Exploring the Sustainability of Control of Qinhuai River: A case study in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Sammanfattning: Qinhuai river in Nanjing, China, has suffered pollution since the late 1970s. To solve the problem, Nanjing Municipality conducted two river control projects. The first one in 2002 ended up a failure, and the second one in 2012 also faced various hinders. The aim of the thesis is to examine the sustainability of the river control launched in 2012, and to contribute with some suggestions for improvement. In this thesis, the author used methods of interview and literature review to gain the empirical data of the river control, used method of stakeholder analysis to analyze the data with the lens of sustainable development, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and externalities. After the analysis, the river control is considered unsustainable. The conclusion is that the pollution mainly originates from wasted domestic water. And the river control launched in 2012 is not sustainable as it lacks long-term perspective, social participation, gender awareness and solutions to mitigate the externalities. The emphasis is that, as the enabler, regulator and provision offer, Nanjing Municipality needs to raise social participation and internalize the environmental externalities to reach sustainable management of the Qinhuai river.