In the past, extensive economic development has caused serious ecological damage and environmental pollution, and the cost of protecting and restoring the ecological environment has become increasingly high.
During the two sessions of the National People's Congress, the meeting of the scientific and technological circles of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang and the environmental resources sector emphasized that "we will promote green and low-carbon economic and social development, strengthen resource conservation and intensive recycling, expand the path of realizing the value of ecological products, actively and steadily promote carbon peak and carbon neutrality, and inject new momentum and shape new advantages for high-quality development." ”
This year's government work report also proposes to improve the value realization mechanism of ecological products and improve the compensation system for ecological protection. In the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Comprehensively Promoting the Construction of a Beautiful China" issued in January this year, it is also clearly proposed to improve the value realization mechanism of ecological products.
As a new thing, the establishment and improvement of the value realization mechanism of ecological products is still in the initial stage of exploration, and it is facing many problems and challenges. So, how should we improve the mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products, how should we promote the establishment of a mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products, and what aspects still need to be further improved?Qiu Shuilin, assistant researcher at the Institute of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization at the Fujian Academy of Social Sciences。
Qiu Shuilin holds a Ph.D. in Regional Economics from China Agricultural University. Fujian Academy of Social SciencespracticeNear-flatAssistant Researcher, Institute of Ecological Civilization Thought, Fujian ProvincepracticeNear-flatLecturer of the New Thought Youth Propaganda Group of the Research Center for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era. He was selected as a high-level talent (Class C) in Fujian Province, mainly engaged in the research of ecological product value realization, ecological economic theory and policy, environmental governance, etc. He has presided over 3 provincial and ministerial projects, and published more than 40 articles in journals such as People's Daily, Guangming Daily, Economic Daily, Chinese Population, Resources and Environment, and China Land Science, including 12 articles in CSSCI source journals.
China Environment News: What is the realization of the value of ecological products, why should we emphasize the realization of the value of ecological products, and what is the role of the realization of the value of ecological products?
Mound Water Forest:Ecological products are generally known as ecosystem services, environmental services or eco-label products in the world, which is a concept that emerged after the outbreak of the global ecological crisis in the 70s of the 20th century. Ecological products in the narrow sense refer to the natural environmental elements and their ecosystem functions created by non-human beings, and ecological products in the broad sense also include the products or services produced by human beings using natural environmental elements.
After the industrial revolution, human beings are developing and destroying nature on an unprecedented scale, and some ecosystems are seriously degraded and even fall into a situation that is difficult to repair, and governments around the world have to invest a lot of manpower, financial and material resources to protect and restore ecosystems, and the production of ecological products is caused by the joint action of natural forces and manpower, even if there is no original natural ecosystem without any human activities, it is inseparable from the ecological protection labor of human beings who give up economic and social development. Therefore, whether from the Western utility theory of value or from the Marx labor theory of value, the ecological products of the current era are valuable.
At present, a broad consensus has been formed on the concept that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets, but due to the competitiveness and exclusivity of the vast majority of ecological products in consumption or use, it is difficult to fully manifest the value of ecological products in the market. In the past 20 years, China has mainly used ecological protection compensation as a policy tool to promote the internalization of positive (negative) externalities of ecological protection (damage) activities.
Although the scope of compensation covers major ecological elements such as forests, grasslands, river basins, oceans, deserts, wetlands, cultivated land and key ecological function areas, and the central government's financial investment has increased from more than 100 billion yuan in 2013 to more than 200 billion yuan in 2023, the degree of realization of the value of ecological products is low, and there are still problems such as the lack of compensation subjects, the unclear targeting of compensation subjects, the low compensation standards, the single compensation method, and weak supervision.
In fact, with the emergence of new technologies, the application of new knowledge, and the changes in the number and scope of consumers, the public attributes of ecological products will also change, making them infinitely close to commercial ecological products. In this context, it is urgent to use the government, market and other means to regulate the interest relationship between the protectors of "lucid waters and lush mountains" and the beneficiaries of "Jinshan Yinshan", so as to improve the level of value realization of ecological products.
The realization of the value of ecological products refers to the institutional arrangement of voluntary transactions between users and providers of ecological products with the goal of generating the desired ecological products, with natural resource management agreements as the conditions, and by means of market-oriented or non-market-oriented methods. From the perspective of the relationship between people, the contradiction between the private marginal benefits and the social marginal benefits of ecological products is very prominent due to the externality, publicity, and spatial differences of ecological products.
From the perspective of the relationship between man and nature, a high-quality ecological environment contains infinite economic value, and promoting the realization of the value of ecological products is to inject strong green kinetic energy into high-quality development and realize the coordination of economic and social development with population, resources and environment.
China Environment News: The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to "establish a mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products", and this year's government work report requires "improving the mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products". What are the deep meanings behind the change from "establishment" to "perfection"?
Mound water forestThe realization of the value of ecological products is a major change in the concept of China's ecological civilization construction, and China has experienced many years of exploration in promoting the establishment of a value realization mechanism for ecological products. In April 2016, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Improving the Compensation Mechanism for Ecological Protection", which put forward the concept of "ecological product market trading" in a forward-looking manner.
