Eco-compensation for watershed services in China

Eco-compensation for watershed services (EWS), or the more general payments for ecosystem services, is an incentive-based environmental policy instrument. With official documents and first-hand data from fieldwork, we analyze China's 17 EWS pilot schemes across 16 provinces. Major environmental crises in China can partly be caused by the inadequate incentives for local governments to forcefully implement the environmental laws and policies. EWS schemes in China mainly target local governments in upstream and downstream watersheds, rather than the private entities in normal applications elsewhere, to provide economic incentives and to encourage their enforcement activities.