Since 1978, China has made great economic achievement. Its environment has substantially degraded however. It was reported that 90 percent of underground water in cities and 70 percent of rivers are polluted, indeed a third of... [ view full abstract ]
Since 1978, China has made great economic achievement. Its environment has substantially degraded however. It was reported that 90 percent of underground water in cities and 70 percent of rivers are polluted, indeed a third of these rivers are so toxic that they endanger health; seven of the world’s 10 most polluted cities are in China and smog contributes to around a million premature deaths each year. China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide and choking smog in cities reaches levels that make it hazardous to go outside. The Ministry of Environmental Protection of China has claimed that the cost of pollution has reached about 1.5 trillion RMB, or roughly 3.5% of GDP, according to its figure in 2010. For the Chinese state, one unanticipated outcome caused by degrading environmental quality is the occurrence of a large number of environmental conflicts. Since 1997, environmental conflicts have increased annually by 25% (Hou and Zhang 2009). In this paper, we focus on environmental conflicts as the debates regarding the planning, construction and operation of industrial plants, such as chemical plants, refinery plants, waste management facilities and other facilities. In nowadays China, waste incineration power plants and PX plants are the two most widely debated projects around China. In this paper, we focus on these environmental conflicts regarding these two types of plants.
In order to governing these types of environmental conflicts, the Chinese local governments undertake a variety of actions, such as face-to-face conversations with protesters, expert persuasion, project halting, information blockage or economic compensation. This raises the question which factors explain the application of the different government strategies in governing environmental conflicts. Ten cases concerning the planning, construction and operation of waste incineration power plant and PX plant are compared in this article.
Two basic comparative methods are applied in this article in addressing the research question: the method of agreement and the method of difference ((Przeworski and Teune 1970). In order to apply these two methods, we first differentiate the ten cases into three patterns of government strategies based on three different outcomes of the final debated plants, namely project cancellation, project continuation and project relocation. Second, the method of agreement is used to explain the similarities of cases in the same pattern. In doing so we explore what conditions these cases have in common. Third, the method of difference is used to explain the differences of the cases in different patterns, identifying conditions that differ between these cases.
The comparison provides us with finding on conditions that make a difference in the choice of governance strategies by local governments in dealing with environmental conflicts. The paper allows us to draw conclusions on the variety of governance strategies local governments use, on the conditions and mechanisms that underlie these choices and on the potentials for Chinese governments to increase their capacities to better deal with the challenges of environmental degradation and citizen responses to that.
IRSPM_conference_paper__2016.3.17_.pdf 