Environmental Governance System Research Articles

Environmental Governance in Gold Mining: The Role of Traditional Institutions in Asutifi North District of Ghana

Mining projects in mineral-rich countries have been justified as contributing to economic growth and social well-being. There are environmental, economic, and social problems resulting from mining; therefore, the need for society to pool institutions to form environmental governance systems to manage these effects. It is within these institutions that power is prescribed, legitimated, and controlled. This study examines the roles of traditional authorities in environmental governance in mining in the Asutifi North District of Ghana. A qualitative case study design combining purposive and convenience sampling was used to select 52 respondents from traditional, state, and business institutions and 29 household respondents. The traditional institutions mostly played the role of development agents in their communities. Even though they have not been entirely successful in substituting for the state, they have complemented the state structures by holding the societies together despite daunting economic, political, and environmental challenges they faced.

Campaign-style governance of air pollution in China? A comprehensive analysis of the central environmental protection inspection.

Central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) is a major institutional innovation in China's environmental governance, but its effectiveness in improving air quality is still unclear. However, the effectiveness of CEPI is of great significance and can be regarded as an important reference for deepening the reform of environmental governance system in China. This article takes the CEPI as a quasi-natural experiment and uses the regression discontinuity design (RDD) and the difference-in-differences (DID) methods to examine the effectiveness of this policy. The study found that the first round of CEPI reduced the air pollution of cities in the inspected provinces in a short time. Moreover, this positive policy effect persisted in the aftermath of the inspection, but this long-term effect is mainly reflected in PM10 and SO2. Heterogeneity analysis showed that CEPI was only effective in reducing air pollutants of industry-oriented cities, cities in Central and Eastern China, and cities with large or small population size. The moderating effect analysis indicated that a healthy relationship (close and clean) between the local governments and businesses was conducive to reducing air pollution. The research confirmed the presence of "selective" reduction of air pollutants in the long run caused by CEPI, thereby providing new inspiration for the improvement of campaign-style environmental governance and the follow-up CEPI work.

The effect of environmental governance in quality improvement of urbanization—Evidence from China 2000–2017

Introduction: The promotion effect of environmental governance on improving the quality of urbanization is yet to be fully understood. No consensus exists on the concept of urbanization quality, and the exploration of the promotion effect of` environmental governance focuses on the economic dimension. Since 2000, high-quality and distinctive urbanization has been an important part of China’s social development, and environmental governance has been a primary aspect of this pursuit. Therefore, Chinese practice is a suitable research object to help enrich the exploration of the academic community.Material and Methods: This paper constructs an evaluation index system for urbanization quality based on a new development philosophy by the Chinese government and adopts the entropy value method to investigate the effect of environmental governance using provincial panel data from 2000 to 2017.Results: Firstly, the overall effect of environmental governance on improving the quality of urbanization is significant, however, among the environmental governance effects of the five dimensions of urbanization quality, it is conducive to innovation and coordinated development but not conducive to shared development. Secondly, the role of the three governance mechanisms in the environmental governance system is not balanced. The contributions of market governance are much higher than that of government governance and public governance, And there is a large room for improvement in the effectiveness of collaborative governance. In terms of the improvement of specific dimensions of urbanization quality, government governance contributes significantly to innovative development but restricts open and shared development; market governance promotes green and shared development but inhibits open development; public governance plays a positive role in coordinated and open development but hinders innovative, green and shared development. Thirdly, the role of environmental governance has significant regional differences. The eastern region is high, the northeast and central regions are second, and the western region is a negative effect. Within the environmental governance system, government governance has a significant promoting effect on all regions, market governance has a significant promoting effect on eastern, western, and northeastern regions. And public governance has the largest promoting effect on eastern and central regions, while it has an inhibiting effect on western and northeastern regions.Discussion: It is necessary to build an environmental governance system adapted to the regional reality, play the leading role of government environmental regulation, and optimize the collaborative mechanism of the government, enterprises and the public in the environmental governance system with the guidance of market governance.

