Research achievements on watershed water ecological environment compensation in China and abroad are reviewed from three aspects, including compensation mechanism, control threshold, and standard and value. The watershed compensation issue needs to break through the limitations of single control factors related to water quantity or quality, balance both water pollution and water ecology, and establish a framework of watershed water ecological environment compensation mechanism under joint control of water quality and quantity thresholds. The compensation standards should be formulated based on attribute superposition and connotation extension of practical significance, economic value, and ecological benefits. It is proposed that future research should explore compensation thresholds for point and non-point source pollution-induced riverine environmental damage, ecological water quantity compensation thresholds considering ecosystem service functions of rivers, water quality and quantity interaction mechanism, and multi-model compensation strategies under dual control evolutionary games.