Recently, the Executive Committee of the Yangtze River Delta Eco-Green Integrated Development Demonstration Zone, together with Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment, Jiangsu Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment, and Zhejiang Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment, issued the first White Paper on Joint Ecological Protection and Governance in the Demonstration Zone.

The white paper systematically sorts out the progress and achievements that have been scored in coordinated ecological conservation and governance since 2019 by the Yangtze River Delta Eco-Green Integrated Development Demonstration Zone as the first state-level inter-provincial integrated development demonstration zone, providing a “Yangtze River Delta model” for China’s inter-regional institutional coordination to achieve integrated, high-quality development.

As of 2025, the share of surface water meeting Grade III rating standards or higher has reached 97.8 percent in the demonstration zone. The waters have been kept steady at Grade II at the Taipu River and improved to Grade III at the Yuandang Lake. Water quality at all four centralized drinking water sources has met or surpassed Grade III standards. The proportion of days with good or excellent air quality has been 80.8 percent. The average concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has been kept at 29 µg/m3 during the year. A total of 2,790 biological species have been documented, consisting of 1,629 terrestrial and 1,161 aquatic species, including 11 national Class-I species under key protection such as Siberian cranes, Dalmatian pelicans and Saunders’s gulls.

In recent years, the demonstration zone has been honored by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment as a practice and innovation base for implementing the concept of “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”. It became the first inter-provincial region included in the second batch of national carbon peaking pilot programs. The Taipu River (including the Water Town Parlor) was named the first inter-provincial outstanding case under the national Beautiful Rivers and Lakes initiative. The demonstration zone has rolled out 161 groundbreaking institutional innovations in total, 25 of which fell under the field of ecological environment, and 11 of them have been promoted nationwide.