Governing landscapes: An agenda for the assessment of grasslands and savannahs

In this article, we propose an agenda promoting the development of a new integrated assessment toolkit (theory-based toolkit) of environmental governance in overlooked ecosystems of grasslands and savannahs in the Global South. To explore the complexity of social-ecological and governance systems, a growing number of systems-thinking approaches provide academics/practitioners with numerous analytical frameworks, theories, and methodologies that are potentially useful for unveiling institutional aspects along with their causal variables for the access, use and management of natural resources. Yet, we argue that achieving a comprehensive understanding of environmental governance systems only by using one single framework or theory is limiting. Further, there is a growing need of more social science knowledge and grassland and savannah context-specific frameworks that are tailored and applicable to policy settings. Therefore, by building on the five approaches of the political ecological framework of community-based governance (CBG) relating to key environmental governance frameworks, such as the community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) and the institutional and development framework (IAD), we propose a theory-based toolkit that would review, synthesize, connect, relate and test multiple core principles in a way that more fully accounts for social-ecological interactions in focal ecosystems. We are convinced that future empirical analysis/research following our agenda and the toolkit approach can generate hypotheses that are testable in real-life contexts. To this end, we suggest guiding research questions, research methods, as well as comparable cases and their rationales.

Public Participation and the Effect of Environmental Governance in China: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The public plays a key role in environmental governance systems. Many studies have discussed the effects of public participation on environmental governance in China from different perspectives. However, there has been no systematic integrated analysis of the effects of public participation on environmental governance and the causes of its heterogeneity. To help fill this gap, we developed a comprehensive analysis framework of the regional differences–participation method–pollution type, and 85 effect sizes were tested by the meta-analysis method. The results showed that there was a weak positive correlation between public environmental participation and the environmental governance effect (ES = 0.044, p < 0.001). The correlation between the two was regulated by regional space and pollution type. The promotion effect of public participation on waste and noise was significantly higher than that of central and western areas. However, there was no significant difference between the different participation methods. Taken together, these results have important significance for increasing public participation and optimizing the effect of environmental governance.

Review of: "Research on the uncertainty of low-carbon environmental governance system and its impact on the dual goals of carbon emission reduction"

Review of: "Research on the uncertainty of low-carbon environmental governance system and its impact on the dual goals of carbon emission reduction"

Building blocks of polycentric governance

AbstractSuccess or failure of a polycentric system is a function of complex political and social processes, such as coordination between actors and venues to solve specialized policy problems. Yet there is currently no accepted method for isolating distinct processes of coordination, nor to understand how their variance affects polycentric governance performance. We develop and test a building‐blocks approach that uses different patterns or “motifs” for measuring and comparing coordination longitudinally on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Our approach confirms that polycentric governance comprises an evolving substrate of interdependent venues and actors over time. However, while issue specialization and actor participation can be improved through the mobilization of venues, such a strategy can also fragment overall polycentric capacity to resolve conflict and adapt to new problems. A building‐blocks approach advances understanding and practice of polycentric governance by enabling sharper diagnosis of internal dynamics in complex environmental governance systems.

Can central environmental protection inspection induce corporate green technology innovation?

As a major institutional innovation of China's environmental governance system, whether the central environmental protection inspection can induce green technology innovation in heavily polluting corporates is crucial to deepening the reform of China's environmental governance system. Based on corporate green patent data from 2010 to 2019, the Difference-in-difference model is used to test the impact of the central environmental protection inspection on corporate green technology innovation after theoretically analyzes. The study finds that the central environmental protection inspection has significantly stimulated the green technology innovation of pollution-intensive industrial companies, by, in the main, encouraging corporates to develop innovative practices which increase the utilization efficiency of fossil energy and decrease end process pollutant emissions. However, green innovations in new energy sources that radically reduce pollution emissions are not significant. In addition, the green technology innovation induced by the central environmental protection inspection is not a superposition effect based on existing innovation activities, but the result of a crowding out of other technological innovations.

