| Water is source of life, key of production and base of ecology. Therefore, water resources meet not only the need of human survival and social development, but also that of the Earth as a whole. It carries economic value, as well as environmental, ecological, and aesthetic values. However, for a long time, water resources have been regarded as something natural, something freely available. Consequently, water resources have not been paid due attention and cherish, water resources protection couldn’t get due compensation and destruction of the water environment has not been duly punished. It is due to human’s wrong understanding on the issue of water resources and the lack of delineation of responsibilities that led to the abuse of water and increasing shortages and deteriorating of water environment. Therefore, it is urgent for China to reconstruct the system of the powers and responsibilities of water resources and to establish the mechanism of watershed ecological compensation, to promote the sustainable and coordinated development of society, economy and ecology, resources and environment through reshaping social justice in the protection and utilization of water resources.The ecological compensation concept is the basis of this article. On defining the concept of ecological compensation, the core elements are the compensation for the impaired in rights and the interests due to environmental protection and environmental damage, and then clearing ecological compensation is compensation for social subjects rather than natural body, especially not the ecological environment construction and pollution governance. Public finance expenditures of the ecological environment construction projects are ecological compensation with the standard as to whether to include the compensation of the damage to environmental issues and rights and interests. Environmental taxes may become a source of ecological compensation funds, but the system itself is not part of the ecological compensation. There are essential differences between ecological compensation and ecological compensation mechanism. Ecological compensation is a more abstract concept, while ecological compensation mechanism is the practical design of ecological compensation. Watershed ecological compensation that is based on fairness and justice as core values is a means to regulate the conflicts of rights and interests with external issues of water resources and environment between administrative regions in the watershed area, including compensation for environmental contribution to the region’s water resources and punishment to water resources environmental damage region.Literature review shows that the international concept similar to ecological compensation is the payment for ecological services, which follows the "the beneficiary pays" principle. In China, studies flourished in watershed ecological compensation, but not in-depth from the perspective of water resources property right, constructing mathematical model of measuring cost and efficiency. As a result, without solid foundation, the study of watershed ecological compensation becomes difficult to be effectively put into practice. Theoretically, the internalization of externalities theory is the theoretical roots of watershed ecological compensation. Externality comes into being in specific economic activities when the party who did not involve in the decision-making influenced by economic activity, and the lack of effective feedback mechanism. Currently, the externality of the region between the upstream and downstream is the root cause of a watershed ecological compensation mechanism. The nature of externality is the issue of property rights. Regional externality is rooted in the ill-defined property rights of water resources and environment between the administrative regions of the basin upstream and downstream. I can say that the key to solve the problem of externalities is to define property rights. Therefore, the property rights system of water resources forms the basis of watershed ecological compensation system. At the same time, to achieve fairness and justice is the value targets of watershed ecological compensation. In the protection and utilization of water resources, the root of unequal rights and responsibilities and the conflict of interest between the upstream and downstream areas is due to the lack of justice principles in related systems. To solve this problem, it is urgent to reform institutions, making clear the rights, responsibilities and benefits of watershed water resources environments, establishing the implementation of watershed ecological compensation system to justify relevant systems of protecting and utilizing water resources.Comprehensive observation of watershed ecological compensation practice at home and abroad shows that there are mainly four practical modes worth learning: intergovernmental cooperation watershed ecological compensation, direct compensation for watershed ecological protector of government-led, compensation for watershed ecological protector of enterprises to participate, market transaction compensation mode under the control of environment total. However, some problems remain, such as dispersion and lag of market transaction compensation mode, the need of support from property rights theory innovation for water resources, the urgency to strengthen regulation and involvement in the government. While in china, three modes can be summarized in watershed ecological compensation practice: the project compensation mainly to protect watered headwaters, watered water pollution control accountability and spanned compensation, water rights trading compensation based on water shortages. Among them, the project compensation mode takes the main position. While the spanned compensation practice targeted to water pollution control shows a rising trend, water rights trading compensation mode occurs only in specific regions. All these models have their advantages, having achieved good results in the regulation of the conflict of interest between the upstream and downstream region, promoting the sustainable use of watershed ecological resources environment. Nevertheless