Performance Evaluation of Regional Water Environment Integrated Governance: Case Study from Henan Province, China

Abstract

The performance of the regional water environment integrated governance is affected by many factors. This study took place in Henan Province, China, as the research area, and constructed an index system through the comprehensive consideration of three target layers based on the Ecological-Social-Economic (ESE) framework. Due to advantages such as strong objectivity and operability, the improved entropy-weight technique for the order of preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) model can greatly overcome subjective human interference and render the evaluation results more reliable. Therefore, it was introduced to evaluate the water environment integrated governance in Henan from 2007 to 2016. By applying the obstacle degree model, the obstacle factors were then diagnosed. The results of this study show that the overall performance of the integrated governance was generally improved in Henan from 2007 to 2016. Performance levels of the three target layers exhibited different trends, of which the social and economic benefits presented a linear increase year by year, but the ecological benefits presented a fluctuating downward trend. The obstacle on the Henan water environment integrated governance mainly comes from the ecological and economic benefits index. Therefore, a series of countermeasures have been proposed as a means of improving the governance performance in Henan.