Environmental Economic Study On Agricultural Pollution And Its Comprehensive Control

Agricultural pollution (AP) has been a leading source of many environmental problems such as water pollution in the world. As the most populous country and the fourth largest in area but a nation with very poor per capita natural resources, China has been experiencing a miracle of economic development over the past 20 years; however, in the meanwhile China is suffering the most severe environmental problems which are mostly getting worse. Especially, China's agricultural pollution is spreading out from point and nonpoint sources to tri-dimension pollution, and has become a critical and unavoidable environmental problem. Furthermore, AP in China has been laid aside by Chinese government and the common while its urban and industrial pollution has been effectively controlled and gotten many close attentions. Exactly based on the above background the paper studied AP in China from the perspective of environmental economics, and the main issues and conclusions of the study are as following:(a) Literature review on AP and practical experiences of AP control on the basis of environmental economics. The existing researches suggest that AP has developed from point and nonpoint sources to tri-dimension pollution and has its own characteristics significantly different from other types of pollution such as urban and industrial pollution. As for AP and its control the developed countries have succeeded in theoretical researches and practical actions. However, there has been a deep gap of theoretical research and practical control of AP in China, especially lacking of theoretical innovation and specific effective controlling countermeasures to AP, compared with those developed countries.(b) To analyze and discuss the environmental economic nature of AP and its control. Firstly, the dissertation analyzed the relationship between agricultural production system and natural and socio-economic environment; and pointed out that agricultural production system is an econ-environmental system with tight connection with natural resources and environment, and has irreplaceable ecological values but also brings sever impairments to environment and the human being. Then the dissertation analyzed AP's economic externalities and the attribute of public goods, which maybe induce some traditional countermeasures to pollution control not to be suitable for controlling AP. For example, there exists typical problem of malfunction of market mechanism in controlling AP. So the dissertation finally pointed out that the comprehensive environmental economic instruments, which integrate public environmental policies, mechanism of economic incentives and governmental function, may be the effective approach to preventing and controlling AP.(c) To analyze the current status, spatial-temporal characteristics and trend of AP in China. China now has been experiencing in the world the most sever problem of AP assessed by the indices of absolute value of pollutants and density of pollutants, especially by the indices of fertilizer, pesticides and agricultural films, the wastes of livestock, aquatic products and crops straw, and the residuals of waste-water irrigation, and so on. Furthermore, through establishing the index system with 25 indices and using software SAS for analyzing AP in China from 1985 to 2005 this study found that eastern and coastal provinces have been suffering the most serious AP, and so do some provinces in central China; and generally speaking the problem of AP in the central has been relatively less serious than that in the eastern, and the western less than the central. The result of cluster analysis also showed that the regions with more serious problem of AP, the higher value of agricultural output, and then the higher opportunity cost if controlling AP in these regions.(d) Socio-economic factors analysis of AP and its control in China. The dissertation firsly analyzed the stakeholders'behavior and their behavioral relationship in Chinese AP. Then the analyzing results showed that the unreasonable design of many institutions, which resulted from the"dural social structure of the urban and rural China", is the insititutional cause for China's serious problem of AP. Especially, such as the current systems of environmental protection, rural public goods supply, rural infrastructure construction, rural education and evaluating mechanism of government officials'performance, have almostly directly induced the peripherization of AP control in the grid of national environmental protection and pollution control. At last the dissertation established the logistic model to analyze the effect of rural households'willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental protection and AP control based on the data of questionnaire survey in the rural area around Miyun Reservoir, the result of logistic modeling analysis showed that the rural households'WTP for environmental protection and AP control is significantly inffluenced by factors such as rural households'environmental knowledge, consciousness of environmental protection, education, income, source of drinking water. The study also found that the government played an active role in protecting environment and controlling AP in the surveyed rural regions.(e) Discussion on environmental and economic policies and tools for comprehensive controlling AP. The study found there has been lacking of systematic and effective mechanism of controlling AP in China for a long period and some obstacles to AP prevent and control, especially there has been the peripherization of AP control and serious neglect of peasant's performance in AP control. Subsequently, the dissertation discussed and suggested some corresponding environmental and economic policies and countermeasures for comprehensive contolling AP; and also generally summarized this study in the end.