China Policy Journal Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2018 | Page 74

Payment for Ecological Services and River Transboundary Pollution
“The Xijiang River drainage basin
covers four provinces, Yunnan,
Guizhou, Guangxi and Guangdong
provinces. Although the water quality
of Xijiang River is relatively better than
other large rivers in North China, since
several years, major pollution incidents
frequently happened on its tributaries,
affected directly health and safety of
people living along the river. Given the
rapid economic and social development
in cities along the Xijiang River and the
already observed tendency of reallocation
of polluting industrial production
toward upstream cities, many researchers
expected large-scale deterioration of
water quality in Xijiang River drainage
basin in near future.”
Then, the current water quality
of the section of the Xijiang River flowing
through the city where a respondent
lived was presented with the help of the
water quality ladder inspired by Mitchell
and Carson (1989) and adapted to
the water quality standard used in China.
The river basin-level uniform water
quality improvement target proposed
by our hypothetical project is fixed at
the swimmable level (C level on the water
quality ladder illustrated in Figure
6), which corresponds to level II of the
Chinese Ministry of Environment Protection
classification. The respondents
were then asked if they were willing to
pay a monthly payment for the realization
of this water quality improvement.
Figure 6. Water Quality Ladders
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