River chief governance system:policy instruments,hydro-engineering and system governance effectiveness
The river chief governance system is a complex system project,and exploring the governance mechanisms of this system is an important part of developing water resource governance theory with Chinese characteristics.Therefore,from the perspective of sys-tem theory and based on social-ecological system theory,we constructed a systematic analysis framework for the governance of the river chief system,and utilized this analysis framework with the data related to water resources and the river chief system of 52 prefectural-level cities and provinces in four provinces,namely,Jiangxi,Anhui,Fujian,and Yunnan provinces,from 2011 to 2020,to empirically analyze the effects of policy instruments and hydro-engineering on the effectiveness of water resources governance.The study found that:① The river chief system did have a certain system governance effect,and its system governance effect was realized with the help of policy instruments and two types of hydro-engineering governance tools('soft'and'hard'),through indirectly changing the behavior of water resource users to take,use,or discharge water,or directly changing the state of the water resource system.② The sum of the policy instruments would lead to water conservation behaviors by all water users,the regulatory policy instruments would lead to farm-ers'choice of conservation irrigation behavior,and the hybrid policy instruments would lead to enterprises'choice of pollutant dis-charge behavior related to industrial structure upgrading.③ The hybrid policy instruments would increase the scale of hydro-engineer-ing construction.④ Voluntary policy instruments could only be effective through participatory governance if there were fewer external pressures on the water system.⑤ The scale of hydro-engineering construction showed an inverted U-shaped relationship with the effec-tiveness of system governance,and only when the scale of hydro-engineering construction was in the moderate range would hydro-engi-neering have the role of enhancing the effectiveness of system governance.With the improvement of hydraulic technology,the vertex of this inverted U-shaped curve would be lowered,and the moderate construction scale of hydro-engineering would also be decreased.Through the method of diagnosing the complex regional river chief governance system,this study believes that the river chief system can be optimized in terms of such aspects as adjusting the utilization ratio of voluntary policy instruments,understanding the behavioral pat-terns of resource users anywhere in taking,using,or discharging water,supporting the development of hydro-engineering technologies,and scientifically controlling the construction scale of hydro-engineering.
万方数据
维普
