A Study On Cross-boundary Governance Of River Chief System

With the advancement of industrialization,urbanization,and regional integration,today's cross-boundary public issues have become increasingly prominent.Since the reform and opening up,China has devoted itself to the development of social economy for a long time and has neglected environmental problems,leading to increasingly sharp contradictions in the ecological environment in recent years.For a long time,the overall situation of China's water resources is not optimistic.River and lake pollution is particularly serious.As a result,watershed governance has always been the focus of attention.Watershed governance involves a wide range of interests between different local governments on the upstream and downstream,on the left and right banks,and between different functional departments of the government.It is a typical cross-boundary governance issue.China's traditional river and lake governance system mainly relies on the environmental protection department and the water conservancy department.The various water-related departments cooperate to complete the management of water resources in the watershed,which is prone to conflicting views;in addition the watershed is a complete whole,we can not only control a certain section of the river.Different administrative districts start from their own interests,and their own governance led to the contradiction of China's watershed governance.As a mechanism innovation in watershed governance,the river chief system refines the responsibility of river and lake governance and protection to the party and government leaders through the establishment of the river chief.This system utilizes the administrative power of the party and government leaders to control water.To some extent,it alleviated the shortcomings in traditional watershed governance.The River Chief System has been proposed for the first time since 2007.Although it has formed a complete system in some regions,the current research on this system is mainly based on a simple review level and a legal level.From a national perspective,there are still problems in the implementation of the River Chief System.How to change the “River Chief System” from an emergency mechanism to a long-term mechanism for environmental crisis is still worth considering.From the perspective of cross-boundary governance,The “River Chief System” is studied through three levels: vertical,horizontal and internal-external interaction.It is pointed out that the River Chief System has problems of low governance efficiency,unclear powers andresponsibilities,unreasonable accountability mechanism,poor coordination and low social participation.The main reason lies in its excessive dependence on the vertical hierarchy system,disagreement of horizontal government,low level of internal and external cooperation.In response to the above problems,Following suggestions are proposed for the development of the River Chief System.First of all,governments at all levels,river chiefs and citizens must establish the concept of green development;secondly,promote reform within the system by improving the construction of legal system,clarifying the power and responsibility of the river chiefs,improving the supervision and assessment system of the river chief system,promoting the linkage between different governments;Thirdly,build up a cross-boundary information exchange platform from the technical level with the basin monitoring system;Finally,promote cooperation between the government and the public,enterprises and social organizations outside the system to improve governance efficiency and governance level.