Implementation and Participation in China's Local Environmental Politics: Challenges and Innovations

Abstract

With its recently published 12th Five-Year Plan (FYP, 2011–2015) China's leaders have set ambitious national environmental targets and goals for developing a more sustainable economy and society. Past records, however, show that ambitious goals and regulations too often fail due to shortcomings in local implementation and civil society participation. At the sub-national level, economic, political, and social interests continue to dictate the political agenda and the participation of non-state actors remains limited. This article analyses these implementation and participation gaps and reviews recent innovations and experiments to address these gaps in local environmental politics in China. Although many ongoing experiments and new institutional arrangements can be identified, these projects and initiatives remain limited in scope and geographical spread. Further advances in policy enforcement and in opening up policy design to citizens and other non-state actors at the local level are needed in order to turn the article ambitions of the 12th FYP into reality.

Keywords:

• Environmental politics
• Chinese politics
• environmental governance
• innovation
• policy implementation
• participation

Notes

In August 2010, the NDRC selected eight cities (Baoding, Chongqing, Guiyang, Hangzhou, Nanchang, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Xiamen) and five provinces (Guangdong, Hubei, Liaoning, Shaanxi, and Yunnan) as low-carbon pilot provinces and cities. Each of the selected pilot regions will develop comprehensive and locally tailored plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Martens (2006) shows that there are also opportunities for Chinese citizen-consumers to participate in environmental management beyond the political domain (e.g. in nature protection, in sustainable household practices, in constructing green company images). However, these participatory methods go beyond the scope of this article.

These cash-reward informant programmes provide a financial reward to citizens that report environmental violations. It was first experimented in Fuyang in 2003, and later adopted by many other cities and provinces, with variation in success rate (Zhang, 2011).