Legal Economic Analysis of Wetland Protection Mechanism: Based on U.S. Experience

The origin and change path of the US wetland protection mechanism is from the interventionist mechanism that restricts overexploitation to the marketization mechanism that ensures sustained and efficient protection. This law is deeply influenced by political, economic, and legal factors. At present, in order to coordinate the relationship between wetland development and protection, the US has moved toward a comprehensive governance mechanism which is dominated by the market-oriented mechanism of Third-Party Compensation such as Mitigation Banking and In-lieu Fee, supplemented by the Permittee-Responsible Mitigation. The experience of US wetland protection shows that wetland resources have the attributes of public goods, which can easily cause external problems in the development process, leading to "system failure" which encompasses market failure, government failure and civil society failure. In order to adjust the relationship between government, market, and civil society, it is necessary to establish a wetland protection mechanism based on market-based operations and combining government, market, and environmental NGOs. China's wetland protection mechanism should also establish a market-oriented mechanism under the guidance of the government, and gradually establish a comprehensive wetland ecological compensation mechanism involving environmental NGOs.