Abstract: With the promulgation of the Yangtze River Protection Law and the implementation of the critical campaign for ecological conservation and restoration of the Yangtze River, significant progress has been made in the ecological and environmental protection of the Yangtze River Basin. However, under the pressure of rapid economic development, the ecological and environmental protection of the basin still faces multiple challenges. These include the imbalance between socioeconomic development and ecological conservation, regional disparities in water quality improvement, high intensity of water resource exploitation, unabated degradation of aquatic ecosystems, and persistent pressures from water environmental risks. To effectively address these challenges, the 15th Five-Year Plan, as a crucial phase for consolidating the foundation of ecological and environmental protection and achieving comprehensive improvements, should prioritize the following measures: coordinating the relationship between ecological conservation and socioeconomic development, promoting green and low-carbon development models, enhancing the implementation of water pollution control, sustainable water resource utilization, and aquatic ecosystem protection, strengthening risk prevention in key regions and across the basin, and comprehensively improving the effectiveness of ecological conservation and restoration in the Yangtze River Basin.