Progress and Prospect of Ecological Compensation Mechanism in Dongjiang River Basin

On  19 October 2016, the provinces of Jiangxi and Guangdong signed the “Horizontal Ecological Compensation Agreement of Dongjiang River Basin Upstream and Downstream” in Nanchang Province. The agreement stipulates that, based on the water-quality assessment of cross-provincial watershed area, the two provinces jointly set up the horizontal compensation mechanism and funding for the water environment of Dongjiang River Basin. Each province agrees to contribute CNY100 million annually, and the central government awards incentive funds of about CNY300 million annually for the water pollution control and ecological environment protection of Dongjiang’s source. The horizontal ecological compensation agreement is tentatively fixed at 3-year term, with the goal of making the cross-provincial boundary water quality reach an annual average of Class III and improving year-by-year. The agreement made several references to the successful experience of the ecological compensation mechanism in Xin’an River Basin, the country’s first pilot on cross-provincial ecological compensation mechanism.