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Enhancing China's environmental governance
Yang, Fuqiang Hu, Min
Yang, Fuqiang
Hu, Min
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Abstract
"China’s economic and social development has had severe environmental impacts: from land and water resource deterioration to becoming the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, pollution has resulted in total losses equivalent to 3.05 percent of China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Under a strategic plan to pursue a sustainable development path, China has passed a plethora of environmental laws, standards, and regulations in recent years, and adopted ambitious targets aiming at reducing major pollutants by ten percent and improving GDP energy efficiency by twenty percent in its Eleventh Five Year Plan (2006-2010). These ambitious goals were set despite clear evidence that China’s environmental governance system has struggled with enforcement, especially at the local level. Due to a lack of enforcement, less than one percent of China’s urban residents live in cities that meet World Health Organization air quality standards. Failure to enforce environmental regulations has also contributed to rapid motorization and the growth of polluting and energy-intensive industries, undermining GHG mitigation achievements made in other countries of the world. A breakthrough in dealing with the problems of China’s high speed growth occurred in March 2008. In recognition of the economic and humanitarian need to improve environmental governance, the National People’s Congress upgraded the vice-cabinet level State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) to the cabinet level Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP). This promotion establishes a basis for building environmental governance capacity through increasing staffing and budgets; increases attention paid to environmental and energy policy integration at all levels of government; and continues efforts to internalize the economic impacts on human health and environmental externalities caused by traditional fuels combustion. This paper discusses institutions which are responsible for environmental governance in China and opportunities to restructure these institutions to integrate environmental concerns into China’s national policy-making process and increase enforcement and compliance." (p. 1-2)
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2008
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With permission of the license/copyright holder