大运河传媒讯（董明 徐蓉 发自广西桂林）10月12~15日，2026年世界运河大会在广西桂林举行。来自全球20余个国家的运河城市、科研机构、高校及行业组织代表，围绕世界运河遗产保护、水运升级和流域协调发展等议题展开交流。荷兰莱顿大学国际亚洲研究所（IIAS）城市集群学术协调员保罗·拉贝博士在参加“人与自然的共生”分会议时介绍了由他参与发起的全球河流城市网络的国际项目，并说水道不只是自然生态系统，同时也是社会、经济系统，水道治理不能仅着眼于工程技术，更要从城市治理维度统筹考量。Grand Canal Media News (Dong Ming, Gui Yan, from Guilin, Guangxi)From October 12 to 15, 2026, the World Canal Conference took place in Guilin, Guangxi. Representatives from canal cities, research institutions, universities, and industry organizations from over 20 countries around the world participated in discussions on topics such as the preservation of world canal heritage, the improvement of water transportation systems, and the coordinated development of river basins. Dr. Paul Labe, the academic coordinator for urban clusters at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands, introduced the international project related to the network of global river cities that he helped initiate during the “Symbiosis between Humans and Nature” session. He said that waterways are not only natural ecosystems but also social and economic systems; therefore, water management should be considered from a city governance perspective, rather than solely focusing on technical aspects.
处境堪忧
2022年，我和一位巴西同事共同发起建立了全球河流城市网络。目前该网络已经颇具规模，汇聚了全球45支研究团队。我们搭建这个平台的初衷是修复城市居民与所在区域河流之间的联结。在世界很多地方，河流正遭受污染，不少河道被填埋，甚至被当作下水道使用，
。我们希望通过这一行动改变现状，恢复河流生态健康。In 2022,a colleague of mine, she's from Brazil, we set up this river cities network and this network is already quite big. We have more than 45 teams in different parts of the world. We set up the network in 2022 in order to help repair the relationship between people and the rivers in their urban areas. In many parts of the world, we notice that the rivers are suffering from pollution, from being buried underground. And we wanted to do something about this relationship to restore the health of our rivers.
这个网络里大约有一半团队来自亚洲，其中一支中国团队正在调研上海附近的吴淞江。自2022年成立以来，我们已经举办多轮交流活动。该网络的宗旨是促进各方交流学习不同案例。虽然各个地方的背景、面临的挑战差异巨大，但我们相信，交流政策经验、分享实践中的经验教训，意义重大。About half of our teams are in Asia. We have one team from China looking at the Wusong River in near Shanghai. We met a number of times since 2022. And the purpose of the network is sharing and learning from each other the different cases, even though they're very different in terms of their context, in terms of the problems that we face, we believe there is a value to learning from each other, to sharing insights and lessons from policy and from practice.
全球河流城市网络是一个跨学科全球协作平台，汇聚工程师、历史学家、生物学家、人类学家、社会学家等多领域人才。我们共同推动河流、运河等水道实现生态效益与社会包容性的复兴，修复水道和与之共生的城市、社区之间的关系。我们应当把水道看作社会生态系统，它们不只是生态系统，同时也是社会系统和经济系统。So the objective of the River Cities Network, we're a transdisciplinary and global network. Transdisciplinary means we bring together very different forms of expertise. We have engineers. We also have historians. We have biologists. We have anthropologists, sociologists. We seek to promote ecologically and socially inclusive revitalization of rivers and waterways, which includes canals. And we hope to repair the relationship between those waterways and the cities and neighborhoods that coexist with them. We could say we look at waterways as socio ecological system. They're not just ecological systems, but they're also social systems and economic systems.
荷兰的水道与广西壮族自治区的情况截然不同。荷兰国土面积仅4.2万平方公里，大约相当于广西的五分之一，但人口密度很高，拥有全球最密集的运河网络，境内有超过6500公里的运河水系，约1150条。荷兰的地理条件十分特殊，全国60%的土地海拔低于海平面，常年面临海水倒灌，还有莱茵河、马斯河等邻国河流来水带来的水患威胁。My main focus will be the Netherlands. So this will be a very different context than the current context in guangxi autonomous region. So the Netherlands is a very small country. Our land area is only 42,000 square kilometers, which is one fifth of the size of Guangxi Autonomous Region. We have 18 million people, so we're very densely populated. But we have the world's densest network of canals. So even though we are very small, we have over 6,500. km of canals, which is very long. And we have an estimated 1,150 canals. And we have a very unique geographical setting in our country. We are 60% below sea level. So you can see the majority of our country is actually under threat from water, sea water, but also the water coming from the rivers, the Rhine, the Mass River from the neighboring countries.
