Old problems and new dilemmas: the conundrum of environmental management reform in China

ABSTRACT

Underpinning China’s severe and continuing environmental degradation is a stubborn gap between environmental regulation and regulatory enforcement at the local level. In the past, scholars have sought explanations for the causes of this implementation gap by interviewing frontline environmental officials. Due to the fact that the self-perception data used in most of those existing studies were gathered prior to 2012, the possible factors contributing to the compromised effectiveness of local environmental enforcement from 2012 onward remain largely unknown. This empirical weakness should not be overlooked, as the prevailing institutions governing China’s local environmental management practices have been experiencing many frame-breaking transformations since 2012. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with leaders of environmental law enforcement teams in all administrative districts of Guangzhou in 2017, this paper not only summarizes pervasive elements which negatively impact the current effectiveness of environmental regulatory efforts, but also provides qualitative evidence and theoretical accounts for three enforcement dilemmas stemming from reform measures taken by the central government.

KEYWORDS:

• Local environmental enforcement
• regulatory challenges
• China’s environmental management reforms
• institutional dilemmas
• work motivation
• performance legitimacy

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Bo Wen is an assistant professor (tenure-track) in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong. His primary areas of study are public management, organization theory and behavior, institutional analysis, policy implementation, regulatory governance, and Chinese politics.

ORCID

Bo Wen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2287-473X

Notes

1 The full name is the environmental law enforcement team (Huanjing Zhifa Dadui). These law enforcement teams used to be independent law enforcement bodies, but were merged into and became internal divisions of their respective district-level EPBs in 2012.

2 See supplementary note 1 (N1) to further understand the reality and consequences of understaffing.

3 While a separation between investigation and enforcement powers is common practice in law enforcement agencies in Western countries, it was not widely utilized in China’s local environmental protection bureaus until 2016.

4 See supplementary note 2 (N2) that justifies the applicability of the principal-agent model to China’s environmental management.

5 Piloted in a number of selected cities over the past three years in accordance with the government initiative, titled Guiding Opinions on the Pilot Reform of Vertical Management System for Environmental Protection Departments below the Provincial Level Concerning Environmental Monitoring, Supervision and Law Enforcement, co-endorsed by the General Offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council in 2016, vertical integration is slated to be adopted nationwide this year (2019).

6 According to Wong and Karplus (2017), in quest of effective approaches to combating air pollution, ‘Beijing may be less efficient in deploying funds where they are needed, relative to governments at the provincial and lower levels’ (p. 681).

7 See supplementary note 3 (N3) to further comprehend the necessity of collaboration between local EPBs and territorial government agencies.

8 See supplementary note 4 (N4) to fully grasp the gist of China’s lack of readiness for vertical integration in its environmental governance system.

9 As similarly observed by Ran (2017), ‘when environmental policies fail, local governments and officials are blamed for local protectionism and unfaithful implementation’ (p. 16) so that the positive image of the central government’s strong environmental commitment can stay untainted.

10 Study limitations and future directions are detailed in supplementary note 5 (N5).

11 These challenges are considered ‘household’ primarily because they have been repeatedly mentioned in the existing literature. What makes my findings interesting is not how novel those issues are, but why they have been left unaddressed for so long in the face of the central government’s growing commitment to environmental protection.

12 Scholars led by Van Rooij et al. (2017) pessimistically contend that these problems will always be around unless ‘the fundamental conflict of interest between pollution control and economic growth’ (p. 18) can be overcome.

13 See supplementary note 6 (N6) that ponders on the seriousness of the identified dilemmas in the face of considerable improvements in environmental performance.

14 The importance of developing fault-tolerant mechanisms is further elucidated in supplementary note 7 (N7).