Assessment of Payments For Watershed Services Policy from a Perspective of Ecosystem Services: A Case Study of the Liaohe River Basin, China

Abstract

Abstract Payments for watershed services (PWS), as one of the typical environmental governance policies, its efficiency assessment has become a research focus. Taking the Liaohe River in China as an example, this study try to find a more suitable assessment method for PWS. we divided its Payments for Watershed Services (PWS) policy into two types, including EC-like model (October 2008 to April 2017) and PES-like model (May 2017 to December 2021), and then by adopting the corrected uint-value transfer method based on the land use change data, we presented a comparison of the service efficiencies of the two phases based on the assessment method of ecosystem service value (ESV). According to the results, the total ESV growth in phase Ⅰ was 15.23 billion yuan, with an average value of 1.69 billion yuan per year; the numbers in phase Ⅱ was 14.86 and 3.72. The main growth spaces were concentrated along the Liaohe River mainstream and the upstream of tributaries, the main growth functions were water regulation (45.12%) and climate regulation (24.32%). The ESV growth were mainly due to the conversion of farmland into forest, grassland, wetland and water. In addition, in the PES-like model, the growth efficiency for the cities that adopted a direct payment system among counties was higher than for cities that did not take this step. In theory, the more people participate, the higher the service efficiency is, this is the main reason why the efficiency of PES is higher than that of EC in this study. Taking the ESV as the main indicator for PWS assessment, can not only conduct policy assessment and comparison, but also effectively identify land types and governance measures that generate positive externality of ecosystem.