| "Why is the water so clear in the dyke, for the fresh water comes from the springhead." How people who enjoy the clear water in the channel to repay those who protect the source of flowing water? It involves compensation for watershed ecology. Watershed ecological compensation refers to an institutional arrangement that adopts economic means to coordinate the relations among interest subjects within river basins. In China, separated by a narrow strip of water, a river basin always links with numbers of administrative regions, which means that the protection of ecological environment in river basins relates to the development of more than one interest subject. In the pattern of benefit partition of administrative division, contradictions and conflicts unavoidably exist among different interest subjects when achieving the comprehensive development and exploitation of resources in river basins. Thus, incentive compensation institutional arrangement is the best solution to guarantee the sustainable development of ecological environment in river basins. Since the1990s, the pilot ecological compensation policies have been executed by the government in some basins, and some good experience have been summarized by us. However, how to construct a model system of watershed ecological compensation in accordance with China’s reality becomes the issue demanding prompt solution in theory and practice.This paper applies research methods such as literature analysis, case analysis and comparative analysis to research China’s watershed ecological compensation mode. Based on a brief overview of the related practice in our country, this paper believes that watershed ecological compensation can be divided into two major tapes, namely government-led compensation mode and market compensation mode. Through comparison of these two modes in driving force and mode, division of party’s right and obligations, compensation efficiency, effective approaches of improving the construction of watershed ecological compensation mode are expected to be found. There are five parts in this paper. The first chapter is a preface, which mainly expounds this paper’s research background, literature review, research methods, research content as well as possible innovation and deficiency, of which literature review is the main part in this chapter by reviewing the existing research results in aspects of theoretical basis, compensation standard and mode of watershed ecological compensation. The second chapter mainly discusses the theoretical basis of this paper. Based on the theory of public goods and the theory of externality, attributes of watershed ecological services and externality settling mechanism of the two mode are discussed in this paper. The third case chapter briefly introduces the practices on China’s watershed ecological compensation which have been carried out, covering compensation practices implemented by the central government, local governments and private sector as well. Based on the practice cases in the third chapter, the fourth chapter divides China’s watershed ecological compensation mode into government-led compensation mode and market compensation mode. On the basis of the classification, it further makes a comparison between these two kinds of compensation modes in driving force and mode, division of party’s right and obligations, compensation efficiency and reaches the conclusion:neither the government nor the market can work independently in watershed ecological compensation, thus, the organic combination of them is necessary. The fifth chapter is to make proposals for the following implementation of watershed ecological compensation compensation based on the previous analysis. |
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