Analysis on the Ecological Compensation in China's Water Source Protection Zones: a Case Study of the Middle Route Water Source Area of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project

Having become the tool to resolve the watershed environmental protection and local development contradictions, ecological compensation has been drawing increasing attention. Conflicts in environmental protection and regional development of the middle route water source area of the South-to-North Water Transfer Project urgently need to be resolved by the ecological compensation. However, the ecological compensation remains unsound yet. The author of this paper introduces the existing ecological compensation policy of the middle route water source area, analyzes main problems existing in ecological compensation policies in the middle route water source area, e.g. lack of legislative support for ecological compensation, insufficient researches on compensation standards, limited channel of funds and unsound evaluation mechanism and ultimately puts forward some suggestions on the improvement of ecological compensation policies of the water source area.