New Patterns of China’s Environmental Governance

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Scholars have noted that China’s environmental governance lacks regulatory clarity, strong enforcement, and robust civil society participation (Economy, Jahiel, Schwartz, Stern, Tilt, Van Rooij and Lo, C. Wang, Wilson). In recent years, various units in China’s government have undertaken a number of initiatives and experiments in new patterns of environmental governance in order to enhance citizen participation and improve regulatory enforcement. The reforms have been pushed forward by a number of recent legislative efforts at the national and local levels, including revision of the Environmental Protection Law (2014), the ministry of environmental protection’s “Provisional Measures for Public Participation in Environmental Protection – Comment Draft” (2015), and the “Supreme People’s Court’s Interpretation of Several Issues Related to the Use of Law in Trying Environmental Public Interest Lawsuits,” among others. China’s emerging model of environmental governance attempts to improve environmental protection by increasing penalties on polluters, clarifying responsibilities for government units involved in environmental governance, demanding greater transparency and information flows, and expanding opportunities for citizen participation. In addition to institutional reforms, citizen participation in the forms of protest and lawsuits are part of environmental governance. Each of the papers on this panel examines aspects of China’s emerging environmental governance from a grassroots perspective to analyze the implications for citizen participation and state management, or to probe the effectiveness of the reforms in improving environmental protection. The authors approach the important issue of China’s environmental governance from political, managerial, and legal perspectives, rendering a multifaceted view of China’s environmental governance and its implications.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Scott Wilson, University of the South

Chair

• Scott Wilson, University of the South

Individual Presentations

• Possibilities and Pitfalls of Low-Carbon City Development in China: Governing Local Policy Innovation - Kyoung Shin, Wuhan University

• Changes in External Support and Environmental Regulatory Enforcement: A Longitudinal Study in Guangzhou, China - Carlos Wing-Hung Lo, Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Nicole Ning Liu, City University of Hong Kong

• “Consuming” Environmentalism: Why and How was Environmentalism Selected as the Ideology of Environmental Protests in Urban China? - Ran Ran, Renmin University of China

• Environmental Participation in the Shadow of the Chinese State - Scott Wilson, University of the South

Discussants

• Benjamin Van Rooij, University of California, Irvine

• Alex Wang, University of California, Los Angeles