Abstract: The Irtysh River is the only one river in Xinjiang that flows into the Arctic Ocean. The other rivers are the typical inland rivers. With the rapid escalation of the scale and development of irrigation agriculture and artificial oasis，the overwhelming majority of inland rivers are under excessive exploitation and utilization of water resources. It has particularly affected the development of natural oasis and ecological safety of water resources. The shortage of water resource is becoming a serious problem for Xinjiang to face on social economic sustainable development and eco-environmental protection. The water resource and ecological environment characteristics，the circumstance of water resource utilization and water eco-environment protection targets were analyzed，and the ecological water requirement of Xinjiang predicted. The paper also analyzed the top ten environmental protection issues which include following aspects: water conservation area and grassland ecosystem protection，eco-environmental protection of the Tarim River，water resource exploration and protection，dam construction and river eco-environmental protection，soil salinization melioration and regulation of irrigation and drainage protection，management of excessive groundwater exploitation area and utilization of groundwater，valley forest eco-environmental protection of Lake Ulungur and Irtysh River，Kulusitai grassland eco-environmental protection，eco-environmental protection of Lake Ebinur and the other significant lakes and wetlands. The specific ecological protection targets and solutions were proposed for the top ten environmental protection issues. The water eco-environment has been severely affected by the increasing duration of socioeconomic water consumption. The paper found that the key issues in the process of performing the  effective water resources management are to regulate and control the scale of irrigation agriculture development，to solve the unreasonable structure and pattern of water consumption，to improve the low water use efficiency and benefit，to reserve enough ecological water，to restrict the excessive exploitation of groundwater，to reduce agricultural water consumption. The results of this paper provide reference for the sustainable use of water resources，ecological environment protection and optimization of water resources allocation of inland rivers in arid region.

Key words: arid regions, water resources, water eco-environment, protection targets, solution