Research into an ecological compensation standard in the Minjiang River Basin under the combined scenario of ‘clear property rights, water quality and quantity, and opportunity cost’

Abstract Quantification methods of river basin ecological compensation with a scientific basis are not only a research hotspot in the field of resources and environment, but also an urgent technical difficulty needing to be solved in environmental management. The theory of property rights and externalities provides us with a new method to understand ecological compensation, which helps us to put forward a clear policy path to effectively solve the problem of ‘the tragedgy of the Commons’ in the ecological environment protection of river basins. Based on the externality problems of social and economic activities for a river basin, a standard calculation method under the combined scenario of ‘clear property rights, water quality and quantity, and opportunity cost’ was built in this paper. Taking the Minjiang River basin as an example, the definition of ecological property rights of the basin was divided into three scenarios: ‘upstream has pollution rights’, ‘upstream has no pollution rights’ and ‘upstream and downstream co-construction and sharing’. Ecological compensation standards of the Minjiang River basin under different property rights from 2015 to 2019 were calculated. The results showed that: (i) in the case where the upstream has pollution rights, the ecological compensation amount of Sanming City ranged from 2.41–9.36 × 108 Yuan, the final compensation value of Nanping City was 2.29–18.99 × 108 Yuan, and the ecological compensation cost of Fuzhou City was 6.78–28.35 × 108 Yuan; (ii) if the upstream area has no pollution rights, the compensation values of Sanming City and Nanping City to the downstream area were each 0; and (iii) under the case of upstream and downstream co-construction and sharing, the ecological compensation value of Sanming City was 6.25–21.34 × 108 Yuan, the final compensation value of Nanping City was 5.80–20.38 × 108 Yuan, and Fuzhou City needed to pay 12.05–36.38 × 108 Yuan for eco-compensation. The calculated results of ecological compensation standards in the Minjiang River basin indicated the amount of ecological compensation paid by the downstream to the upstream showing an upward trend on the whole. This method was relatively easy to define property rights and obtain data, taking into account the benefits of upstream and downstream, and the calculation process was relatively simple, which developed and supplemented the traditional ecological compensation method used for river basins.