E nvironmental pressures in China mainly manifest through water stress exacerbated by climate change, with Beijing being one of the most affected cities. Beijing is the first city in China to initiate land and space ecological restoration, using the five major rivers and canals across the city as green corridors to improve the water system’s connectivity and restore the river channel’s ecological function. The principles and research design for water restoration in Beijing can benefit from international lessons learned.

The Global Center on Adaptation, as a knowledge broker for adaptation solutions, facilitated a knowledge exchange through a series of roundtable discussions between the city of Beijing and international experts to help inform and shape Beijing’s water restoration strategy. In this roundtable discussion (the first in the series), experts discussed: