Environmental governance

Key references

Abstract: Rapid urban development in China provides rich cases for urban research. Current urban studies in China are heavily influenced by an urban imagination embedded in the West. Using the cases of land management and environmental governance, social transformation and the spatial and regional dimensions of urbanisation, this article attempts to rethink some surprising findings from empirical research in Chinese cities and to contribute to theoretical understandings of urbanisation beyond contextual particularities. Following the narrative of ‘planning centrality, market instruments’ in China, this article highlights the political logic behind managing growth and environmental governance, social differentiation produced by interwoven state and market forces and new geographies of Chinese cities beyond the economic-centred imagination.

Abstract: This paper uses the perspective of state entrepreneurialism to explore China’s environmental governance. The perspective illustrates how the Chinese state maintains its centrality, combining environmentalism and developmentalism while deploying flexible market development tools. This paper examines the Chengdu park-city model, an exemplar President Xi Jinping endorsed and widely emulated in China. The model combines the development of industrial and ecological spaces. It aims to deliver the central government’s vision for ecological civilisation and the local government’s economic development strategy. The development tools include land consolidation, financial mobilisation and an economic strategy that attempts to introduce ‘urban scenes’ into ecological spaces. This ecologically oriented development approach is more state-centred, contrasting with the neoliberal green growth machine.

  • Fangzhu Zhang, Fulong Wu, and Yining Liu. 2023. China’s urban environmental governance. In F. Zhang and F. Wu (eds.) Handbook on China’s Urban Environmental Governance (pp. 1-24). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Abstract: This introductory chapter explains China’s recent turn to strengthened environmentalism and discusses the features of environmental governance. The chapter introduces the framework of this handbook, stressing the need to interrogate environmental governance at the urban level. Beyond environmental policies, the handbook examines environmental practices from the perspective of the interactions between the state, market and society across multiple scales. The core concern of this handbook is how to characterise China’s environmental governance: whether the governance aims to promote economic growth through environmental regulation or is invoked to implement ‘ecological civilisation’. We reveal the purposeful ecologic fix under ‘state entrepreneurialism’, in which the state vision of ‘ecological civilisation’ occupies the centrality. At the same time, market instruments are mobilised, and the society actors are primarily reactive in environmental contestation or campaigns. Examining state-centred governmentality across a series of environmental practices such as eco-city planning, waste management and low-carbon energy transition, we highlight the need for collaborative environmental governance and greater attention to social justice.

Abstract: China’s eco-cities are often regarded as branding tactics of the entrepreneurial local state for economic growth and land revenue generation. However, it is not clear whether the ecological goal has been pursued at all. This paper fills this lacuna using a case study of Taihu New Town. Through an ecological fix perspective we suggest that ecological enhancement through the production of nature is attempted in conjunction with the production of the built environment. The ecological fix is not confined to an economic agenda. Under state entrepreneurialism, the central state maintains environmental governance in the name of ‘ecological civilisation’, while the local state performs the ecological fix. In Wuxi, the fixes include the removal of low-efficiency, polluting town and village enterprises (TVEs); creation of green space and infrastructure; the development of renewable energy; and low-carbon transition.

The wetland park and greenways along Taihu Lake. From the paper above.

Abstract: This paper examines the recent green turn in China by investigating a large-scale urban greenway project. Using the perspective of the socio-ecological fix, we demonstrate that multi-scalar states strive to upgrade environmental quality. Specifically, the local state seizes the opportunity for ‘ecological civilisation’ envisioned by the central state to carry out green infrastructure development. We reveal complex motivations to incorporate ecological changes into entrepreneurial urban governance instead of encroaching greenspace for economic growth. Our state-centred analysis reveals that such an environmental strategy, the making of Chinese green urbanism, is promoted like a political mission, despite its operation by the development corporation. We argue that, while the socio-ecological fix facilitates capital accumulation, its deployment must be understood through state politics and actors.

The southern section of the Landscape Greenway in Chengdu. From the paper above.

Abstract: Recent studies on socio-technical transition have elaborated the multi-level perspective through a power-sensitive view of agency and a symmetrical approach to niche-regime relations. This paper adopts this modified framework of the multi-level perspective to unpack the mechanisms of urban sustainability transition in China. It develops two arguments through a case study of the role of the local government in solar development in Wuxi city. First, the evolving alignments between niche, regime and landscape processes of the socio-technical systems of Chinese cities are mediated by conflicts between local governments and their upper-level counterparts as they share power over urban development. Second, instead of being identified as either regime supporters or niche advocates, Chinese local governments are best described as embodying both roles in urban sustainability transition as they struggle to balance their economic and environmental objectives. These two arguments point to a need to examine sustainability transition in Chinese cities with attention to the leadership of the local government in aligning the actions of various actors in and beyond the city who can stabilise and disrupt existing socio-technical configurations.

