Local climate governance and policy innovation in China: a case study of a piloting emission trading scheme in Guangdong province

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates how piloting programmes in China can promote local policy innovations. By using one of the piloting emission trading schemes (ETS) in Guangdong province as a case study, it is argued that the main features of the piloting experiments, particularly in the climate change domain, are largely different from previous local marketization experiments that dominate the reform period of China. Whereas previous experiments are often characterized as bottom-up or indigenous initiatives with strong patronage relations to the pro-reform politicians at central level, the current piloting programmes are often crafted in a top-down fashion that is often misaligned with local market or corporate interests. Hence, local policy innovations are designed, developed and brokered by the local state officers, in order to bridge this central–local interest gap. As a result, successful implementation of these policy innovations largely depends on local political traditions, bureaucratic culture and perceptions of distinctive development needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy Experiments
• Policy Innovation
• Emission Trading
• Carbon Markets
• Climate Governance
• Climate Policy
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Bo Chen is associate professor of Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) and Director of Green Fintech Lab. He holds a PhD in Economics at Renmin University of China and two master degrees in Carbon Finance at University of Edinburgh and Control Engineering at Zhejiang University. He has abundant experiences in both academy and industry. He is leading the Green Fintech Lab to develop a series of standards and tools for green finance.

Dr. Wei Shen is a political economist who worked for development finance agencies in China for over ten years. His research interests include: the political economy of China’s low-carbon transformation and climate change policies; China’s role in global climate finance and climate governance; and South-South cooperation on climate change issues. He is particularly interested in the role of business and private actors in the process of low-carbon transformation in the rising powers such as China and India.

Peter Newell is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. His research focusses on the global political economy of climate change and energy, including work on energy transitions. He has previously worked at the Universities of Oxford, Warwick and East Anglia and with FLACSO Argentina. His books include Climate for Change, Governing Climate Change, Climate Capitalism, Transnational Climate Change Governance and Globalization and the Environment.

Professor Yao Wang is the Director General of International Institute of Green Finance (IIGF), and the Deputy Secretary General of Green Finance Committee (GFC) of China Society for Finance and Banking. She is the Fellow of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and Advisory of the Sustainable Finance Programme at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University. In 2010–2011, she was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. Professor Wang is interested in Low Carbon Economy, Climate Finance and Green Finance, and published several publications and working papers on climate finance and green finance.

ORCID

Peter Newell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5371-7668

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ESRC STEPS Centre [grant number ES/I021620/1].