Good Governance for Environmental Protection in China: Instrumentation, Strategic Interactions and Unintended Consequences

Abstract

During the past decade, China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection has pursued a strategy of “extending governance” to the public by creating formal public participation channels and promoting environmental transparency. Rather than representing a normative end in their own right, these features of “good governance” are being used instrumentally by the political executive to enlist public support in enforcing environmental regulations, and to depoliticise dissent by channelling it through legal mechanisms. This paper examines how environmental non-governmental organisations and “not-in-my-backyard” movements strategically interact with the Ministry of Environmental Protection and its good governance rhetoric to promote their own objectives. At the same time, it argues that unintended consequences have emerged as Chinese citizens increasingly assert their participatory and transparency “rights.” By appropriating instrumental good governance policies to their own advantage, citizens define concepts such as participation and transparency on their own terms.

Key Words:

• Good governance
• transparency
• participation
• environmental
• civil society
• China

Acknowledgement

I would like the thank Linda Li and the anonymous reviewers for their comments. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own.

Notes

¹ SEPA was replaced by the higher-ranking MEP in 2008.

² Constructors who fail to carry out an EIA are allowed to do a “make-up” EIA after construction is underway. This is seen as a major weakness in the EIA process, as it effectively undermines the whole logic behind the EIA process.

³ The Temporary Measures on Public Participation in EIA were not formally promulgated until 2006.

⁴ The Nu River hydropower project was temporarily suspended in 2003 by Premier Wen Jiabao.

⁵ In contrast, the Liulitun EIA had been approved by the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau.