Future Adjustment and Implementation Approaches for the Comprehensive Management of River Basins 

Abstract:

In recent years, the watershed management in Taiwan has gradually transformed from the traditional thinking into the new governance thinking. It is believed that the rapid urban development leads to the increase of runoff, which cannot be tolerated by the existing flood control facilities and needs to be extended from the governance of the line to the surface. However, the comprehensive watershed management not only involves water, soil, forest and other aspects of governance, but also includes the funding and budget. How to effectively manage water resource distribution, river pollution control, flood control, environmental landscape construction and other related watershed management work is the research objective of this project. Therefore, this project explores the current watershed governance issues, finding the ways to the future adjustment and promotion of integrated river basin management. 

There are two major research findings: 

1. To elucidate the current watershed governance problems The main problem of watershed management is the lack of overall objectives and plans. The current tasks on watershed management lack of integration and sources of law basis. Moerover, due to insufficient financial resources, the budget of watershed management dependents on a special budget. 

2. To propose adjustment and promotion methods for the future watershed governance Foreign references, such as Japan, the United States, Germany and China, all have a top-down close system to take responsibility for watershed management. 

Conversely, Taiwan lacks a complete system which can integrate watershed management. Therefore, through interviews and symposiums, this project proposes the following plans for future adjustments and promotions of the integration of watershed management: 

(1) Institutional adjustment: It is suggested that the policy framework of integrated watershed management should be developed by the Executive Yuan and be coordinated with the national land plan in order to solve the institutional problems and the long-term land management issues. 

(2) Implementation method: Driven by three-level watershed management organizations, and setting up a project office in the Executive Yuan, comprehensive watershed management can have a complete and close planning. It can solve the problem of river basin management rudderless as well. 

(3) Funding review mechanism: This project proposed that there should be a two-stage funding review mechanism. The National Development Council is responsible for checking the financial plan. The Executive Yuan is responsible for reviewing submitted plans and strengthens the integrity of the content of the plan to avoid overlapping resources.