Public Involvement in Watershed Management

Protecting drinking water suppliers at their source has attracted more attention than before (Porter & Smith, 2015). In the 21^st century, great emphasis in the watershed management “is being given to decentralized and participatory approaches to land use planning and management” which is “sensitive to the interests of a wide range of stakeholders” (Eckman et al., 2000, p.37).

Heathcote (1998) claims that an important part of water management is to understand attitudes, needs and wants of different water users and stakeholders, and he further lists those users and stakeholders as government agencies, industrial users, residential users, public interest groups, etc. There are competing and conflicting interests and demands among these groups regarding the water rights and access to water (ibid.). Webler & Tuler (2001) define public participation or involvement as “a variety of procedures for enabling diverse members of the public to be active participants in deliberations about preferred policy options, and in some cases decision-making” (pp.29-30).

In water policy and management in China, different government agencies at all levels of governments are involved with responsibility split among completing and conflicting institutions (Gleick et al., 2009).

Liu et al. (2010) suggest that watershed management in China often gives priority to technological factors and not enough consideration is given to social factors. The Water Law in China provides institutional guarantee for public participation in watershed management from two aspects: (i) public access to information on water environment in China and (ii) reporting offences and bringing lawsuits (ibid.).