On February 23, 2022, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment held a regular press conference, and river basin governance was once again on the list of concerns, with the Yangtze river and Yellow River basin governance attracting the most attention.
According to relevant officials, 3 billion yuan will be allocated to the Yangtze and Yellow rivers to compensate and guide water pollution prevention and control in 2021, and local governments will be supported to promote the construction of horizontal ecological compensation mechanisms. In the next step, we should continue to speed up the establishment of a horizontal ecological protection compensation mechanism for the whole Yangtze and Yellow rivers.
The establishment of ecological compensation mechanism will directly promote the collaborative management and joint prevention and control of river basins.
In May 2020, issued by the support guide create horizontal Huang Hequan river basin ecological compensation mechanism of pilot implementation scheme is put forward, along a yellow nine provinces take the lead in carrying out pilot work, and asked to explore establishing river basin ecological compensation standard accounting system, perfecting target appraisal system, improve the compensation funds allocation system, standardize the compensation funds use, driving the basin of collaborative governance, Joint prevention, control and law enforcement for ecological and environmental protection and restoration in river basins have been strengthened.
In April last year the national four departments have jointly issued the support of the Yangtze river basin all create horizontal compensation mechanism of ecological protection plan, and then to regulate basin involved in 19 provinces along the Yangtze river basin horizontal ecological compensation mechanism, to further promote the library in the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze river, the river lake, full, cansu collaborative governance.
The model of cross-regional collaborative governance needs to be deepened, and the improvement of watershed water environment faces new challenges.
Some people in the industry have said openly that with the proposed protection policies of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, the whole industry will face the challenge of overall planning and collaborative governance of the whole basin. Under this collaborative governance process, watershed governance is just a tentative attempt to throw a brick to attract jade. The new pattern of water treatment industry accepting collaborative governance will become one of the key words of industry development sooner or later.
Back to watershed governance. The current model of cross-regional collaborative governance is helping the basin's water ecology to develop in a good way. Chishui River basin is one of the important tributaries of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
Last year, the Regulations on the Protection of the Chishui River Basin jointly issued by Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces were formally implemented, and the collaborative management of the basin has been incorporated into the working regulations of each local basin. According to statistics from relevant departments, in 2021, the water quality of the main stream of the Chishui River basin reached the class ⅱ standard, and the water quality remained stable and the environmental quality was further improved.
In addition, Guizhou province has previously established a horizontal ecological compensation mechanism in the upper and lower reaches of the Chishui River basin. By 2021, Zunyi City in the lower reaches had paid nearly 100 million yuan in horizontal ecological compensation funds to Bijie city in the upper reaches. With yunnan and Sichuan provinces, a cross-provincial mechanism for upstream and downstream horizontal ecological compensation has been established, and 200 million yuan has been jointly invested to set up a horizontal ecological compensation fund for the Chishui River basin, which is mobilizing the enthusiasm of ecological protection in the basin and promoting the stability of water quality in the upper reaches of the Chishui River.
However, collaborative watershed management has not really "landed", ecological compensation mechanism has not been fully established, collaborative governance model has not been fully formed, and the characteristics of watershed fragmentation management still exist... In the next step, it is also necessary for all regions to strengthen communication and contact on watershed management, exchange new information on watershed management, and not "fight alone", so as to jointly create new measures for watershed management and protection.