Dilemmas of State-Led Environmental Conservation in China: Environmental Target Enforcement and Public Participation in Minqin County

Mao, KuoRay; Zhang, Qian

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3668329

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Minqin County is an example of groundwater overdraft driven by unsustainable economic targets and grain quotas. By the early 2000s, 32,000 people had left Minqin as “ecological refugees” and 20,000 ha of farmland had been abandoned (Mao & Zhang, ). In 2007, the prime minister called the preservation of Minqin a “national security issue” and the Shiyang River Basin Management Plan was designed to reduce groundwater abstraction in Minqin from 517 to 89 Mm 3 by 2010.…”

Section: Searching For Success Storiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The 2007 plan introduced new measures, including subsidies for drip irrigation and greenhouses, individual crop‐and‐area‐based quotas (adjustable according to the quantity of surface water available), water pricing, cutting electricity to private wells outside the community, using prepaid cards to implement quotas at each well, buying back wells, and establishing groundwater user associations to implement the measures (Aarnoudse, Bluemling, Wester, & Qu, ; Mao & Zhang, ).…”

Section: Searching For Success Storiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Why is state‐centered groundwater governance largely ineffective? A review

Molle

Closas

2019

WIREs Water

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Faced with severe groundwater depletion, many governments have opted to increase the power of the state. Despite calls for more inclusive governance and a role for groundwater users, modes of governance have tended to continue to rely on a diversity of policy tools and state‐run strategies in the attempt to control groundwater (over)abstraction. Yet, around the world, the performance of state‐centered governance has remained dismal. Beyond common difficulties in terms of data and financial or human resources, this article analyzes in greater depth the limited effectiveness of state groundwater policies that has been observed, emphasizing its political ramifications. The various aspects of weak monitoring and enforcement, as well as of the infamous “lack of political will,” are considered from the perspective of the political economy of groundwater economies. Cases of relative success are then used to identify favorable drivers and contexts for effective state‐centered groundwater governance. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water Governance Engineering Water > Planning Water

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Section: Searching For Success Storiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Searching For Success Storiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why is state‐centered groundwater governance largely ineffective? A review

Molle

Closas

2019

WIREs Water

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“…However, few of them have yet managed to take over 'male' roles outside the home, particularly with respect to joining village committees and participating in the governance and management of the village's natural resources. As a result, there is growing concern that the gap left in village life by the migrant men is allowing both land and minerals to be exploited for the personal gain of powerful individuals rather than being managed for the good of all the village residents (Kostka and Mol, 2013;Mao and Zhang, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Attempts have been made by the Beijing Government to widen local participation in resource management as a means of improving environmental governance (Kostka and Mol, 2013;Johnson, 2014;Mao and Zhang, 2018). However, few village committees have responded, and concerns are growing that, without the migrant men to oversee them, many local officials are 'unruly' (Johnson, 2014: p. 241) and unable, or unwilling, to prevent the degradation of their village's environment and common pool resources.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governance, Gender and the Appropriation of Natural Resources: A Case Study of ‘Left-Behind’ Women’s Collective Action in China

Ravenscroft

Wang

Liu

2019

Society & Natural Resources

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China's rapid urbanization has created opportunities for many peoplepredominantly men -to migrate from rural to urban areas in search of work, leaving their farms and families. This has resulted in many villages being dominated by a large population of 'left-behind' women. This situation has required these women not only to take responsibility for their own domestic and farming duties, but also increasingly to get involved in local governance, particularly in trying to prevent the appropriation of collective natural resources. Based on a case study in a typical village in central China, this paper explores an example of women's collective action to prevent the over-exploitation of collectively owned sand resources. As the case study illustrates, although previously denied the opportunity to participate in local politics and governance, the 'left behind' women have seized the initiative and have demonstrated the capacity to impose their will, through a mix of toughness, flexibility and endurance. As a consequence, the study demonstrates that, when empowered to act, the left-behind women are as capable as anyone of defending their community's resources. This new approach to collective action over natural resource management therefore suggests that rural-urban migration has not been a wholly negative phenomenon for those left behind. On the contrary, it has created a space in which those who were previously denied access to local politics can assert not only their right to govern, but also their aptitude for the types of action that are required to defend collectively-owned resources.

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“…The restrictive targets were linked to the annual evaluations of state bureaucrats and the amount of fiscal transfer payments allotted to local governments (van Rooij et al., 2017). Nevertheless, reliance on quantitative targets to assess regulation enforcement has led to widespread manipulation of statistics, and the political pressure to achieve short-term policy outcomes has undermined the long-term sustainability of environmental institutions (Eaton & Kostka, 2014; Kostka, 2016; Mao & Zhang, 2018; Ran, 2017). Concurrent with the development of the top-down, direct-command approach of environmental governance, the Chinese central government has gradually expanded the regulatory landscape to allow participation from stakeholders outside of the bureaucracy.…”

Section: Environmental Regulation and Enforcement In China: A Brief Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Conservation or the Treadmill of Law: A Case Study of the Post-2014 Husbandry Waste Regulations in China

Mao

Jin

et al. 2020

Int J Offender Ther Comp Criminol

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As industrialized animal agriculture expanded rapidly in the last decade, the resultant pollution has generated widespread despoliation of natural resources and environmental victimization in rural China. This study examines the formulation and implementation of national environmental regulations from 2014 to 2019 and finds that the juxtaposing ministerial and provincial jurisdictions resulted in conflicting interpretations of the scale and evaluation criteria of the national policy. We argue that the regulations are more than centralized conservation programs designed to reduce environmental pollution caused by the expansion of animal husbandry. Instead, these regulations are fundamentally state-led rural development initiatives that utilize the designations of ecological protection zones to reconfigure land use and promote scale-up production in agricultural structural adjustment initiatives. The enforcement of these environmental regulations, therefore, constitutes a treadmill of law (ToL) that accelerated the geographical specialization and function intensification of the Chinese husbandry sector.

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Dilemmas of State-Led Environmental Conservation in China: Environmental Target Enforcement and Public Participation in Minqin County

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Why is state‐centered groundwater governance largely ineffective? A review

Why is state‐centered groundwater governance largely ineffective? A review

Governance, Gender and the Appropriation of Natural Resources: A Case Study of ‘Left-Behind’ Women’s Collective Action in China

Environmental Conservation or the Treadmill of Law: A Case Study of the Post-2014 Husbandry Waste Regulations in China

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