there are many defects, such as, not from the key factors-defining the water property rights to solve the problem of regional externalities, not creating a system of water resources compensation mechanism from a cross-section of water quality and quantity. Therefore, it is urgent to promote the water rights system innovation in practice, making clear the rights and interests of water sources richness and clarity on the basis of a single state ownership, to create a perfect spanned water resources and environment compensation mechanism.In terms of the powers and responsibilities system of water resources in practice, the core is the issue of ownership. As natural object, water belongs to nobody, thus, there is no original owner. Meanwhile, because of the attributes of public resources in the watershed of human existence and its current form, water resources should not become private property of any individual in the real world. Therefore, countries are recognized as owner of water resources within the territorial scope of all form of law, based on national sovereignty, or set for all the countries on behalf of the interests of all citizens to protect every citizen’s water interests, enabling the country to become the original owner of water resources, and building the necessary macroeconomic management over the state of water resources.Judging from the water systems of property rights in history, it is Chinese tradition to practice single-state-ownership system and unified management of water resources. After the founding of People Republic of China, all means of production was stated-owned for a long time, and water resources naturally belonged to the government. Therefore, the ultimate ownership of water resources and the macro-control management naturally belonged to the state. However, the current problem is that such a sweeping national ownership resulting in specific ownership of water resources is unclear, and the associated water rights and responsibilities cannot be clearly defined. On one hand, possessing the ownership of water resources, the central government has rights to dispose, mobilize and allocate water resources, while local governments and residents have no right to interfere, but to accept passively. On the other hand, the sweeping regulation of water resources ownership belonging to state makes water resources shared things of all people who can obtain free of charge through the watershed policy or super cheap uncontrolled use of water resources. At the same time they discharged of sewage irresponsibly by the water flow properties. This severely diluted the awareness of water conservation, so that the behavior of the conservation and protection of water resources were not compensated, which resulted in the typical "tragedy of the commons".Currently, some studies have been made in the field of the water property rights and watershed ecological compensation. However, all of them were based on the default general state ownership of water resources, using the concepts of "water rights","initial water rights" and "water source right", which was also based on the water resources policy of the government to freely distribute water resources in accordance with the population and economic development, exploring water-using rights or watering rights, neglecting further study of water resources ownership. Therefore, currently the owner’ rights and interests of the country’s water resources have been dummy actually, which resulted in exacerbating shortages of the available water resources and deteriorating of water environment, because of lacking of the effective management and use.It is urgent to bring forth new ideas into the property rights system of water resources for watershed ecological compensation. National ownership of water resources is defined as ownership of the ultimate macro-control management at home on the basis of sovereign nature, rather than property rights on ownership. Property Law defines the ownership as "the owner of a realty or chattel is entitled to possess, utilize, seek profits from and dispose of the realty or chattel in accordance with law." Their rights body is a natural or legal person, and the country within a country does not have a separate legal personality. Therefore, the national ownership of water resources can reflect many of the rights of ownership in the state-to-state affairs. But within the national territory, national ownership involves that countries have the ultimate ownership of macro-control management. The so-called "the ultimate ownership of macro-control management" means that countries have ultimate macroeconomic regulation and control of water resources management ownership based on the principle of fairness, in order to safeguard the common interests of all the people by the water administrative department of the State Council to exercise and make arrangements, including the legislative powers of the national macro-management of water resources, the right to social development planning, the implementation rights to water resources ecological compensation, water allocation and the right to enforce laws against, so as to ensure that the sustainable use of water resources and its environment.The property usufruct of water resources area should be clear. Most of our watersheds have the characteristic of crossing administrative regions, and the local governments of their flows have the rights to dominate, possess and use every rivers and water resources. Because of the relatively independent interests among each region, there is intensive competition, which will inevitably lead to a conflict of cross-border water resources and environment, resulting in water resources and environmental crisis. Therefore, the state-owned water resources (initial) rights should be divided within macroeconomic management in accordance with law and the economic benefits, specifically into property income, sanctions and the use of power. As regional wealth,"Water property usufruct of this kind of wealth in the region" should be a clear contribution to the area of water resources regions. A change of the ownership of "regional wealth" is bound to affect the