The Impact and Internal Mechanism of Environmental Decentralization on Green Total Factor Production

Since the emergence of environmental federalism theory in the 1960s, the empirical research on it has been pursued by scholars, mainly focusing on whether a country’s environmental regulation should be centralized or decentralized. For a long time, countries have been actively exploring and putting environmental governance systems into practice for themselves, especially at present, in the face of multiple constraints of resources, environment, sustainable development power and other factors. How to build an appropriate environmental governance system and promote the level of green development by encouraging enterprises’ technological innovation is a practical problem to be solved urgently. Based on this, this paper constructs a new research framework of environmental decentralization—technological innovation—green total factor productivity (GTFP) and investigates the effect and mechanism of environmental decentralization on GTFP. The results show that environmental decentralization can reduce the quality of environmental information disclosure and inhibit the innovative output of enterprises, ultimately leading to the decrease of GTFP. Environmental decentralization has a spatial spillover effect on GTFP, which can promote GTFP in neighboring areas. This paper tries to enrich the research results of traditional environmental federalism theory, the “Porter Hypothesis”, and growth pole theory, and it provides a solution to enterprises’ financing constraint problem.

Stackable Direct Current Triboelectric‐Electromagnetic Hybrid Nanogenerator for Self‐Powered Air Purification and Quality Monitoring

AbstractTriboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) and electromagnetic generators (EMGs) show their strengths in harvesting mechanical energy from ambient environment, while the output characteristics of the hybrid generators are not optimally utilized. Here, a stackable triboelectric‐electromagnetic hybrid nanogenerator is designed to construct a self‐powered environmental governance system that fully harnesses the high‐voltage output of TENG and high‐current output of EMG, respectively. Based on the corona discharge, a cylindrical direct‐current TENG is obtained by a flexible contact between flourinated ethylene propylene and Ag fiber cloth. Systematic studies of the parameters that affect TENG outputs are also performed. The results show that the two stacked direct‐current TENG generates a −8.76 µC s−1 discharge rate and −21.61 kV voltage at 1400 rpm. For the EMG component, the rectified average power is 2.51 W, which can charge a capacitor of 1 F to 3 V in 38.9 s. Finally, driven by airflow, the designed hybrid nanogenerator is applied to release negative air ions and continuously power an air quality detector. The self‐powered air purification and quality monitoring system via hybrid nanogenerator established in this work may provide an alternative avenue for sustainable societies.

Corporate Governance, Media Attention and Environmental Information Disclosure

Environmental information disclosure is an important element in the modernization of Chinese environmental governance system and governance capacity. Based on two perspectives of corporate governance and media attention, the relationship between the two and corporate environmental information disclosure is analyzed based on the research samples of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed enterprises from 2017-2021. The empirical results of this paper show that: corporate governance and media attention can significantly enhance corporate environmental information disclosure; media attention has a significant moderating effect on corporate environmental information disclosure, which can further strengthen the relationship between corporate governance and environmental information disclosure, and this moderating effect is more obvious in state-owned enterprises.

Analysis of China's Role and Motivation in the Global Environmental Governance System Based on Neo-liberalism and Realism

With the gradual deterioration of the earth's environment, global environmental problems have become an important issue that the whole world urgently needs to solve. Nowadays, globalization cooperation among countries has been carried out in-depth and is no longer limited to the traditional economic and cultural fields. Non-traditional security issues have gradually become the mainstream of cooperation among countries. China's motivation to participate in environmental governance in the context of globalization is particularly important. This paper will use a theoretical plus case study approach to analyse their motivations to draw conclusions about the issue. At the same time, analysing China's motives for participating in global environmental governance helps us to better understand the logic of China's behaviour and its role in global governance today. The paper figured out that China has its behavioural logic, what China should do next is to let western countries know its logic and enhance cooperation in the environmental field with other entities.

