Hello, 2021

Jianyun Zhang, President

Hongwu Tang, Executive President

As we approach the end of 2020, we will soon usher into a brand new year, which is also the second new year since the founding of YICODE. On behalf of the Institute, we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks and sincere wishes to all the people who have supported us.

In 2020, thanks to the support from the Jiangsu Provincial Government, China Three Gorges Corporation, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Education and other partner organisations, we were able to stay faithful to our aspirations of protecting the Yangtze River and promoting quality development in its basin, and our year of 2020 has been highly productive.

Our research in 2020 has been very fruitful. YICODE was on the teams leading or closely involved in quite a number of key research and development programmes, including 6 projects and more than 20 themes under the 13th FYP research programmes of China, and more than 30 projects funded by NSFC. We launched 40 research projects on our own open funds. We succeeded in bidding for 6 projects under the “Yangtze Fund” with a total grant close to 15 million Chinese yuan. We partnered with the Provincial Development Reform Commission of Jiangsu to jointly launch 5 projects closely related to the management of Yangtze in the province, which are on the Phase II project of the east route of South-to-North Water Diversion, aquatic ecosystem of the Taihu Lake, Yangtze River transportation and protection of the Yangtze finless porpoise, relocation of riparian chemical industries, and bank protection and usage. Our blue book on protection and green development of the Yangtze, which is the first piece of literature devoted to this area, was pulished in 2020. Through internal policy consultations and external media interviews, we were able to provide our inputs on key social issues including the COVID-19 pandemic and major floods of this year. Our sturdy research has enabled us to provide crucial decision-making support as a think tank.

The development of our own team has also been encouraging in 2020. We are very grateful to the generous support from our partner organisations including Hohai University, Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute, etc., in providing us with very talented and professional brains to form a interdisciplinary team which could meet our research and development demands. We are also more than pleased that we have welcomed another 9 talented and outstanding experts like Prof. Roger Falconer to join our team.

2020 has also been a year when we became more of a influencer. The “Yangtze Lectures” we have started provides a valuable arena for crucial insiders of the field to share their ideas on the latest and most heated topics. We have hosted 5 talks this year and were pretty startled that, at the peak, around 10,000 people joined us, many virtually, for the events. We offered courses during the summer break to help young people of the field to further develop their interests and skills for their research. More than 900 students and young teachers from more than 30 organisations took the courses. In December, we hosted the first Yangtze Young Minds Innovation Forum. Many young and promising people were invited to the Forum, which provided a perfect opportunity for them to share their ideas. Currently, we are still in preparation for the 3rd ESTDS International Forum on Water Security and Sustainability, and we are thrilled to meet everyone, either in person or online, in the upcoming April.

The upcoming new year promises new challenges as well as opportunities. The YICODE team will continue to stay true to our own mission, and keep working hard towards the green development of the Yangtze River. Our principles of “innovation, collaboration, green, open and sharing” will not change, though we are at a new start of a new year to making ourselves better in supporting integrated river basin management and quality development.

With faith and expectations we are saying hi to the new year of 2021. Wish everyone happiness, health and prosperity.

(Translated by David Zhou, Zihan Yu)