The Effectiveness of “River Chief System” Policy: An Empirical Study Based on Environmental Monitoring Samples of China

Wanhua Li,Zhijia Deng,Yaodong Zhou

doi:10.3390/w13141988

Abstract

There has been controversy in theory and practice among studies about the governance of the “River Chief System” (RCS) policy and the watershed management issues behind it. This paper uses the regression discontinuity (RD) method and the water pollution monitoring data of 150 state-controlled monitoring points in China from 2007 to 2018 at the China National Environmental Monitoring Station to empirically study the effect of the “River Chief System” on water pollution treatment and the influencing factors behind the effect of the “River Chief System”. The results show that the “River Chief System” policy has a positive impact on river pollution treatment in the observation term. The implementation effectiveness of the “River Chief System” is limited by factors such as the boundaries of the river chief’s jurisdictions, the administrative conflict among river chiefs, local government environmental expenditure capacity, and environmental pressure. It is believed that the key to basin governance is to further improve the synergistic model of basin governance among regions.

Highlights

As watershed pollution involves many areas, the point-source pollutions coexist with area-source pollution, and liability is difficult to determine, various countries have found basin governance difficult [1,2]
We proposed the proportion of the length of the river flowing through the city to the total length as the proxy variable for the administrative conflicts of river chiefs; when the river flowing through a certain city accounts for a higher proportion of the whole river, the river is less likely to flow through other cities and is less affected by the governance policies of other river chiefs, which means that the risk of administrative conflicts in river chief governance will decline, so we assumed that the proportion of river length is positively correlated with the governance effect of the River Chief System” (RCS)
We tested the validity of the regression discontinuity method and9 otfh1e9 regression results

Summary

Introduction

As watershed pollution involves many areas, the point-source pollutions coexist with area-source pollution, and liability is difficult to determine, various countries have found basin governance difficult [1,2]. The central and local governments constantly emphasize the importance of environmental management, promulgate laws and regulations, and set up special governance institutions for major river basins [7,8,9], it is still difficult to effectively improve upon the problem [10,11]. The State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) appointed local government heads as river chiefs across the nation to clean up and protect water resources. As many mayors and county heads are responsible for their districts, river chiefs were to be responsible for the management and protection of the watercourses, including resource protection, shoreline management and protection, water pollution prevention and control, water environment management, ecological restoration, and law enforcement monitoring [13]. Available online: http://www.china.com.cn/zhibo/zhuanti/ch-xinwen/2016-12/12/content_39896976.htm (accessed on 25 December 2020). Available online: http://www.cnemc.cn/sssj/ (accessed on 25 December 2020)

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion