| With the rapid industrialization and urbanization in China,economic growth at the cost of resource consumption,ecological deterioration,and environmental pollution,has seriously restricted the sustainable development of the local economy.Gradually,the contradiction between the ecological environment and economic development becomes predominant.Issues arise when the mechanism of benign interaction between the victims,the protectors,and the beneficiaries is not complete yet.Furthermore,local governments,as the interest subjects representing the interests of the region,have a direct impact on the effectiveness of ecological and environmental protection actions.Therefore,it is necessary to build a scientific compensation mechanism for ecological protection to meet the goal of National Environmental Governance.The "Beautiful China" in the 19 th National Congress of the CPC outlined a grand blueprint for ecological and environmental protection,in order to speed up the reform of the system of ecological civilization,it tries to explore the establishment of an environmental governance system in which the government plays a leading role.The ecological fiscal transfer is an innovative financial tool for ecological environment governance.Based on the principle of Fiscal equilibrium,the ecological compensation mechanism for the distribution of financial revenue among governments at different levels and adminisrative regions is used as an intergovernmental transfer payment system.It is an important part of the top design and system of ecological civilization in our country.As a public good,the eco-environment has a spillover effect and spatial externality.Under the fiscal decentralization system,local governments have the information advantage of local ecological environment resources and are responsible for the supply of external public goods.If ecological compensation is not effective,the supply of local public goods will be reduced.The eco-environment has the issue of insufficient positive motivation and weak negative restriction in China,the allocation of transfer payment funds should not only consider financial factors,but also incorporate ecological indicators into the criteria for the allocation of financial funds to compensate the local government ecology protection and the environmental governance cost,and internalize the externality.As an important part of the ecological compensation mechanism,the ecological fiscal transfer has attracted extensive attention from the political,social and academic circles in various countries.On the one hand,the concept of diversity of understanding,ecological compensation has multiple meanings,the ecological fiscal transfer also has a different definition.However,ecological fiscal transfer policy of central and local government scattered in various documents has not yet formed a system.Therefore,in the investigation stage of ecological compensation marketization,the subject of how the government plays the leading role to meet the policy objectives has not yet formed a conclusion.Based on the research results of environmental economics,ecology,and finance,this paper aims to perfect the ecological fiscal transfers with Chinese characteristics.Firstly,the paper introduces the theoretical basis of ecological transfer payment system.It not only defines the concepts of ecological compensation,transfer payment and ecological transfer payment,but also elaborated the ecology value theory,the public product theory,the government relations theory and the Game Theory which the ecology transfer system related,and the elements and mechanisms of the ecological fiscal transfer system,such as the double objectives,the allocation of funds,the supervision and examination,and the incentive and restraint mechanism,etc.,to solve the problems existing in the ecological transfer payment system.Secondly,the paper briefly expounds the current situation of ecological fiscal transfer system.To analyze the internal mechanism of ecological fiscal transfers,this study first combs the vertical and horizontal ecological fiscal transfer system and the practice of central and local ecological fiscal transfers.Based on the provincial level data,the paper uses the arcGIS10.2 software to cluster and compare the Ecological Environment Index and the equalization index of basic public services.And then analyzes the difference of the spatial pattern of the central-to-local ecological fiscal transfers.As the top-level design of our country,the central-to-local ecological fiscal transfer system is constantly improving.The field of ecological fiscal transfer is from single to comprehensive,and the scope of payment is from province to interprovince,payment methods range from the type of blood transfusion compensation to the type of blood making compensation,gradually expanding the scope of ecological fiscal transfer,and increasing the intensity of ecological fiscal transfer in key region and field.A diversified compensation mechanism for ecological protection has been initially established.However,in local practice,there are still some problems such as the limited source of funds,unbalanced scale of funds and tasks of ecological protection,and low participation rate of market subjects.The root cause is that the system of fiscal decentralization is not perfect,and the game of environment governance between the central government and local government is still the inducement of the local government's ecological and environmental behavior distortion.The payment structure of ecological fiscal transfer in China is biased towards the Earmarked Grants,and the repeated setting of projects seriously affects the efficiency of funds.Consequently,the indicators,scope,and objectives of the allocation of funds in the ecological fiscal transfers are not in line with the monitoring and assessment,the process and system are in weak supervision,and both the motivation and restriction mechanism are weak.Due to the overlapping of administrative functions and the lack of cross-border coordination mechanism,ecological compensation is easy to be vacant and overlapping.As a result,there is still a certain distance between the ecological fiscal transfers and the demand for local ecological compensation funds,which can not fully reflect the ecological value of local difference,and the task of ecological protection of local governments is arduous which directly affects the effective operation of local ecological fiscal transfers.Then,this paper studies the eco-environmental effect and the equalization effect of basic public services of vertical and horizontal ecological transfer payment system by comparative analysis and econometric analysis.Due to the balance between equity and efficiency in ecological fiscal transfers,there is a big difference between the allocation of existing funds and the priority areas of ecological protection,which affects the efficiency of funds to a certain extent.On the one hand,the target effect analysis of vertical ecological transfer payment is based on 17 pilot provinces and 199 counties in four pilot provinces of Gansu,Guizhou,Henan and Hubei,then builds mathematical model and examines the Environmental Effects and the Equalization Effects of public services of the ecological fiscal transfers system using stata14 Software,and makes a comparative analysis of the objectives of the general ecological fiscal transfers system between the central government and the different provinces,and shows that the emphasis is different for the central and provincial fiscal funds distribution,equalization of basic public services is the main purpose of ecological fiscal transfer for the central government,and has realized the fund compensation function,the ecological fiscal transfer from province to county is more conducive to the realization of ecoenvironmental effects through the local government's environmental protection efforts.On the other hand,the target effect analysis of horizontal ecological fiscal transfer is based on the cross-provincial ecological compensation in Xin 'Anjiang River from 2012 to 2017.Comparing the changes of water environment quality of the river basin,then the development quality of local ecological environment in the upper and lower reaches of the river basin.It is found that the horizontal ecological transfer payment is mainly aimed at the protection of the ecological environment,the level of local basic public services has not changed much.Therefore,the central government should pay more attention to Macroeconomic regulation and control,while local governments focus on diversity practice.Finally,this paper puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions to improve the ecological fiscal transfer system.In order to effectively balance the relationship between eco-environmental protection and economic development,it is importment to follow the principles of environmental protection priority,fairness and efficiency.On the one hand,the relationship between the central and local governments should be coordinated to balance the needs of all parties comprehensively.With the increasing input of ecological transfer payment,we should improve the legal system of ecological protection,perfect the damage compensation system and strengthen the top-level system design.On the other hand,it is importment for the central and local governments to attach importance to the form of Block Grants,appropriately merge and integrate the Earmarked Grants,and explore the comprehensive ecological compensation form so as to use funds as a whole.The ecological fiscal transfer system for the provinces needs to be improved so that the funds can be allocated by the county government according to the regional difference.Also,the supervision and evaluation system should be optimized by introducing social participation and independent third party evaluation.Various forms of incentives and penalties aimed to optimize the motivation and restriction mechanisms,and deepen benefit-sharing mechanisms between interregional resources are elaborated to achieve interregional equity and cooperation. |
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