Ecological Co-Conservation and Sharing Mechanism for Sustainable Watershed Management

It is necessary to promote the harmony between human and nature, and the equity between upstream and downstream areas for river basin sustainable development. Ecological compensation is being applied to pay for ecological services and transboundary external effects caused by ecological conservation or exploitation in China. A conception of co-conservation and sharing, which means to burden the conservation cost and share the benefit in the whole river basin, is presented in this paper to solve the difficulties with current research and implementation of ecological compensation in China. The scale of co-conservation area is determined by geographical characteristics, while the sharing area is established depending on economic factors. Xin'an River Basin, related to two provinces in East China, is taken as the study area. The territorial scales of the co-conservation area and the benefit sharing area are determined. By analyzing the transformation of environmental protection costs and benefits between different districts and sections, the distribution of conservation costs is conducted in the whole sharing area. Furthermore, a framework for co-conservation and sharing mechanism is discussed.