Research on China’s green watershed policy and institutional management system

Against the background of intensifying global climate change, ecological degradation of watersheds, and economic development, the construction of a scientific and efficient green watershed policy management system has become an important issue in China’s ecological protection and sustainable development. In this study, the construction of a scientific and efficient green watershed policy management system has become an important issue in China's ecological protection and sustainable development. In this study, 485 policy documents related to green watersheds issued at the national level during the period from 1997 to 2024 are systematically reviewed to analyze the characteristics and evolutionary patterns of these policy regimes with the four important objectives of ‘pollution reduction, carbon reduction, greening and growth’. The analysis of the change in the number of documents shows that the total number of policy documents and the number of documents corresponding to the four objectives show a phased growth trend, with an explosive increase in 2018 and 2021, and then entering a plateau period, indicating that the green watershed policy system is gradually becoming more and more perfect. The analysis of sectoral synergy shows that the number of joint documents issued by policy sectors shows a steady growth with each year, while the synergy of policy sectors fluctuates, with the sectoral synergy index reaching as high as 11 in 2006, and the policy sectoral synergy index rising significantly after 2014, basically remaining above 2. This suggests that China is gradually focusing on solving environmental pollution problems by integrating the collaboration of various sectors. The analysis of the change in policy focus shows that China's green watershed policy shows a shift from end-of-pipe management and energy saving and emission reduction to systematic restoration and economic structure transformation, and gradually focuses on carbon reduction, pollution reduction, green growth synergy, and digital economic empowerment. Integration analysis of the policy system reveals that there are problems such as the need for coordination in goal setting, difficulties in collaboration between policy departments, and insufficient social attention. Based on this, this study proposes to build an integration mechanism, improve the cross-sectoral synergy mechanism, and deepen the digital empowerment and other policy recommendations to support the construction of a refined and modernized green watershed policy management system.