Eco-compensation for watershed services in China

ABSTRACT

Eco-compensation for watershed services (EWS), or the more general payments for ecosystem services, is an incentive-based environmental policy instrument. With official documents and first-hand data from fieldwork, we analyze China’s 17 EWS pilot schemes across 16 provinces. Major environmental crises in China can partly be caused by the inadequate incentives for local governments to forcefully implement the environmental laws and policies. EWS schemes in China mainly target local governments in upstream and downstream watersheds, rather than the private entities in normal applications elsewhere, to provide economic incentives and to encourage their enforcement activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Payments for ecosystem services
• economic incentives
• local governments
• water quality management
• policy implementation

Acknowledgement

We thank Dr David Wilmshurst for language editing.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Major Science and Technology Programme for Water Pollution Control and Treatment [grant 2013ZX07603-003], the National Basic Research Programme of China [grant 2012CB955803], and a South China Programme Research Grant from the Chinese University of Hong Kong [grant 6903795].