Administrative Regions Adjustment And Environmental Governance

In the period of social transformation,the adjustment of administrative areas is one of the usual means of local government to reconcile social contradictions and promote regional economic development.It will bring a series of uncertain shocks on the development of social economy in the administrative region.Previous researches pay more attention to economic effect rather than environment of regions change.This paper takes the change of the administrative division of the prefecture-level Chaohu City since2011 as a quasi-natural experiment.Based on the water quality data of the national control monitoring points,this paper estimates the impact of administrative division adjustment on the water quality indicators of Chaohu Lake using synthetic control method（SCM）.We find that the water quality of Chaohu Lake is partially improved（NH₃N）.However,the main pollutants（COD and DO）deteriorate after the adjustment.Detailed robustness tests are conducted from five levels,including exclusion of municipalities,comparison with DID method,transformation of treated group,RMSPE comparison test before and after intervention and placebo test,all these empirical results show stability.Further research showed:（1）The expansion of industrialization and urbanization explain the crux of this contradiction.（2）The swing of economic growth and environmental governance make the environmental target of administrative adjustment invalid.（3）Local assessment systems still favour the economy over the environment,progress on environment governance remains slow.（4）The strength of non-profit organizations is weak,and the degree of public participation is poor.The policy enlightenment shows that returning to the policy beginning,rationalizing the management system of Chaohu Lake and designing feasible accountability mechanisms are the fundamental policies to Chaohu Lake governance.At the same time,we must grasp the core of high-quality development profoundly and not sway in economic growth and environmental governance.In addition,in view of the characteristics of Chaohu Lake governance,it is necessary to establish a multi-department coordinated and orderly governance mechanism,design and improve feasible accountability mechanism,and improve the implementation efficiency of environmental governance.