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Turnover of environmental protection officials and transboundary water pollution

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Abstract

Considering the situation of the frequent turnover of Chinese environmental protection officials (EPOT), this paper analyzes its impact on transboundary water pollution. The results show that EPOT can reduce transboundary pollution. EPOT can reduce the concentration of DO by 0.261 and NH3-N by 0.167 in the downstream river. And the impact shows a first strong and then weak change over time. EPOT can restrain transboundary pollution by reducing the production of polluting enterprises and promoting public pollution reporting, and it aggravates transboundary pollution by reducing environmental law enforcement and collaborative governance. In addition, the impact of EPOT on transboundary pollution has a distance effect. Within the regulatory distance of 50 km, EPOT has strong inhibition on transboundary pollution. When the governor and the environmental protection official (EPO) change tenure at the same time, the inhibition of transboundary pollution is the strongest. In addition, EPOs from the central government and with working experience in environmental protection departments can control transboundary pollution better.

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Data Availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. The water quality is divided into grades I, II, III, IV, and V and inferior V. Among them, grades IV and V and inferior V represent light pollution, moderate pollution, and severe pollution, respectively

  2. The specific information of 44 sites can be seen in Table 9 in Appendix

  3. PH is an indicator of water acidity and alkalinity. When PH is 7, it is neutral, less than 7 is acidic, and greater than 7 is alkaline. The closer to neutral pH, the better water quality

    DO stands for the molecular oxygen dissolved in water. The higher the value, the better the water quality. The higher the COD value, the more serious the water pollution

    NH3-N represents the ammonia nitrogen content of water quality, because ammonia nitrogen is the direct factor of eutrophication of rivers and lakes in China. The larger the value is, the more serious the pollution is.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University, Changsha, China

    Juan Lu

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  1. Juan Lu
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Juan Lu: Conceptualization, methodology, software, writing (original draft preparation), data curation, visualization, investigation, software and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Juan Lu.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 9 Information of provincial boundary monitoring stations
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Lu, J. Turnover of environmental protection officials and transboundary water pollution. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 10207–10223 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11530-4

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