This book applies an interdisciplinary governance assessment framework to assess China's water quality governance from a holistic point of view. The project explores China's water quality status, water policy discourses, water regulations, public participation in water governance, the path towards green water law, eco-compensation approach in water quality management and the implementation mechanism for achieving water goals. It will appeal to academics in water law, researchers and practitioners dealing with water management, as well as a general audience interested in water issues.
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Yes, you can access Politics and Governance in Water Pollution Prevention in China by Liping Dai in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Política y relaciones internacionales & Política asiática. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Liping DaiPolitics and Governance in Water Pollution Prevention in ChinaPolitics and Development of Contemporary Chinahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02874-9_1
Begin Abstract
1. Introduction
Liping Dai1
(1)
Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Along with the economic development, water pollution in China is developing from traditional pollution with conventional pollutants to a compound type of pollution with new and old pollutants interacting with each other. Traditional water management schemes are not able to meet these challenges. Improving water governance is a key topic in the political agenda in China. This book deploys a three-step diagnostic method—ten building blocks approach to explore China’s current water governance for water pollution prevention and control. It consists of seven chapters, each discusses different building block(s) of water governance, including China’s water quality knowledge, water policy discourses, public participation in water management, green path to water law, market-based approach and implementation of water goals.
Keywords
Water pollutionChinaWater governance
End Abstract
1 Background
Since 1978, China has been on the road towards a transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. The achievements are remarkable after almost three decades of effort. Industrialization in China has been unprecedented—no developing country has grown by more than 10% per year as China has, without interruption for two full decades (Eichengreen, 2013). The urbanization rate had reached 51% by 2011, and by 2030 nearly 60% of the population are expected to be living in urban areas (West, Schandl, Heyenga, & Chen, 2013). The living standards of ordinary citizens have improved significantly, so that millions of Chinese citizens have been lifted out of poverty.
However, pressure on the environment is likely to grow in response to the industrialization and urbanization. In the period between 2001 and 2005, about 54%, on average, of the seven main rivers in China contained water which was deemed to be unsafe for human consumption (Mundial, 2007), though this rate had dropped from 54% to around 9% by 2016 (Ministry of Environmental Protection, 2017). As a result of the economic development, water pollution in China is developing from traditional pollution with conventional pollutants to a compound type of pollution with new and old pollutants interacting with each other, and from industry-dominated pollution to the coexistence of industrial pollution and agricultural pollution (Wang, 2008). Traditional water management schemes are not able to meet these challenges.
Poor water quality not only threatens human and ecosystem health, increases treatment costs, and reduces the availability of safe water for drinking and other uses, but also limits economic productivity and development opportunities. The Chinese Government has paid great attention to the environmental issues in the past decade and made a number of efforts to address the challenges facing the water sector.
2 Water Governance
Water crisis is often a crisis of governance (Rogers & Hall, 2003). In its first World Water Development Report, the United Nations identified that “water crisis is essentially a crisis of governance and societies are facing a number of social, economic and political challenges on how to govern water more effectively” (World Water Assessment Programme, 2003). Notions of water governance (and of governance in general) have evolved over time. Early thinking about water governance was based on highly centralized systems that emphasized the role of governments in water management (Cooley et al., 2013). Today, the term is used more broadly; according to Rogers and Hall it refers to “the range of political, social, economic and administrative systems that are in place to develop and manage water resources, and the delivery of water services, at different levels of society” (Rogers & Hall, 2003). More specifically, water governance refers to formal and informal processes that allow for the determination and negotiation of objectives , setting of standards, and resolution of disputes among disparate voices in order to address challenges and meet objectives at local, sub-national, and national levels (Cooley et al., 2013).
Improving water governance is a key topic in the political agenda worldwide (OECD, 2011). Due to the complex nature of water systems (multilevel, multi-scale and multi-actor), a comprehensive water governance approach is needed in which different interests and uses of water are interconnected so that water policy and measurements are developed and implemented with the support of different stakeholder groups (van Rijswick, Edelenbos, Hellegers, Kok, & Kuks, 2014).
Governance can take many different forms depending on the economic, cultural and traditional political norms of a country and the behaviour of the legislature and legislators (Rogers & Hall, 2003). van Rijswick et al. apply a multidisciplinary perspective (a three-step diagnostic method and ten building blocks ) to approach water governance (Fig. 1) (van Rijswick et al., 2014). Figure 1 illustrates the cyclic aspect of the method. Once the agreed service levels have been implemented, the loop might go back to the content as it can have consequences for the state of the water system, or when monitoring shows the need for revision of one of the building blocks (van Rijswick et al., 2014).
Fig. 1
A three-step diagnostic method—ten building blocks approach of water governance assessment
The “ten building block ” assessment method assumes that water governance is sound when three main dimensions and the corresponding ten building blocks are dealt with. Sound water management requires knowledge of the water system in time and space and of values, principles and policy discourses . This knowledge is required for the organizational process to come to an agreed service level. The organizational process requires sufficient stakeholder involvement, insights into the trade-offs between social objectives , the attribution of responsibilities, authorization and the associated means as well as regulations and agreements. Finally, the agreed service level has to be implemented, which requires the engineering of infrastructure, monitoring, enforcement and conflict prevention and resolution (van Rijswick et al., 2014).
3 Structure of This Book
This book deploys the three-step diagnostic method—ten building blocks approach to explore China’s current water governance for water pollution prevention and control. It is divided into seven chapters. Following this introduction, Chapter 2 discusses the current stage of water quality knowledge in China and provides detailed analysis of how the water problems are framed by the Chinese Government. More specifically, Chapter 2 discusses the blocks of “water system knowledge”, “policy discourses ” and “regulations ”.
Chapter 3 turns to the block of “stakeholder involvement”. Good water governance and effective stakeholder involvement are inextricably linked since the collaborative processes can make or break planning and implementation of water management . This chapter focuses on public participation , a practice of stakeholder involvement, to explore whether the current regulations have offered the public opportunities to participate.
Chapter 4 discusses the transformation of water policy in recent China (the block of “trade-offs between social objectives”). As a result of the rapid industrialization and urbanization, water policy in China has been constantly changing during the past decades and a more sustainable development pathway is being developed. This chapter analyses how a sustainable, development-friendly approach to the utilization and management of water resources is reflected in China’s water law .
For almost a decade China has been implementing “eco-compensation ...
Table of contents
Cover
Front Matter
1. Introduction
2. Water Quality Knowledge and Water Policy Discourse in China
3. Public Participation in Water Governance in China
4. China’s Path to a Green Water Law
5. Exploring China’s Approach to Implementing ‘Eco-Compensation’ Schemes—The Lake Tai Watershed as a Case Study
6. Implementing the Water Goals—The River Chief Mechanism in China
