Historically, there have been three stages in dealing with floods: passive defense in ancient agricultural society; active methods of control in industrial society; and coping in a natural way in today's intellectual society, a Chinese senior expert said. Floodwater is a natural product resulting from weather changes, while flooding disasters happen primarily because of human over-exploitation of fertile riverbanks, according to Qian Zhengying, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The World Meteorological Organization reports that some 17 million people living in over 80 countries worldwide were hit this year by floods of various degree, with 3,000 lives lost, a flood-stricken area over 8 million sq km and a total monetary loss of 30 billion US dollars.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development which closed last week emphasized that enhanced water management has become a vital task for sustainable development.

The setup of an anti-flood system is a key aspect in water management.

"Facing frequently occurring flood disasters, we human beings should have changed our way of tackling floods, rejecting the old thinking of fighting against floodwater, and instead, learning to coexist with it," Erich J. Plate, former president of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, said. The Chinese people have struggled for 5,000 years to reduce the damages caused by floods. Now a dense population has taken over around one million sq km of fertile plains where there are abundant resources.

The core of flood control efforts in China is in deciding what outlets to give floods while making reasonable use of the plains, said Qian, who is also vice-chair woman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). During the first three decades of this century, the Chinese population will increase to 1.6 billion, and its urbanization rate will increase to 50 percent from the present 30 percent. The situation makes it necessary to control a certain volume of floods via man-made facilities, but that is not enough, according to Qian. "We have changed our way of dealing with floodwater since the heavy 1998 floods. We learned that we should stop intruding on water as we try to prevent water-incurred harm to ourselves," atop flood control official said.

Takeuchi, president of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, said four great ancient civilizations all originated from valleys of large rivers, and never perished because of floods. Instead, they developed new technologies to fight them. Given proper management, floodwater could become a source of human prosperity, he added.

(Xinhua News Agency September 12, 2002)