Abstract: China’s recent environmental turn in urban development has been marked by a rush of urban green projects. Many city governments have lately focused on green infrastructure of a specific kind – the greenway. This article provides a preliminary assessment of the contributions of greenways to a new, environmentally benign form of urbanisation advocated by the central government. Through a case study of the city of Maanshan, it reveals that Chinese greenways are not just a sustainability fix for the economy’s sake, as many urban green projects in China tend to be conceived. Although the greenways are far from being effective in stimulating tourism, they can promote urban liveability beyond the symbolic and lend material support to active travel. These findings endorse an analytical approach that gives equal emphasis to both the physical and political nature of emerging green infrastructure initiatives to more fully appreciate the logics and functions in their ongoing popularity.

Location of Maanshan and its main greenways. From the paper above.

Relevant studies

Abstract: Studies on environmental governance have mainly focused on the relationship between local state, market, and community. However, how an environmental agenda is achieved by multi-scalar state actors and how these multi-scalar interventions reshape urban spatial politics have been understudied. This research investigates the protection of Erhai Lake in Dali, a third-tier city in Western China. Erhai Lake protection is a high-profile initiative proposed by the top leader. However, it is not only conducted through a top-down target-setting authoritarian system but has also invoked market and state interventions from various scales. Based on this case, we first reflect on statecraft in governing environmental sustainability in China, which manifested in mobilizing hybrid instruments to achieve the environmental goal. Second, environmental practices at the local scale do not municipalize environmental resources. Instead, the provincial-level state stands out in influencing local regulations and deploying state-owned enterprises to achieve environmental and economic ends. These actions peripheralize local city authorities in economic development, social management, and environmental assets management, undermining the entrepreneurial stance of the city government. This research contributes to understanding the co-evolution of urban spatial politics and environmental practices.

Environmental projects supported by the special local government bond. From the paper above.

Abstract: The state remains central in contemporary environmental politics and policies, although environmental governance increasingly involves neoliberal and non-state mechanisms. Environmental management in China holds features of an ‘environmental state’ and has been undergoing continuous restructuring, manifested by a recent city-regionalism turn. Informed by the theories of eco-state restructuring (ESR) and eco-scalar fix, this paper investigates air pollution management in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region by tracing the practices of environmental and territorial governance over the past decades. Through the analysis of parameters of the eco-state, this paper conceptualises the air pollution governance in China into three phases, namely pollutants emission control (the 1990s–2005), campaign-style regional governance (2006–2012) and city-regionalism in air quality governance (2013 onwards). We find that the central state plays proactive but different roles in each phase, characterised by state strategic selectivity, adjustments of state apparatus, deployment of a set of policy instruments, and enhanced state capacities for monitoring, control and legitimation. In this context, the city-regional level has become the key scale at which environmental regulations are targeted and the economic and environmental realms are being (re)formed. This state-led eco-scalar fix process to cope with urgent environmental issues explains the underlying rationality of building up the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region as a new national strategic project.

Changes in SO2 emissions and concentrations in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei between 1994–2012. From the paper above.

Abstract: This chapter analyses the ongoing transition in China’s environmental governance through the lens of multi-level governance. Focusing on the field of waste management, it shows that while the centre has significantly strengthened macro control in recent years, there are continued variations in local response intertwined with local circumstances and development objectives. The state is also willing to engage non-state actors in policymaking and implementation, to improve governance efficiency and legitimacy. These multi-directional dynamics point to the need to look beyond the actions of the state and to examine critically how various actors operating at different scales/levels interact and shape governance processes. They also give rise to a complex governance landscape that produces collaboration but also renders conflict and compromise inevitable.

Abstract: Land-centred urbanisation has precipitated shortage of green space in Chinese cities. However, in the Pearl River Delta, an ambitious greenway system has recently managed to flourish. It is intriguing to ask how this has become possible. Informed by the perspective of urban political ecology, this paper finds that the greenway project in the Pearl River Delta represents a set of politically realistic endeavours to alleviate urban green space shortage by adapting to, rather than challenging, powerful landed interests. Three interlocking dimensions about land—municipal land quota, rural land use claims, and real estate development—have influenced why, where and how greenways have been created. Based on these findings, we argue that research on China’s politics of urban sustainability necessarily needs to understand the country’s land politics.