On October 25, the First Working Meeting of the Belt and Road International Water Alliance, initiated by the Chinese Hydraulic Engineering Society (CHES), was held in Nanjing. The meeting was chaired by Duan Hong, Vice President and Secretary-General of CHES. Attendees included Academician Zhang Jianyun of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; Philippe Gourbesville, President of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR); Liu Zhiguang, former Director-General of the Department of International Cooperation, Science and Technology of the Ministry of Water Resources; and Li Ge, former First-class Inspector of the same department. As one of the founding institutions of the Alliance, our university was invited to attend, represented by Li Hong, member of the Standing Committee of the CPC University Committee and Vice President.

The meeting unanimously elected Academician Zhang Jianyun as Chair of the Alliance, and reviewed and adopted the Charter of the Belt and Road International Water Alliance and the Initiative on the Future Development of the Alliance. The Initiative states that, going forward, the Alliance will work together with water-related institutions worldwide to strengthen academic exchanges, enhance its role as a think tank, promote the internationalization of standards, advance science popularization and talent cultivation, and jointly explore solutions to water-related challenges. It calls for concerted efforts to address the issues of the times, promote peaceful development, and achieve the sustainable utilization of water resources. Participants also held in-depth discussions on the future development of the Alliance and reached a consensus on “deepening cooperation on water security, sharing water-related technologies, and jointly addressing regional water issues,” thereby laying a solid foundation for building a cooperative platform on water resources among Belt and Road partner countries.

In recent years, our university has consistently aligned its work with major national strategic needs such as large-scale water diversion projects, focusing on the research, development and application of high-performance hydraulic models and key technologies for large pumping stations. These efforts have provided critical support for backbone projects of the national water network, including the South-to-North Water Diversion Project and the Yangtze-to-Huaihe Water Diversion Project. As one of the founding members of the Belt and Road International Water Alliance, our university has further strengthened exchanges and cooperation with international counterparts, significantly enhancing its international influence in related disciplines and its capacity to serve national strategies.