fair and equitable distribution of wealth.In reality, the national water resources are distributed payment-free according to regional population and economic development, so up-stream regions of water resources are virtually deprived of "Water property usufruct". In state laws and general provisions, local governments should take the obligations to protect water resources environments while enjoy the rights to use water resources and the environment. However, there are obvious conflicts between water conservation and resource utilization. Up-stream regions take more responsibilities for the protection of water resources and environment, and having less right to enjoy water resources environment; while down-stream areas take less responsibilities and enjoy more right. As a result, it is seriously unequal in responsibility and right between upstream and downstream. In a long time, the upstream regions will inevitably despite the legal responsibility to protect, with its natural advantages in the watershed, and over-exploitation of water resources and water environment sewage capacity, resulting in the deterioration of the ecological environment in the catchment.What matters here is that the specific powers and responsibilities of the water resources among regions are ill-defined and contrary to justice. At present, Chinese watershed ecological compensation practices are mainly based on the responsibility system of water quality, without the support of the water resources in terms of system, lacking sufficient and reasonable basis, and deviated from what the watershed ecological compensation should mean. Logically, the complete framework of watershed ecological compensation system should put first the compensation of resource to upstream contributions and then responsibility system of reward and punishment based on the section of water quality.In the performance of macroeconomic regulation and control of water resources management ownership responsibilities, the central government should uphold the maintenance of the primary principles of social justice, fully considering the interests of the contribution to the area of water resources. First, the contribution of regional water resources should be recognized in the legal system, the specific water resources property usufruct should be assigned to the contribution region of water resources and environment, to establish two-level property rights system of the national ultimate macroeconomic control management ownership and regional water resources property ownership, ensuring the due resource revenue to the area of water resources. And then, the specific use of the water resource ownership and disposition rights are allocated to the next level in the basin administrative regions based on the factors of population, ecological, social development, and the market mechanism.Watershed ecological compensation mechanism should be constructed on the basis of two-level property rights system of Water Resources. With the accurate measurement technology of watershed management on water quality and quantity, according to basin sectional installation, the contribution to the water of the watershed source region and the intermediate region can be calculated. In order to implement different standards of ecological compensation for the watershed range,"Water contribution to the water", first make the watershed source region and the intermediate regional access to water resources and property income; On this basis, according to the river ecological requirements and the basin water use allocation rights, stringent water quality and quantity of incentive accountability and water rights trading mechanism would be established to lay more scientific institutional basis for complete water the spanned compensation mechanism in the whole basin system.Here, the level of incentive standard is critical to basin water resources ecological compensation. If too high, the standard cannot be implemented, while too low, it cannot work. However, some theoretical factors as direct input costs to protect water resources, the opportunity cost of opportunity, the value of the environment and ecology, regional differences, government financial situation, the stage of economic development, as well as water resources value should all be taken into consideration or reference, with a result lying in negotiations and Games between the relevant governments.Nation coordinates and implements ecological compensation work of basin water resources. Implementation of basin water resources and its ecological compensation across districts constitute the basic functions of the country and its government because of its distinctive public goods morphology. Dominated by the higher levels of government based on a basin-wide, lower levels of government to assume a specific implementation, watershed ecological compensation for inter-provincial large and medium-sized river is driven by the central government, the province’s small and medium-sized river by the provincial government, each set up a watershed ecological compensation committee responsible for fund raising, use, management and supervision, and compensation funds for financing by the government.This thesis, taking Xin’anjiang basin cross Anhui and Zhejiang provinces as a case study, analyses the existing compensation practices in implemented basin water environment compensation under the auspices of the central government, reconstructing the above theoretical framework to explore Xin’anjiang Ecological Compensation Mode. The existing Xin’anjiang watered compensation mechanism is essentially a simple agreement on gambling, involving the water quality alone, not involving the issues of property rights between upstream and downstream water resources and compensation for water resources, without full embodiment if the rights, responsibilities and interests unified and fair justice. The result of reconstruct is to determine property ownership and equity compensation both from perspectives of water resources and water quality, strengthening compensation by both government of Zhejiang Province and Anhui Province. |
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