In the latter half of 20th century, human developed their ability of reconstructing physical world dramatically. Inevitably, the corresponding phenomenon of resources degradation, environmental deterioration and human health damage became more and more grievous decades by decades. Ecological compensation theory grown in the soil of sustainable development and became the common understanding of international circles. In the circumstance of constructing the resource-effective and environment-friendly society in recent years, the conception of ecological compensation had come into common use in the Chinese public policies, which also was the focus of international academia.
The article summarized the developing process and general situation of the study on ecological compensation. Furthermore, the authors analyzed and evaluated the advances in ecological compensation, including conception, theory origin, criterion, mode and effect of native and international.
In conclusion, the authors pointed out that domestic researches were localized on the aspects of the theoretic discuss, compensation monetary standard and policy mode plan. Four deficiencies of domestic researches should be improved: (1) the synthetical study of multi-regional and multi-department compensation; (2) the study on spatio-temporal distribution and grade partition; (3) feasibility and effect evaluation and (4) efficiency and detailed implement plan analysis.
Subsequently, the authors gave out several prospects for further study, those were: (1) GIS spatio-temporal scheme model of ecological compensation; (2) the risk compensation and diverse compensation; (3) quantitative societal-economic effect and eco-environmental impact assessment study; (4) compensation inclination analysis; (5) compensation of multi-regional carbon emission and so on.
At length, the authors pointed out the eco-compensation mechanism was the requirement for eco-friendly society establishment and inter-regional co-prosperity in China, and analyzed the necessity and basic content for the study of regional eco-compensation theory and methodology in accordance with national ecological situation in China.