescuing protection and the problems existing in Grand Canal protection and utilization, a special plan has developed for making protective and managerial strategies, which is, riverway, water resources project, control project, project management facilities, and the others are taken as protected object. Coordination mechanisms for Grand Canal are suggested to establish to be responsible for water administration on Grand Canal heritage protection, and carry out targeted conservation planning in each reach. And Grand Canal protection is enhanced greatly from the perspective of financial assurance and scientific propaganda. The protection is not only for Grand Canal’s own and water projects, but also for its surrounding ecological environment protection and management. At the same time, water culture construction should be actively carried out, which plays an important role for protection of ancient water project still in use.
Year: 2013