This report is the result of a collaborative effort between the World Bank and the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC). The World Bank team was led by Marcus Wishart (Lead Water Resource Specialist) and Barjor Mehta (Lead Urban Specialist) and included Gang Qin (Senior Water Supply and Sanitation Specialist), Guangming Yan (Senior Urban Development Specialist), Liping Jiang (Senior Irrigation and Drainage Specialist), Tian Qi (Water Resource Management Specialist), Xiawei Liao (Water Analyst), David Kaczan (Young Professional) and Anqi Li (Team Assistant); the CRCWSC team was led by Tony Wong (Project Director from CRCWSC) and included Ben Furmage (Chief Executive Officer), Jianbin Wang (International Engagement Manager), David Pannell (Professor of Economics and Director, Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, University of Western Australia) and Sylvia Tawfik (Research Assistant).

The work is a contribution to the broader program on “Evaluating and Realizing the Value of Water in the Construction of an Ecological Civilization for China,” a collaborative venture between the World Bank and the Development Research Center of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (DRC). The DRC team is led by Dr GU Shuzhong (Deputy Director General of the Institute for Resources and Environmental Policies) and includes Li Weiming (Director of Research Division, Institute for Resources and Environmental Policies), and Yang Yan (Assistant Research Fellow, Institute for Resources and Environmental Policies) along with other researchers from the DRC, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), the Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research (IWHR) and the DRC of the Ministry of Water Resources (MWR).

A series of case studies were prepared to validate the methodology within the local context, highlight the change in values within different social, cultural and economic conditions and support the valuation of benefits associated with China’s Sponge Cities. These case studies include the Futian River in Shenzhen (Annex D) conducted by a team from the Shenzhen Water Planning and Design Institute Co. Ltd led by Xiang Sun (Project Manager, Senior Engineer) and including Hang Song (Assistant Engineer) and Penghui Du (Engineer); the Kunshan Forest Park (Annex E) conducted by a team led by Bin Jiang (Principal Investigator, Researcher) from the Jiangsu Institute of Urban Planning and Design and including Jianguo Zhu (Professor-level Senior Engineer), Yongzhou Huang (Professor-level Senior Engineer), Sufang Shenz (Senior Engineer), Yun Kong (Engineer), Bo Feng (Engineer), Yanyan Zhou (Assistant Engineer) and Kun Xie (Assistant Engineer).

This work was developed under the leadership of Victoria Kwakwa (Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific), Benoît Bosquet (Regional Director, Sustainable Development, East Asia and the Pacific), Jennifer Sara (Global Director of the Water Global Practice) and Martin Raiser (Country Director for China) from the World Bank and Vice Minister Wang Yiming and Vice Minister Long Guoqiang from the DRC along with his ministerial colleagues from the Government of the Peoples Republic of China. The report was prepared under the guidance of Sudipto Sarkar (Practice Manager, Water Global Practice, East Asia and the Pacific Region) and Francis Ghesquiere (Practice Manager, Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice, East Asia and the Pacific Region).

The team is grateful for the advice provided by the peer reviewers: Greg Browder (Global Lead for Water and Resilience); Xiaokai Li (Lead Water Resource Specialist); Wanli Fang (Senior Urban Development Specialist) and Boris Ton Van Zanten (Disaster Risk Management Specialist) along with Professor CHENG Xiaotao (Former Director, Research Center on Flood and Drought Disaster Reduction, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Ministry of Water Resources of China) and Dr. MAN Li (Former Deputy Secretary General, PPP Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences, Ministry of Finance of China). Valuable advice and guidance was also provided by experts within the World Bank, officials from the Government of the People’s Republic of China, along with various universities and non-government organizations working on nature-based solutions, urban water management and climate resilience.

This report was made possible with the financial support of the Global Facility for Disaster Risk and Reduction (GFDRR) under the activity on “Integrating disaster risk management in urban operations in China” and the Global Water Security and Sanitation Partnership (GWSP), which supports client governments to achieve the waterrelated Sustainable Development Goals through the generation of innovative global knowledge and the provision of country-level support.