China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 69

China Policy Journal
Figure 2. No PES Transfer Regime When There Is No Transboundary Pollution
sider the quality of the water that a region
receives from its upstream neighbor
and the quality of the water that it
leaves to its downstream neighbor. For
example, if region A, which keeps the
water quality on its border with B at
the required Class II level, should not
be considered a transboundary polluter,
then B will not be considered a
transboundary victim. However, if the
water quality between B and C is found
to be at class III after flowing through
region B, this means that B is unable
to guarantee the same water quality as
that received from A. In such a case,
B will be regarded as a transboundary
polluter and should be responsible for
the damage suffered by the population
living in all three downstream regions
(C, D and F; the green arrows illustrate
the direction of the compensation from
B to the three downstream regions). A
possibility for region C illustrated in
the figure is that C manages to keep the
water quality at level III, which is lower
than the required quality but is equal to
the quality of the water it receives from
B; therefore, we should not consider C
a transboundary polluter but simply a
transboundary pollution victim (caused
by B). If region D receives class III water
quality but leaves its water quality
even worse at class IV, D should be considered
both a transboundary polluter
responsible for the damage caused in
region F (the blue arrow illustrates the
compensation from D to F) and a transboundary
pollution victim of region B.
In Figure 4, we present another
possible spatial distribution pattern of
transboundary water pollution. Compared
with Figure 3, in this new scen-
Figure 3. PES Transfer Regime with Transboundary Pollution: Scenario 1
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