历史上，荷兰运河主要承担三大功能：第一，为低洼地区排水；第二，作为经济发展的交通网络；第三，运河也成为休闲场所，人们在这里开展水上运动、岸边休憩。就像人体有动脉一样，国家也有属于自己的动脉。运河是货物运输的主要交通干线。So our canals have had three historical functions. The first is as drainage of water from these low lying areas, the areas in blue that I showed you. The second is as transportation networks for economic development. And the third function is a more recent one. Now the canals are also recreational spaces. So people go to the canals to, for water sports, enjoy themselves, sit on the banks. But that's a more recent function. So there are arteries, like arteries in the body, arteries in the country. The canals are major traffic arteries for transport of goods.
从地理溯源来看，荷兰地处三大河流的三角洲：发源于德国、瑞士及阿尔卑斯山脉的莱茵河，发源于法国、流经比利时的默兹河和发源于比利时的斯海尔德河。而运河则以多种不同形式出现，最初的形态是小溪，这是自然形成。第二类来自泥炭开垦。当土壤含水量较高时，必须排水才能稳定土地。第三类则是出于航运用途而开凿的运河。还有一部分运河，是为了排水作业和城市防御而建设。19 世纪，荷兰国王威廉一世大规模修建运河，推动全国交通发展与国家现代化进程。The historical context is that we are at the delta of three different rivers, the Rhine River, which comes from Germany and Switzerland, the Alps, the Mass River, which comes from France and through Belgium, and the Schelde River which comes from Belgium and canals appeared in several different ways. The first is as creeks. In the delta landscape, so this is a natural feature. The second way that canals were formed was via peat reclamation. So much of the soil is peat. This is very. Organic soil, very wet, so the soil has to be drained to stabilize. The third way that canals were established was for navigation. Next, we have this phenomenon of boulders. Another reason is defense networks around the cities. Canals were formed to protect these cities from intruders, from invaders. And lastly, we can see in the historical context that our King, William, the first, in the 19th century, he created a lot of canals to boost the transportation and modernization in the country.
另一个需要注意的重点是，我们在谈论运河时，也应当提及河流，因为在荷兰，二者的区别并非总是十分明确——毕竟当地有大量河流实际上都经过了运河化改造。为什么要对河流做运河化改造？一是调控水流、泥沙入海的速度；二是改善通航，未经整治的河道很难开展航运；三是减轻洪涝风险，在洪水侵袭城市之前约束水势。19世纪，德国境内的莱茵河河道极易泛滥，风险很高。很早之前人类就开始整治河道，使其可控，服务人类生产生活。如今的莱茵河，相比自然河流，特征更接近人工运河。Another important thing to notice is that when we talk about canals, but we should also talk about rivers because the difference is not always very clear in the Netherlands because a lot of our rivers have in fact been canalized. So why were these rivers canalized? They were canalized to speed up and regulate the flow of water and sediment to the sea. They were canalized to facilitate river transportation. And of course, to reduce flooding. Rivers were dangerous before they flooded cities. So the canalization was a way to protect the land in the cities. Here is an example, a diagram of the Rhine in Germany, our neighboring country, in the 19th century. So here the river is completely braided. It moved from east to west, very unpredictable, prone to flooding, very dangerous river. So human beings very early on try to rectify or that what they call normalize or rectify this river to make it more predictable. To suit human interests. In other words, engineers made this river into a canal, or even the Rhine River today acts more like a canal than a wild river.
当下的核心挑战，首要就是气候变化。荷兰地势低洼，受气候变化冲击感受尤为强烈。我们遭遇持续高温，干旱直接拉低运河水位，海水会以多种方式侵入内陆，带来巨大风险。气候变化会制约内河货运。水位过低时，部分水闸关闭，限制船舶通行，直接影响航运产业。可运载货物量下降，货运被迫绕行更远路线，抬高农产品消费成本。海水入侵内陆，导致大量土地彻底丧失耕种条件。So the next topic, the present day challenges, the main challenge that I'm gonna talk about is about climate change. And we feel the effects of climate change very strongly in our country, which is very low lying. We had very hot summers, very little precipitation. The dry conditions have a big effect on our canals. The water levels were reduced. And what we see is that salt water from the sea comes in. So the consequences of climate change are, it results in transport restrictions for goods traffic. Today, many sluices are closed to limit, to close to transportation because the water levels are too low. There is an effect for industry. Fewer goods can be transported. There's a need for alternative, often longer routes, and there's a higher cost for consumers in the agricultural products. And the salt water coming into the lands, especially western areas, means that a lot of land cannot be farmed anymore.
