Practice and Pondering on Water Governance and Stewardship in Yellow River Basin

Water is the source of life, key of production and base of ecology. Water is so important that it has been under the management of the government. Water resources in drainage basin are an important part of national water resources and under the integral management and regulation of-basin administrative organization national agency. When shortage of water resources becomes more and more serious and water crisis gets severe, each country is seeking solution and changing the intrinsic administrative mode, one of which is to encourage public and stakeholders to participate water management in order to improve the performance of water management and meet the requirement of different stakeholders. The special report begins with notion, role, necessity and development tendency. Based on the analysis of water management and public participation of Henan Yellow River, relative experience is summered up about public participation in water management in Henan Yellow River, that is, attracting the public to pay attention to and take part in water management through publicizing, comprehensively promoting to make governmental information public, ensuring civil right to know, declare, defend and hearing in accordance with provisions. Water-taking hearing system has been put into practice. Linkage mechanism of Yellow River water administration was established. Information is made public in time. At the meantime, shortcomings existing in public participation in water management are still stated.