Improving the Water Quality Monitoring System in the Yangtze River Basin—Legal Suggestions to the Implementation of the Yangtze River Protection Law

Qiu Qiu,Helena F. M. W. Van Rijswick,Gang Tu,Liping Dai

doi:10.3390/laws10020025

Qiu Qiu, Helena F. M. W. Van Rijswick + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/laws10020025

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Journal: Laws	Publication Date: Apr 9, 2021
Citations: 5	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Hubei University Of Economics, Utrecht University

Abstract

The Yangtze River Basin is the largest river basin in China and has the most complex trans-boundary problems. The water quality monitoring system of the provincial boundary sections in the basin is the typical go-to system to show the interaction between administrative regions and basins. In this article, we discuss the water quality monitoring system in the basin from a legal perspective, explore the achievements and deficiencies of the system, and identify the main elements that constrain the effective operation of the system in the basin, including the fragmented competencies of monitoring institutions, the different monitoring techniques, the overlapping monitoring contents and scopes, the different data releasing channels, and the different applications of the data. We provide legislative suggestions to implement the newly enacted Yangtze River Protection Law and valuable lessons for the design of monitoring systems in other countries or (trans-boundary) basins that face a similar situation.

Highlights

The Yangtze River Basin is the largest river basin in China and the third largest in the world, covering around 1,800,000 square kilometers
River that discharge nearly 40 billion tons of wastewater to the river every year, accounting for more than half of the national wastewater discharge and forming a coastal pollution zone of nearly 600 km (IAP2 n.d.). This worsens the ecosystem degradation and creates pressure on the safety of the drinking water (Xin 2016); due to the great disparities of the economic and social development in the upper and lower reaches of the basin, the conflicts arising from basin management and regional management have become increasingly prominent. This has become a serious conflict in the Yangtze River Basin and a major obstacle to the implementation of the combination of basin management with administrative regional management required by the Chinese
The application of the combination approach considers both the physical and hydrological boundaries and the administrative boundaries of a river basin. It is different from many places in the world, for example, from the Integrated River Basin Management approach applied in the EU, which is required by the Water Framework Directive (WFD)

Summary

Introduction

The Yangtze River Basin is the largest river basin in China and the third largest in the world, covering around 1,800,000 square kilometers. River that discharge nearly 40 billion tons of wastewater to the river every year, accounting for more than half of the national wastewater discharge and forming a coastal pollution zone of nearly 600 km (IAP2 n.d.) As a result, this worsens the ecosystem degradation and creates pressure on the safety of the drinking water (Xin 2016); due to the great disparities of the economic and social development in the upper and lower reaches of the basin, the conflicts arising from basin management and (administrative) regional management have become increasingly prominent. It is different from many places in the world, for example, from the Integrated River Basin Management approach applied in the EU, which is required by the Water Framework Directive (WFD)

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