Rivers institute at Yunnan University on China top 100 list

A preeminent institute which focuses on rivers – at Yunnan University or YNU, in Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan province – was recently given a singular honor.

The Global Think Tank Impact Assessment Report 2021 – prepared by the China Knowledge Center for Engineering Sciences and Technology and the Center for Information Resources Analysis and Application – was recently released. YNU's Institute of International Rivers and Eco-security made its list of China's top 100 influential think-tank institutions.

The report has long adhered to a comprehensive evaluation and rating of the activities of leading global think tanks in a data-driven paradigm – based on the principles of open data, world orientation, transparent evaluation and repeated calculations.

The YNU institute – which also incorporates the Asian International River Center – is based in the southwestern plateau mountains. It is the first in China to conduct multidisciplinary comprehensive research at a river-basin scale and with a cross-border perspective.

For a long time, the institute has taken the Lancang-Mekong River basin as the core focus, with the international rivers in China and South and Southeast Asia as the main body of its work – taking into account other representative international rivers in the world – and placed itself at the forefront of similar international research.

Since its establishment, the institute has been designated as a "973 Plan" project – China's first cross-border ecological security research project. It was also China's first national key research and development plan project for cross-border water security research – a major project of the national science and technology support plan – as well as being made a key project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.