过去，水患、洪水是我们最大的威胁。而现在，新的挑战变成水资源短缺。转折点大致在2000年前后，我们意识到防范重点不再是水太多，而是淡水不足。这种新危机带来一系列后果：农业用水受限，很多园艺温室被限制抽取过多水资源；部分运河临时封闭。因此，当前淡水管理政策优先三项工作：保水、蓄水、排水。保水，水务部门通过调控水位，延长水体在运河内留存时间，滋养土壤与周边区域，避免淡水快速流失。蓄水，思路和中国海绵城市理念十分相似，雨水调蓄设施越来越重要。排水，这套系统至今依旧不可或缺。So our enemy, water was always our enemy, but the new enemy is that we have too little water. We used to have too much water. That's the flooding danger. But now we have too little water, which is the drought conditions. So this, the turning point was around the year 2000 when we realized that we have to protect ourselves not so much against flooding now, but against too little water. So what is happening as a result of this new danger? First is that we have water usage restrictions for agriculture. You can see here a lot of the horticulture glass houses, they're not allowed to extract water so much. We have the temporary closure of some canals. And now I will quickly go into the last topic, which is the transitions and the innovations. So there are our freshwater government policy now prioritizes three things, which is water retention, water storage and water drainage. And I will go step by step very quickly. The first step, water retention. Water authorities now use weirs to regulate the water level. So by regulating this, they're able to keep the water in the canals for longer, and that helps the soil and the surrounding areas so that the water does not evacuate away. The second step is water storage. The water is almost like sponge city measures which you have here in China. So we have water storage facilities are becoming much more important, and the third is still the same priority as before, the drainage, which is still needed.
基于自然的解决方案的重点之一就是溪流修复，通过给河流留出更多空间，部分圩田退还给水系，践行与自然共生的工程思路。生态溪流修复，包含把硬质混凝土堤岸改造为自然岸线。天然岸线可以给水生生物提供栖息、繁殖空间，提升生物多样性，改善生态。Nature based solutions, there are four priorities, restoration of streams, so the title of this sub conference is harmony with humans and nature. This is one way through these nature based solutions that we are trying to achieve that restoring the streams. Giving more room for rivers, removing some of these boulders, which is the engineered land and building with nature. There's a lot more detail I can give you, but I don't have the time, unfortunately. Part of this restoring streams is also creating natural river banks, which you can see here on the picture, instead of having concrete banks. The banks are natural and this helps animal species to come back to the waterways who they have hiding places and breeding places. This improves the ecology.
但新的政策落地并不容易，各方利益诉求存在冲突。一边是生态学者、城市规划师，另一边是农民、建筑业群体。我们希望将生物多样性置于优先地位，但农民往往更希望优先考虑生产力。那是两个不同的目标。我们希望优先打造生态友好型运河堤岸，但农户往往不乐意自家地块上出现昆虫和鸟类。我们要优先为河流预留更多的自然摆动空间，但这一举措遭到建筑业和农民的反对。But unfortunately, we don't always have harmony in these new policies because we see there are different interests between. Ecologist planners and on the one hand, and farmers and the construction industry on the other, we want to prioritize biodiversity, but farmers often want to prioritize productivity. Those are two different objectives. We want to prioritize nature friendly canal banks, but the farmers don't always like insects and bird on their land. We want to prioritize more room for rivers to move. But this is opposed by the construction industry and also by farmers because that means they have less land on which to produce.
基于自然的解决方案，并不总能获得民众、建筑行业的认同。我认为当下我们的一项重要任务，就是让全社会理解这类生态方案的长远价值。And nature based solutions is not always accepted by citizens and by the construction industry. So there's a task for us, I think, to create awareness about the importance of nature based solution.
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制作 曹宇
编校 延晨 徐蓉
一审 桂艳 张莉
二审 肖东 董明
三审 晖军
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