In August 2016, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the Implementation Plan for the National Ecological Civilization Pilot Zone (Fujian), which put forward the concept of "ecological product value realization" for the first time. In October 2017, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Several Opinions on Improving the Strategy and System of Main Functional Zones", which clearly included the four provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guizhou and Qinghai in the pilot of the national ecological product value realization mechanism. Subsequently, the relevant policies and regulations formulated for the ecological protection of the Yangtze River Basin and the Yellow River Basin have also repeatedly proposed to explore the path of realizing the value of ecological products.
In April 2021, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Establishing and Improving the Value Realization Mechanism of Ecological Products" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), which clarified the timetable and roadmap for the realization of the value of ecological products from the top-level design, and explained that the various conditions for the establishment of the value realization mechanism of ecological products are in place, and the time is basically ripe. Therefore, on the basis of the previous work, the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to "establish a mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products".
After the exploration and practice of efforts in recent years, China's ecological product investigation and monitoring system has been basically established, a relatively scientific ecological product value accounting system has been initially established, the operation and development of ecological products have been continuously innovated, the ecological product protection and compensation policy system has been increasingly improved, and the problems of "difficult quantity, difficult mortgage, difficult transaction and difficult realization" of ecological products have been well solved.
On the whole, at this stage, China has initially established a value realization mechanism for ecological products in line with national conditions, but there is still a gap compared with the goal of "the initial formation of an institutional framework for the realization of the value of ecological products in 2025 and the comprehensive establishment of a perfect ecological product value realization mechanism in 2035" proposed in the Opinions. In this context, this year's government work report requires "improving the value realization mechanism of ecological products", aiming to further break the deep-seated bottlenecks and constraints that affect the value transformation of ecological products under the current institutional framework and system, and accelerate the construction of the value realization mechanism of ecological products on the basis of the existing work results.
China Environment News: How to establish a mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products, and how to improve the mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products?
Mound Water Forest:The value realization mechanism of ecological products mainly includes the investigation and monitoring mechanism of ecological products, the evaluation mechanism of ecological products, the operation and development mechanism of ecological products, the protection and compensation mechanism of ecological products, the guarantee mechanism of ecological product value realization and the promotion mechanism of ecological product value realization. Among them, the ecological product investigation and monitoring mechanism and value evaluation mechanism are the basic support for the realization of the value of ecological products, the ecological product management and development mechanism and the protection and compensation mechanism are the strategic paths, and the ecological product guarantee mechanism and promotion mechanism are the fundamental guarantees. The establishment of a mechanism for realizing the value of ecological products is a systematic project that must be implemented in depthpracticeNear-flatIn accordance with the working principles of "protection first, rational utilization, government-led, market-operated, systematic planning, steady progress, support innovation, and encourage exploration", we focus on the task requirements of the "six mechanisms", and strive to build a policy and institutional system for transforming lucid waters and lush mountains into invaluable assets.
To promote the improvement of the value realization mechanism of ecological products, it is necessary to implement policies by category, adapt measures to local conditions, and promote various tasks in an orderly and gradual manner.
First, it is necessary to build a comprehensive three-dimensional information registration platform for the library, operation and management of natural resource ownership confirmation registration data, so as to realize the standardization, standardization and informatization of the unified registration of natural resource assets.
Second, it is necessary to take the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Bureau of Statistics jointly published the "Accounting Specifications for the Total Value of Ecological Products (Trial)" as a guide, refine and improve the ecological product value accounting index system, specific algorithms, data sources and statistical caliber of administrative regional units and specific regional units at all levels, and promote the application of ecological product value accounting results in the fields of ecological protection compensation, ecological resource rights and interests trading, and performance appraisal and evaluation.
Third, it is necessary to deepen the reform of the compensation system for ecological protection and ecological environmental damage, and accelerate the construction of an ecological economic system with industrial ecology and ecological industrialization as the main body.
Fourth, it is necessary to study and formulate guiding opinions on the establishment and improvement of the value realization mechanism of ecological products in key areas and key regions, and at the same time stipulate the content of realizing the value of ecological products in special chapters in the "Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China" and other laws and regulations.
China Environment News: How to expand the path of realizing the value of ecological products?
Mound Water Forest:Among them, expanding the path of realizing the value of ecological products is both the key and the difficult.
First, it is necessary to actively explore job compensation, technical compensation, industrial compensation and other ways in the vertical ecological protection compensation, and explore counterpart cooperation, industrial transfer, talent training, joint construction of parks, purchase of ecological products and services and other compensation methods between the supply and beneficiary areas of ecological products.
Second, it is necessary to encourage the government to control or set quotas, and promote the trading of ecological resources rights and interests such as water rights, sewage rights, and carbon emission rights, as well as the trading of indicators such as greening increment responsibility indicators, clean water increment responsibility indicators, and forest coverage rate.
Third, it is necessary to promote the pilot of eco-environment-oriented development model projects, actively create an eco-tourism development model that integrates tourism and health care and leisure, and moderately develop environment-sensitive industries such as digital economy, clean medicine, and electronic components.