Study On Ecological Compensation Mechanism Of River Basin

With the rapid development of global economy, the earth's ecology environment faced serious threats. In recent years the river basin ecological environment of China has been increasingly worse because of poor environmental protection consciousness and insufficient environmental investment. So establishing an eco-compensation mechanism of river basin has become an important policy demand for the construction and protection of river basin ecological environment. Ecological compensation mechanism is a complex of ecology, economics and law. Xin'an jiang river basin is treated as a typical study case in this paper considering its special geographical location, excellent ecological environment and different economic development of upstream and downstream. In light of on-the-spot investigation and literature at home and aboard, a systematic review of river basin eco-compensation is presented and key factors on establishing eco-compensation mechanism are discussed.There are five chapters in this paper. Some issues such as background, significance, framework and methods of the research are introduced in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 consists of relevant concepts and theoretical analysis. Theories such as justice theory, externality theory, public goods theory, ecological capital theory and sustainable development theory are described. The first two chapters constitute the fundamental basis of the paper. In Chapter 3, the realistic basis and existing obstacles of eco-compensation mechanism for Xin'an jiang upstream region are discussed on basis of on-the-spot investigation and literature research. Realistic basis comprise environmental protection inputs for upstream region and benefits in downstream region. The upstream region has taken much effort in protecting environment, which included inputs for forestry construction, soil erosion control and pollution control. In addition, the upstream region also lost some economic development opportunities because of environmental protection. It in return exacerbated the region's economic disparity between downstream and upstream. Currently there are many obstacles in implementing ecological compensation mechanism of Xin'an jiang river basin, which included difficult definition of compensation liability, difficult measurement on compensation standard, immature compensation mode, limited system environment and etc. The paper emphasizes on the necessity of implementing ecological compensation mechanism of Xin'an jiang river basin by analyzing the actual demand and realistic situation. Several ecological compensation mechanism application cases are described in Chapter 4. Advantages and disadvantages of ecological compensation mechanism models presented in these cases are discussed. In Chapter 5, in light of theoretical basis and statistical analysis the paper discusses the definition of river basin ecological compensation object and subject, how to estimate ecological compensation standard and how to establish multi-level ecological compensation mechanism and create a good institutional environment for the smooth implementation of the ecological compensation mechanism.