Title: Regional water pollution management pathways and effects under strengthened policy constraints: the case of Tianjin, China
Abstract: Abstract In recent years, China's government has attached great importance to pollution management. In 2015, the State Council issued the “Action Plan for Water Pollution Prevention and Control”, proposing the water quality targets of 2020, and deploying 10 important tasks for water pollution reductions. As a result, provinces and cities have conducted water pollution management in order to achieve the expected goals. Although the performance of regional water pollution management directly affects the implementation of national plan, a systematic evaluation of the performance of regional water pollution management has not yet been conducted after ambitious goals were set and strengthened policy constraints were conducted. This paper constructs an evaluation index system based on DPSIR model, and evaluate the performance of Water Pollution Management (WPM) in Tianjin from five aspects as Driver, Pressure, State, Impact and Response (DPSIR). The results show that the performance of WPM in Tianjin has been commendable, resulting in an improvement from 76.15 points out of 100 in 2014 to 90.93 points out of 100 in 2018, with the score rising more rapidly from 2016 to 2018 after the regional policy was implemented. Furthermore, the management system, paths and deficiencies of WPM are analyzed. Under the constraints of River Chief System, pollutant discharge permit and discharge standards, ecological compensation agreements on water pollution and other policies in Tianjin, the effect of pollution source control is obvious, with the water quality obviously improved, and the public satisfaction levels are high.