Water Environment Management and Performance Evaluation in Central China: A Research Based on Comprehensive Evaluation System

Abstract

As a developing country with insufficient water resources, China’s water environment management and performance evaluation have important research value. The three provinces (Henan, Hubei, and Hunan) in central China with typical significance in geographical location and water resources governance were selected as research objects in this paper. Based on the principal component analysis (PCA) method and the pressure-state-response (PSR) model, a comprehensive evaluation system for the water environment in those three provinces during 2011–2017 was established in this paper. The evaluation results show that: (1) The water environment management and performance evaluation of the three provinces in central China were generally poor in 2011–2012, but the overall trend was rising; (2) in 2013–2014, the situation was improved compared to the previous two years, but needed further enhancement; (3) in 2015–2017, the water environment management and performance of the three provinces showed significant improvement. Among them, the Hubei Province had the highest water environment evaluation value (1.692), and the Henan Province had the most significant progress (from 0.043 to 1.671). The contributions of this paper are: (1) The comprehensive evaluation model based on PCA and the PSR model was constructed to analyze the sustainable development of water environment in central China; (2) the performance evaluation system for water environment management, which could comprehensively evaluate the performance of water environment treatment and effectively reveal the correlation between various indicators, was established. The principal factors in water environment management can be obtained by this evaluation system. Based on the analysis of the reasons underlying the above changes, the corresponding policy recommendations for improving water environment management and performance in central China were suggested in order to provide a reference for further improvement of water environment management in developing countries.

Research on Air Pollution Control in China: From the Perspective of Quadrilateral Evolutionary Games

“…Therefore, the public's behavior strategies include blowing the whistle (let the probability be θ) and not blowing the whistle (let the probability be (1 − θ)). As for the local government, regarding the excessive emissions of polluting enterprises within its jurisdiction, it may choose to regulate for the benefit of public interests; it may also choose not to regulate due to concerns that the local economy might suffer from strict environmental regulations [46,47]. When the public chooses to blow the whistle and the local government chooses to regulate, the whistleblower will receive an extra compensation from the polluting enterprise for negative externalities (let it be R 4 ).…”

Evaluation of Sustainable Urban Development under Environmental Constraints: A Case Study of Jiangsu Province, China

“…Sustainable urban development refers to the long-term, stable and sustained economic growth and structural optimization of the city within a certain time and space, thus realizing urbanization and urban modernization. While meeting the needs of the current urban population for survival and development, we must also consider the needs of future urban population survival and development, maintain the corresponding potential reserves, and enable the city to maintain a balanced development [1][2][3][4]. Sustainable urban development includes sustainable development of population, economy, resources, environment, and society.…”

“…The above literature still has the following shortcomings in the study of sustainable urban development efficiency: (1) The indicators for assessing the sustainable development of the urban economy are relatively simple, and should take into account indicators such as population, economy, resources, environment, and society; (2) Most of the undesirable outputs are limited to the emission of exhaust gas, ignoring the harm of other wastes to urban development; (3) In order to solve the infeasibility problem of the M-L index in calculating the directional distance of the cross-period, the modified M-L index method should be used for the calculation. Based on the existing research theories and methods of urban economic sustainable development, this paper takes 13 prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu Province as an example.…”

Evaluation of the Level of Sustainable Development of Provinces in China from 2012 to 2018: A Study Based on the Improved Entropy Coefficient-TOPSIS Method

“…The past economic growth of China was supported by its resources, environment, and society, but made limited contribution to the resources, environment, and society. Therefore, the harmony of sustainable development is in question [25,26]; (4) Sustainability. Sustainability means that one country can overcome various obstacles in its development process and maintain its ability to continuously develop and progress [27,28].…”