Pollution in Taihu Lake China: causal chain and policy options analyses

Abstract

Taihu Lake is located at the densely populated region of the eastern coast of China. Taihu Basin is one of the most developed regions of China. Over the past decades, especially since the reforming and opening-up of China in 1980s, the lake has received more and more pressure from a variety of interlinked human activities, including industrial pollution, fertilizer and pesticide application, eutrophication, overfishing, etc. Water quality has been deteriorating sharply in the lake. In this paper, we made a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and socio-economic issues to affect Taihu Lake ecosystem health. Pollution was identified as the most serious environmental concern. The root causes of these environmental problems are recognized to be diverse, including dense population, high urbanization, heavy industrialization, fast economic development, insufficient sewage treatment, weak public awareness of environment conservation, and lack of institutional capacity and insufficient enforcement through regulations and legislation. On the policy part, past and current policies and measures are reviewed, especially the “Zero” discharge action and phosphate ban in detergents in Taihu Basin. In order to mitigate environmental problems, some further policy options have been proposed, including: improving the fishery management; strengthening cross- provincial collaboration; making efforts to reduce flood disaster and increasing investment to new environmental protection technologies. It is important to assess the economic, social and environmental values of natural resources (soil, water and organisms) in order to allocate them efficiently and fairly between the present and future generations.