Fund allocation modeling of compensation subjects for various protection levels of the ecological flow in rivers under runoff variations

Abstract

Ecological compensation for protecting of river ecological flow (e-flow) is crucial to maintaining the health of river ecosystems; however, determining the fund sharing for ecological compensation can be challenging. To fill this scientific gap, we herein developed a specific framework to determine the fund-sharing of ecological compensation subjects. Such a framework mainly consists of three parts:1) Identifying the subjects who benefit from the consumption and eco-products provided by e-flow protection, and determining the sharing coefficient of the compensation subjects based on the ratio of their economic benefit to the total economic benefit; 2) Evaluating the ecological compensation resulting from the e-flow protection with the help of the production function method; 3) Combining the ecological compensation and compensation sharing coefficient to determine the fund sharing of compensation subjects. We have successfully applied this approach to the Baoji Section of the Weihe River and the Baojixia Yuanshang Irrigation District (BYID). The obtained results revealed that the compensation subjects were Baoji and Xianyang City, and their corresponding fund-sharing coefficients in 2010 in order were 0.71 and 0.29. It was predicted that ecological compensation for e-flow protection would be 209 million yuan in 2010 year, and the corresponding values of capital sharing are 148 million and 61 million yuan. Over the last 23 years (in the time interval of 2000–2022), the share of compensation funds has gradually decreased, indicating an increasing trend with the improvement of the security level. Join us in our mission to protect river ecosystems and maintain a healthy balance by using this approach for ecological compensation.