通过回顾发达国家(如美国、欧洲国家)和发展中国家(如中国、拉丁美洲国家)在实施生态补偿过程中采取的各种措施,发现其中存在的一些问题。在此基础上,总结了生态补偿的运行机制,提出完善生态补偿机制的措施,即:界定受偿方和支付方,明确各自的权利与义务;以机会成本为理论依据,将受偿地区生态保护与经济社会发展综合考虑,设定具有差异性的补偿标准,并将补偿分为基本补偿、产业结构调整补偿以及生态效益外溢补偿3个阶段;综合受益程度、支付能力和支付意愿确定支付方的支付标准;建立融资渠道,有效配置资金;建立生态补偿组织管理体系。生态补偿机制应以“造血式”补偿为目标,在研究中需加强生态学与经济学理论与方法的交叉。

Ecological conservation or protection is a kind of socioeconomic activity with positive externality.To internalize the externality,the concept of Ecological Compensation (EC) is put forward.It adopts economic and market-based instruments to encourage people participate in ecological conservation.Participant Gets Principle (PGP) and Beneficiary Pays Principle (BPP) are the two basic principles of it.EC has been widely applied to afforestation,watershed management,agro-environmental protection,biodiversity conservation,carbon sequestration,and so on.While its theories and practices are still in infancy,the compensation system is imperfect with respect to who should be compensated,who should pay,how much to be compensated,and how to finance and allocate compensation payments.By reviewing EC approaches and some efforts that have been made in developed countries (e.g. America and some European countries) and developing countries (e.g. China and Latin American countries),we find out there was very little use of the BPP,ecology and economics have not been well integrated into EC studies,most programs just focus on payments,ignoring the influence of socioeconomic factors on ecological conservation,and so on.After the review and comments,we summarize a functioning mechanism of ecological compensation,which can guide us to improve ecological compensation system.The improvement methods concern:(a)identifying providers and beneficiaries of ecosystem services; (b)on the basis of opportunity cost approach,integrating ecological conservation with regional socioeconomic development,settling proper compensation standards to services providers;(c)calculating payment levels from the side of beneficiaries by integrating the quantity of services they receive,their willingness to pay and their bearing capacity;(d)seeking financing sources and allocating payments cost-effectively;and(e)building up the framework of EC.We consider an effective EC system should take “hematogenesis” rather than “blood transfusion” as its object,and EC research should integrate ecological theories and methods with those of economics.