Just sustainability, actor-networks and environmental politics in China: local controversies over shared environmental infrastructure in industrial districts

ABSTRACT

A primary method of mitigating environmental problems in industrial districts, or so-called industrial clusters, in emerging economies is through shared environmental infrastructure. Yet the social justice and equity aspects of these projects claiming to be green and sustainable have rarely been investigated and interrogated, especially in authoritarian systems. Drawing on actor-network theory and environmental politics, this article examines how unjust sustainability may occur in collective environmental solutions such as shared environmental infrastructure in China. Through a case study of a furniture-coating centre to be built in a well known furniture manufacturing cluster in the Shunde District of Guangdong Province, this article investigates how the resulting local controversy unfolded and how the power dynamics between the local state and the protesting communities played out. The result shows that power asymmetry in collective environment actions may result in injustice and inequity concerns that trigger local controversies. Controversies, in turn, offer an opportunity for the power struggle between enrolment and counter-enrolment, which may challenge unequal power relations. The behaviours and tactics deployed by different actor groups in local controversies depend to a certain extent on the constraints and opportunities present within China’s multi-scalar environmental governance.

KEYWORDS:

• Actor-networks
• environmental infrastructure
• environmental management
• environmental politics
• just sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Sovereign power means power exercised in coercive, commanding, administrative or juridical forms (Wang, Qian, and He 2022).

2 A definition of “eco-civilization” presented on the United Nations Environment Program website is “an ethical morality and ideology which realizes harmonious co-existence and sustainable development both among people and between them and nature and society, reflecting the progress of civilization”.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Sustainability of Major RGC Funding Schemes 2018–19 [grant number: 3133239].