On November 24th, Mr. Li Guoying, Minister of Water Resources, met Mr. Fernando Mattos, Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries of Uruguay, and conducted in-depth exchanges on deepening China-Uruguay water cooperation.
Li Guoying pointed out that China’s basic water regime features summer floods and winter droughts as well as scarce water resources in the north and abundant in the south. The distribution of precipitation in time and space is extremely uneven, thus resulting in frequent occurrence of flood and drought disasters. China is one of the countries in the world with the most complicated water conditions, the most difficult management challenges and the most arduous water governance tasks. Ministry of Water Resources of China thoroughly practices President Xi Jinping’s water governance philosophy of “prioritizing water conservation, balancing spatial distribution, taking systematic approaches, and giving full play to the roles of both government and market”. A series of effective endeavors has been carried out in the spheres of water disasters, water resources, water ecology and water environment governance, so as to continuously improve the guarantee capacity of national water security. Under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, Ministry of Water Resources of China stands ready to work with water authorities of Uruguay to upgrade the level of bilateral water cooperation through the China-Uruguay Joint Steering Committee on Cooperation in the field of water resources. Both sides will jointly make contributions in water sector to the development of the China-Uruguay comprehensive strategic partnership.
Fernando Mattos expressed his admiration for China’s achievements in water governance, and agreed to deepen pragmatic water cooperation between Uruguay and China. Moreover, he expected to learn from China’s successful experience in the fields of flood and drought disaster prevention, water infrastructure construction, irrigation and water supply, among others. Uruguay is willing to reinforce practical water cooperation with China under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, in order to comprehensively gear up Uruguay’s water resources management.