Transjurisdictional Water Pollution Management: The Huai River Example

Abstract Transjurisdictional water pollution has been a major problem for Chinese authorities due to legal, institutional, and procedural frameworks that are inadequate to deal with integrated water resources management or for resolving local and inter-provincial disputes. The pollution crisis in 1994 in the Huai River was of such severity that the State Council directly intervened and promulgated new legal and institutional approaches to deal with this transjurisdictional crisis. This included a new regulation with new procedures, new institutional arrangements, and specific measures to deal with polluters. The Huai River example provides a background for how transjurisdictional pollution might be managed elsewhere in China and on the continuing problems in Chinese transjurisdictional pollution management. The example of the Huai River basin demonstrates typical problems of environmental governance in China and illustrates the directions that the Chinese Government is taking to resolve these.