This publication describes the urban–rural water linkages (URWLs) approach to restoring river health in degraded environments, such as the Tuan River in Henan Province of the People’s Republic of China. The URWLs approach tackles issues affecting urban and rural areas through a focus on land use, water withdrawal, and pollution. This publication demonstrates how this approach can be effectively embedded into the project design to maximize the benefits of investment projects, which are aimed at restoring degraded river environments and uplifting the livelihood of the people dependent on such ecosystem. It makes a case for how the approach can be applied generally across the Asian Development Bank’s developing member countries.
