Can Environmental Governance Responsibility Linkage Mechanism Help Reduce Boundary Pollution ?

Since the reform and opening,China has been developing with each passing day.Its economy has been developing rapidly and the comprehensive national strength has been greatly enhanced.At the same time,environmental problems are also followed,and the pollution of watersheds continues to intensify,which gradually seriously endangers the people’s health and the sustainable development of society.In the process of environmental governance,China’s long-standing fiscal decentralization system tends to lead to a lack of coordination mechanisms between administrative regions.In horizontal local competition,driven by the performance evaluation system with economic growth as the core,local governments often choose to "free ride" for the sake of economic growth to transfer environmental pollution across the boundary,resulting in relatively more serious pollution problems at the boundary of administrative regions.Facing the increasingly serious problem of river pollution,the environmental governance responsibility linkage mechanism has played an important role in solving the problem of watersheds pollution.Through the clear responsibility of the government at all levels,it builds system of the assessment of accountability,the rewards and punishment,encourages local governments to pay more attention to environmental governance and have stronger motivation for watershed environmental protection work.Therefore,the linkage mechanism of environmental governance responsibility is of great significance for solving the problems of watershed governance in China,promoting the construction of ecological civilization,and implementing the green development.Based on the basis of existing research and the number of weeks of water quality monitoring in key sections of China from 2008 to 2016 and the manually sorted policy data of river chief system,this paper studied the impact of environmental governance responsibility linkage mechanism on border pollution,discussed its impact mechanism through empirical research,and analyzes the regional heterogeneity of its governance effect,taking the river chief system policy as the policy impact.Based on the empirical results,the following conclusions can be drawn: First,there is indeed a problem of border river pollution in China,which means the river pollution in border areas is more serious than that in non-border areas.Secondly,the linkage mechanism of environmental governance responsibility has an obvious improvement effect on border pollution.Thirdly,the border pollution control effect of river chief system is different in regions with different degree of marketization.The implementation of river chief system in eastern and central regions with medium to high degree of marketization can significantly improve border pollution,while the effect of river chief system in western regions with low degree of marketization is not obvious.In addition,the effect of river chief system on border pollution control is also different in regions with different degrees of opening.The improvement of river chief system on border pollution is more significant in regions with lower degrees of opening.Fourthly,the river chief policy can reduce pollutant emissions and improve the pollution situation of border rivers by increasing the environmental protection expenditure of the local government and promoting local green innovation.According to the research results of this paper,the following possible suggestions are put forward: First,in the process of boundary pollution control,we should insist on clarifying the rights and responsibilities of local government officials,strengthen the assessment and accountability content of bottom-up responsibility,and turn the pressure of pollution reduction into the driving force of environmental control.Secondly,cooperation among local governments should be further promoted,and local governments should be encouraged to jointly deal with pollution problems,improve the boundary pollution phenomenon of "free-riding",and further implement the concept of green development.Thirdly,specific judgments should be made according to the actual environmental conditions in the establishment and implementation of the environmental governance responsibility linkage mechanism,and environmental objectives should be established,and specific measures should be implemented based on the actual pollution conditions.Fourthly,in the view of the linkage of environmental governance responsibilities,the government should increase environmental investment and promote local green innovation to effectively improve the pollution of border rivers and achieve sustainable development.