Loosely-coupled Collaboration of Policy Implementation in China: A Case Study on the Governance Policy of S River Basin

Successful river basin governance is challenged by actor engagement in the various stages of planning and management. Water governance has been handled as a critical national issue in China since ancient times. Over thousands of years, water governance in China has evolved from flood control, irrigation, and navigation to modern large-scale water supply, water pollution control, and ecological protection, with sustainable water resources management being the major challenge today. Although these issues vary significantly across the country, China has adopted a national, unified approach to manage water resources in a river basin context. In particular, over the last 70 years, China’s water governance has experienced fundamental changes. These commonalities show that designs are fundamental to tackle geographic and sectoral fragmentation of complex systems and catalyze the emergence of adaptive water governance. This study comparatively analyses the advantages of the policy in basin environmental governance, such as clear government responsibility, enhanced coordination among government departments, the accountability mechanism of the one-vote veto system, and the disadvantages of the policy in terms of high costs, information asymmetry, and lack of public participation. Furthermore, this study proposes suggestions on the sustainable development of watershed environmental governance from three aspects: regional characteristics, investment, and institutional innovation of policy implementation. Hence, this research is an important scientific foundation for the authorities to build cooperative water resource management programs in transboundary river basins. In future research, the availability of a more detailed dataset will enable the construction of a more comprehensive water resource management plan for different phases.