From 6^th to 10^th March in 2012, management department of National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) organized some experts to assess the results of key project “Research of Water Management Issues during Establishing Resource-saving Society” (70733004) led by Prof. WANG Jinxia from Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research. Based on research report from the project team and other relevant project publications, this project was assessed as getting the outstanding achievement.

In the past 4 years, based on large scale field surveys and expert interviews, applying econometric approach and non-linear program, this project has conducted many excellent studies, including the reform of irrigation management and its impacts, agricultural water pricing policy and water rights institution, adoption of water saving technologies and its impacts, and optimal water allocation. These studies have received wide attention from domestic and international scholars, policy makers and international organizations, project team members are also directly involved in the activities of establishing water saving society led by Ministry of Water Resources. In addition, this project has promoted the development of interdisciplinary studies of agricultural economics, management science, hydrology and agronomy. Based on interdisciplinary studies, this project has combined three aspects of studies about climate change risks, water security and agriculture together, and established the integrated simulation and analysis tool. This tool can be used for simulating and projecting the security of water resources under the risk of climate change and socio-economic development, and has made contribution to the approach development of climate change risks. Currently, this tool has been highly evaluated by experts from World Bank and other domestic and international scholars, and it will become the important platform for relevant policy decision makings.

The project team has collected the richest data on rural water management, survey samples cover 16 provinces distributed in 9 river basins, more than 600 villages and 1700 households. Research results show that during the reform of irrigation management, establishing long-term incentive mechanism has played the significant role on realizing water saving objectives. There still exist large policy space to promote the adoption of agricultural water saving technologies, and implementing subsidy and extension policies and effective water pricing policy can play significant role on increasing the adoption of agricultural water saving technologies, In order to walk out the puzzle of agricultural water pricing reform, implementing win-win policy (increasing water price and also subsidize farmers directly) will be one of important policy reform options. In addition, water right transfer and water pricing reform can play substantial role on optimizing water allocation though their implementation still face many challenges. Finally, research results show that under the change of climate, socio-economy and policies, water resources in most river basins will become more serious, especially in the North China. Under the condition of increasing water scarcity, if no corresponding adaptive measures have been adopted, increasing water scarcity will result in the decline of irrigated areas and output loss of agricultural production.

Until now, the project team has published 37 papers in both international and domestic journals, and among them, 14 papers were published in international journals and 9 papers were collected by SCI/SSCI. This project also trained many young researchers, for example, project leader, Prof.Jinxia Wang was awarded as “Outstanding Young Scientist” by NSFC in 2009, and 1 postdoctoral scientist, 2 Ph.D students and 7 Master students are actively engaged in this project. The project team members have also conducted substantial collaboration with scholars from Stanford University, Yale University, Minnesota University and World Bank.