With students across the country joining together to mark China's 9th Mother River Protection Day Tuesday, the management team behind China's second largest river, Huang He, or Yellow River, are also celebrating a milestone that saw their protection efforts recognized at an international level last week.

After 10 years of overcoming natural and man-made challenges facing what Chinese people call the Mother River, the Yellow River Conservancy Commission (YRCC) was awarded the prestigious Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize 2010 Wednesday for keeping the river flowing unabated for 10 years.

"In rejuvenating the Yellow River and managing floods, YRCC has brought about widespread and sustainable social, economic and environmental benefits to over 100 million people," Tan Gee Paw, Chairman of the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize Nominating Committee was quoted by the Singapore International Water Week as saying.

Mother River Protection Day was initiated by the Chinese Communist Youth League in 1999 and extends to rivers in cities and villages.

This year the day launched a new website in a bid to attract more young people to the cause, utilizing modern social networking sites and tools, such as twitter. Pictures of young people planting trees and cleaning up rivers in their hometowns can be uploaded onto the new site.

Activity organizer Wang Su told the Global Times that she hoped more and more young people could take part in protecting river environments in their everyday lives.

"Saving water, turning off taps, economizing on paper use and stopping people littering are all great habits for environmental and river protection," Wang explained. She added that returning used batteries and not using single-use chopsticks are also ways that people can help.

Jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Water Resources, State Forestry Administration and China Youth Development Foundation, Mother River Protection Day and its related campaigns and activities have raised over $597 million yuan ($87 million) in donations since it began and millions of young people have helped organize volunteer groups to improve China's river environments.

Apart from public participation in the protection day, continued reasonable use of the river is very important, Li Guoying, commissioner of the YRCC told the Global Times

"The conflict between water supply and demand will become more and more obvious, with the development of agriculture, industry and towns enlarging," Li said, adding that his team is constantly applying new approaches toward creating a balance.

He explained that the transformation of the Yellow River has been based on the ideology of maintaining a healthy river life with a systemic and holistic management approach. Li said that by allocat-ing and regulating the water supply, benefits have reached over 100 million people and extensive wetlands areas and species biodiversity have been restored.

He added that about 90 million people living in flood-prone areas have also been protected from potentially devastating floods.

Initiated by the central government in 1999, YRCC's integrated management of the Yellow River is based on cooperative efforts of the 11 provinces situated along the 5,464-kilometer-long river, insuring the river's protection and development as one ecological system.

However, despite its management successes, the river is still facing great pressures, according to Li.

"It is estimated that the total water of the Yellow River may decrease by 1.5 billion cubic meters in 2020, from the present 58.1 billion cubic meters at present," he said.

Another problem is pollution caused by industrialization, expanding towns and the use of pesticides in agriculture, according to Li.

"Waste water in the Yellow River has increased every year from 2.2 billion tons in the 1980s to 4.3 billion tons nowadays," he said.

Known as the "cradle of Chinese civilization" by Chinese people, the Yellow River is considered the birthplace of northern Chinese civilization and was once the most prosperous region in China.

"We hope the awareness of maintaining the healthy life of the river can be deep rooted in everybody's heart, regarding the river with life like human beings," Li added.

"In the future, through everybody's efforts, the Yellow River can flow all of the time, without flooding and remaining healthy and clean, with people living harmoniously with nature, with birds flying and flowers blossoming along the river."