| Source water protection area(SWPA) is the area designated by the state to protect the water source, the establishment of which can protect and improve ecological environment of the area, alleviate a series of environmental pollution brought about by rapid economic growth, and ensure water security, thereby promote the overall coordination and sustainable development of the economy and society. Although the establishment of water source protection area ensures the water security to a certain degree, but there are many protential problems. One of the most important problems is how to coordinate between the survival of local residents and ecological protection in the protected area. The implementation of ecological compensation system is an effective way to solve the survival and protection problem of water source protection areas. It is the focus of future ecological civilization construction, as well as the core content of the establishment and improvement of ecological compensation mechanism. Moreover, it has already become an important means and urgent need of protecting ecological security of the water resources in protected areas, as well as solving the problem of the imbalance between economic and social development.According to the special sacrifice theory and stakeholder theory, taking the perspective of reducing the destruction of ecological environment, this paper discussed the scope of compensation, compensation standard and compensation method for land user, businesses and residents in the protected areas respectively. The main research contents include:(1) Investigation and analysis of ecological compensation in water source protection areas. The establishment of water source protection areas will have a certain impact on not only the production and living of local residents, but also social and economic development of protected areas. In order to better solve the problems of "who are the compensation subjects and objects, what is the amount of compensation, and how to compensate", a questionnaire employing contingent valuation method was designed, field investigations were carried out in selected water source protection areas of 12 cities in Shandong province and other provinces, 645 valid questionnaires were obtained at Level One, Level Two and Quasi Protection Areas. Further, the local residents' cognition on protection areas, current situation of ecological compensation and satisfaction of the existing ecological compensation mechanism were analyzed. Based on above analyses, it was found out that the residents of water source protection areas have a good understanding of the establishment of protected areas and the protection of ecological environment; the current ecological compensation coverage is mainly related to Level One Protection Area and most of the local residents are not satisfied with the existing compensation standards. Regression model estimates showed that, the age of residents, household income, types of protection areas and the compensation standard are highly significant in effecting level of satisfaction of compensation standard.(2) Defining the subjects and objects of ecological compensation, as well as the compensation scope of ecological compensations in SWPAs. First, the stakeholders and their interests in the ecological compensation of the water source protection areas were identified and analyzed. And by establishing the game model, behavior choices of each stakeholder were further studied. On this basis, the scope of compensation was defined from the perspectives of three subjects, namely land users, enterprises and residents. Under the premise that land use regulations in SWPAs are based on increasing public interests, if damages are to be caused by land use regulations that impose land owners to more than general social responsibilities, it is necessary to compensate the land owners, otherwise it is not necessary to compensate them. In order to protect the ecological environment, enterprises in the protected areas that suffer from profit decrease due to moving, closing down, changing the line of production or limiting production volumes need to be compensated. Residents of protected areas can be divided into ecological migrants and residents living under restrictions. They should be fully compensated or properly compensated accordingly.(3) Accounting ecological compensation standards of source water protection areas. Compensation standards accounting is the difficult point and main focus of ecological compensation. After defining the scope of compensation, this paper calculated the compensation standards under three kinds of scenarios, namely prohibited land use, limited land use and changed land use. Accounting of ecological compensation standards requires the government to compensate the property rights of land owners. In the case of prohibited land use, the compensation standards can be implemented in two ways: one is to have a third party assess the value of land; the other is to refer to the fair market value of land. In the case of limited land use, compensation coefficient should be calculated according to the degree of land use limitation. The annual compensation amount can be calculated by the land value, land area and land limited compensation coefficient. In the case of changed land use, calculation of ecological compensation standards should be determined by comprehensive evaluation of production cost, opportunity cost and other economic losses and unemployment resulted by changed land use. The compensation standard for ecological migrates should be determined by the living standard and the income level of previous and current living areas; ecological compensation for residents living under restrictions should include compensation for intangible costs due to lifestyle changes, job transfer training and counseling, as well as tangible cost of constructing facilities to control non point source pollution.The paper also took the Yun Meng Hu reservoir as an example. The ecological compensation standards of cultivated land in the protected area were estimated. Estimates showed that in 2010, the total value of cultivated land in Yun Meng Hu reservoir was over 29.05 million yuan / mu, in which the social security value is 19.29 million yuan / mu, close to twice the economic value, and is more than half of the total land acquisition compensation(accounted for 66.4% of the total land compensation amount). This shows that although the current land acquisition compensation standards takes into account of the land compensation fees, resettlement subsidies and other compensation; the compensation standard is still quite low, it does not take into consideration of the large social security value of arable lands.(4) Selection of ecological compensation means in water source protection areas. Compensation subjects' interests are different, the appropriate means of ecological compensation will be different as well. In this paper, ecological compensation methods were analyzed in three aspects of the land users, operating enterprises and local residents. According to the ecological compensation means under land control of land use situationregulation, can choose the compensation means of land storage and transfer of development rights compensation can be applied. Ecological compensation for the relocated or closed enterprises can be financial compensation and land replacement, so as to support and encourage enterprises to move away from the water source protection areas, as well as to seek greater development space. For enterprises who have limited production volumes or switched lines of production, the government can resort to tax incentives, preferential policies on land use to compensate the enterprise indirectly. Ecological migrates can be compensated financially, as for the residents of water source protection areas, measures to help them improve employability through intellectual training, employment training and so on.(5) Protection mechanism of ecological compensation in source water protection areas. This paper discussed the establishment and perfection of protection mechanism of ecological compensation in water source areas, from three aspects of legislative guarantee, fund collection and coordination management. To establish the ecological compensation system of water source protection areas, legislation must be established first, which specifies the principles, subjects, content, standards, stakeholder responsibilities, compensation management and utilization etc. of ecological compensation in water source protection areas. Thus it can be used as the legal basis for ecological compensation of stakeholders in the water source areas. As for capital raising, the financing channels include local budget funds, financial subsidies from superior government, tax paid by beneficiaries, operational income in source water areas and social donations. As for the coordination among different departments, a designated water source department should be established to safeguard the realization of ecological compensation goals in SWPAs. |
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