Study On The Legal Problems Of The Impact Of Hydropower Development On The Water Ecology And Environment In The Source Section Of The Yellow River Basin

The Yellow River Basin is an important economic zone in China and serves as an important ecological barrier with a quite important position in China’s economic development and ecological protection.As an important water-covering and recharging area of the Yellow River Basin,its headwaters section should first take up the heavy responsibility of soil conservation and ecological restoration in the Yellow River Basin.At the same time,the significant drop and high potential energy of the headwaters of rivers in the Yellow River basin make it a rich mine of hydropower resources.Hydropower projects are intensively developed here,making it one of the thirteen hydropower bases in China.As a grand system project to transform nature,hydropower development is bound to form ecological disturbances,among which the more prominent ones are soil erosion and the protection of species in the watershed.In the face of the complex ecological environment of the headwaters of rivers and the new mission and challenges of the Yellow River basin,it is necessary to study the ecological and environmental impacts caused by hydropower development in the headwaters of rivers at the legal level,and to analyze and make recommendations on the current status of legislation,law enforcement and justice at multiple levels.This paper is divided into five parts.In the first part,the importance of the ecological value of the headwaters of the Yellow River basin was analyzed.Firstly,the ecological value of the Yellow River basin was analyzed.Then,the geographical position of the source section of the Yellow River basin in this thesis was clarified.Further,the ecological value of the source section of rivers in the Yellow River basin was reflected by analyzing the special characteristics of the source section of rivers to provide a value basis for the subsequent legal analysis.The second part offered an analysis of the current status of hydropower development in the headwaters of the Yellow River basin and the resulting ecological problems.First,we analyzed the current situation of intensive hydropower development in the headwaters of the rivers.After that,we investigated the correlation between hydropower development and soil erosion and species conservation problems respectively,and pointed out the causes of these problems caused by hydropower development.In the third part,we made targeted legal analysis and divided it into two main parts to address the erosion problems and species protection issues caused by hydropower development studied in the first two chapters.The first part was the legal analysis of the newly adopted Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of the Yellow River,and the second part is the legal analysis of the relevant subordinate laws in the source section of the river.We hope to further highlight the current legal issues related to the source section of rivers in the Yellow River basin by echoing the high and low legal levels of the two sections.The fourth part was the introduction and inspiration of foreign related legal systems,mainly including the management experience of the Tennessee River Basin in the United States,the green hydropower environmental certification system in Switzerland,and the Superfund Act in the United States.And from the perspective of these three foreign systems,we analyzed their inspirations of the source section of rivers in the Yellow River Basin in China today.The fifth part was the suggestion of legal countermeasures to the ecological problems caused by the hydropower development in the source section of the Yellow River basin.We mainly focused on the current outstanding legal issues analyzed in Chapter 3,and the legal opinions proposed from the perspectives of allocation of authority,judicial coordination,and making up for the lack of legislation through the study of the Yellow River Protection Law and other legal normative documents,hoping to contribute to the ecological protection and high-quality development of the source section of the rivers in the Yellow River Basin through legal analysis and suggestions.