Study On Environmental Pollution Control Of Local Government Under Fiscal Decentralization

In recent years, environmental pollution problems have been one of the focus and difficulty points which draws more and more public attention. To control environmental pollution and protect the ecological environment has become the common interests of human society, which has highly attract the attention of China’s government. The ecological civilization construction has been written into the 13 th Five Year Plan at the fifth plenary session of 18. The environmental conservation has been upgraded to national long-term development strategy. However, the "first pollution, then governance" mode of economic development for a long time has made the pollution problems accumulated, the goal of environmental quality improvement is difficult to achieve in a short time. Environmental pollution problems has become the bottleneck to the sustainable development of the economic society. Due to the system of fiscal decentralization, the local government blindly pursues economic growth in the short-term and dominant effect, ignoring the public spheres, which is the most important reason why the Environmental pollution problems can’t be solved.Based on the above background and reasons, this article explores how to improve the initiative of pollution control of local government, how to form the coordination mechanism between fiscal decentralization and environmental pollution control, finally achieve the goal of the environmental pollution control and promote the sustainable development of social economy in China. This article sums up the related research results with the longitudinal clue to analyze the historical roots of the environmental pollution problems which are under the fiscal system. What’s more, it analyzes the inconsistent economic rights and responsibility of local government, the imperfect financial transfer payment system and the unsolved cross-border pollution control problem. All these analyses were based on the public finance theory, fiscal decentralization theory, game theory and other related theory. Based on game theory, the behavior in environmental pollution control between governments and the action between enterprises and government and the forced and conductive mechanism of pollution control were discussed. The environmental pollution control of local government under fiscal decentralization was further and normative studied in theory. The research finds that the local government doesn’t have a motivation to control environmental pollution because the inconsistent economic rights and responsibility of local government and the conduction of environmental fiscal expenditure and transfer payment. At the same time, the effectiveness of environmental pollution control has not been paid enough attention and its forced effect has not occurred.This article combines empirical analysis with normative analysis, vertical analysis and horizontal comparison. It describes China’s present situation of environmental pollution treatment, sets indicator system according to the statistical yearbook and survey data, and conducts the regression analysis between the fiscal decentralization and environmental pollution improvement of local government. The empirical results indicate that industrial pollution abatement exists a negative relationship with fiscal decentralization degree and a positive correlation with expenditure for environment protection and urbanization level. Industrial structure adjustment has uncertain effect on local government’s environmental pollution control level. It shows a positive relationship with industrial waste gas and a negative correlation with industrial waste water and solid waste control degree. In addition to the expenses on environmental protection of the local government and industrial structure policy, the efficiency on local government’s environmental pollution control should also be taken into consideration. Accordingly, this paper inspects and evaluates the relative efficiency on inputs and outputs of local government’s environmental pollution control by DEA-LCA, the results indicate that pollution control in most parts of China is lack of efficiency, which is far from the total quality environmental management. The paper is on the basis of the pollution control experience from the developed countries such as America and Japan, which provides an optimization reference for the environmental pollution control of the local government under the fiscal decentralization. It includes that improve the legal system of environmental pollution control, promote the reform of the local government fiscal system, perfect the environmental taxation and boost the cross-region administration of local government’s environmental pollution control.Under the framework of public financial theory, using the research achievements and methods of modern economics, the paper builds transmission and reversed mechanism by effective incentive and constraint, to improve the enthusiasm of local government in environmental pollution control. It is of significance to achieve the better control of the environmental pollution, improve China’s environmental quality and guarantee a sustained development of ecological civilization and economy.