Study Of Ecological Compensation Mechanism Of Inter-basin Water Transfer

The distribution of China's water resources is not equal, as a whole, more in south than north and more in east than west, less in winter and spring than summer and autumn. Additionally, with the rapid development of the Country's economy and society and the increasingly improvement of the pepole's standard of living, more and more waters are needed, which made some water scarcity areas lack of water more serious. In order to alleviate this problem, the common measure adopted by the Government is that they transfer water from the rich areas to the scarcity.Of course, water diversion include inside-basin diversion and inter-basin diversion, differently, the difficulty and complexity of the inter-basin diversion are bigger. Inter-basin water diversion(IBWD) will refer to several districts which dominated by different local Governments, which made the diversion project produce many problems, such as ecological, economical and administration problems. However, it is very difficult to harmonize those basins'interests, especially the problem of payment for environmental services (PES), which may be the most important problem. IBWD bring much economical, social and environmental benefit for the water scarcity areas, but also take certain loss to the water sources areas. Diversion without payment not only violate equity of water,but also not benefit to the efficient of water. Therefore, if we want to transfer water successfully, we must master advanced engineering technology and construct relevant economy compensation mechanism at the same time so as to remove the negative effect of IBWD project. Although our country have been to research on PES and also carried out some measures in some areas in the 1990s, it mostly fastened on the PES of receding furrow to forest and exploiting mine. As for the more complex problem-IBWD, both relevant theoretical research and practical exploring are very little, which is in the way to explore, so we should research on the PES of IBWD.Recently, there exist many IBWD projects in our country and others, in China, the most typical is the South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) Project. China's SNWD Project which transfers water from south to north is a great measure to transfer the water resources across basins, distribute it reasonably, and alleviate the water scarcity problem with implications for industries and agriculture and the water supply of cities and towns in the northern areas. A Southern Shaanxi city, Ankang, as one of the important water sources reserve of the Medium Route of the SNWD Project, must take the responsibility for protecting the high quality water sources, and need to meet high environmental conservation standard. Meanwhile, as an under-developed area in Shaanxi Province, the city has its anxious to develop local economy. The high costs of environmental conservation would certainly be a heavy burden for local government and residents. On the base of theoretical research and practical exploring, this article follow as the route "background analysis—theoretical analysis—field survey and analysis—mechanism constructing—conclusion and suggestion". At first, we simply introduced relevant research background, objective and route; then summarized relevant research and practice in our country and others, then based on a field survey, this study has investigated a relationship between Ankang's economic growth and emissions by employing a Cobb-Douglas function. Based on the model result and field survey, we show that residents in water sources areas has done much effort and pay much economical cost, so we must compensate water sources areas. In the end, we establish a basic frame model of payment for environmental services of IBWD through referring relevant research and practical exploring, which involved controlling water sources, locating compensation subjects and objectives, constructing an intermediary institution and fixing on its relevant function; through referring Ankang' relevant data,this article put forward the means of compensation standards and its distribution quantum in different accepting region, and illustrate those mechanism's operating procedures and protecting measures in detail at last.At the present, when PES of IBWD is not established and lack of relevant research and practical exploring, kinds of market-based compensation pattern is recommended, so as to establish a multi-PES which give priority to market mechanism and less in Government instrument, which will promote compensation mechanism operating efficiently on the long time, both efficient and equity are considered.