Does Central Environmental Protection Inspector Improve Corporate Social Responsibility? Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

As an essential innovation in China’s environmental governance, the central environmental protection inspector policy (CEPI) plays a crucial role in driving the development of the corporate responsibility system. Using the difference-in-differences model with multiple time periods, samples of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2013 to 2020 are chosen to examine the impact of the CEPI on corporate social responsibility within the context of China’s modern governance system. The results indicate the following: first, the CEPI can significantly promote enterprises to fulfil social responsibility; second, the local government environmental regulation and public participation are the dual guarantees for the effect of the CEPI’s policy, and market-based environmental regulation of the local government is more effective than command-and-control environmental regulation; and third, a high propensity for technological innovation is a critical incentive for businesses to fulfil their social responsibilities under the CEPI. For enterprises to actively respond to society, the compensation effect of innovation must be greater than its cost effect. By examining the interaction between the Central Government, the local government, companies and the public, this research aims to provide theoretical support for accelerating the creation of China’s contemporary environmental governance system.

The Guarantee Mechanism of China's Environmental Protection Strategy from the Perspective of Global Environmental Governance-Focusing on the Punishment of Environmental Pollution Crime in China.

Effective global environmental governance is the only viable way to solve the human environmental crisis. For a long time, China has been an active promoter and contributor to the global environmental governance system. In recent years, China has enhanced the penalty intensity of environmental crimes, the environmental pollution crimes in particular, and received good results in order to better realize the construction of ecological civilization and better fulfill the emission reduction targets of international environmental treaties. The deterioration of China's environmental crisis in the past and the lack of deterrent effect of China's environmental laws are closely related to the ineffective punishment of environmental crimes. In order to better promote environmental protection careers, China's environmental crimes still need to be continuously optimized in terms of adding charges, legislative models and restorative justice.

The effect of strategic synergy between local and neighborhood environmental regulations on green innovation efficiency: The perspective of industrial transfer

Considering the environmental governance dilemma caused by environmental decentralization, this study aims to explore whether the strategic synergy between local and neighborhood environmental regulations can be an essential tool to improve green innovation efficiency and achieve sustainable development. Using the data of industrial firms from 2005 to 2019, and employing network slack-based measure and Tobit regression, this study provides empirical evidence that (1) the green innovation efficiency shows an upward trend in fluctuations but still has great room for improvement; (2) the direct impact of local environmental regulation on green innovation is positive, but the indirect impact through forcing firms to transfer into the neighborhood with loose regulation is negative, that is, the industrial transfer plays a suppression effect; (3) the strategic synergy of environmental regulations has U-shaped and direct effect on green innovation and also has a positive indirect effect through inhibiting the firm's behavior transferring into the neighborhood. This study reveals the influence mechanism of the strategic synergy of local-neighborhood environmental regulations and offers empirical evidence to explain the reason why synergistic environmental governance can effectively promote green innovation, which provides the theoretical guidance for government to formulate environmental policies and construct an environmental governance system.

Polycentricity in practice: Marine governance transitions in Southeast Asia

Environmental governance systems are expanding in size and complexity as they become more integrated and ecosystem-based. In doing so, governance transitions often involve more actors and knowingly or unknowingly alter the autonomy of actors to make decisions, and thereby the ability of the governance system to self-organise. In other words, these governance systems are becoming increasingly polycentric, moving towards an institutional structure that is reported to confer a number of benefits to social-ecological systems. This article adds to a growing body of evidence on polycentric environmental governance in practice. It adds nuance to the normative and apolitical portrayals of governance transitions in general, and transitions towards more polycentric forms of governance in particular. We analyse the relations amongst actors and historical development of four large-scale marine governance systems in Southeast Asia to understand how context, particularly power, shapes the emergence and evolution of polycentric marine governance in practice. Our data indicate that transitions towards increased polycentricity do increase diversity and autonomy of decision-making centres, which can enable more innovation or flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. However, these innovations do not always underpin sustainability and equity. Coordination mechanisms are critical for channelling the power dynamics that emerge among diverse actors towards sustainability. Yet, in these emergent, ad hoc polycentric governance arrangements such mechanisms remained nascent, ineffective, or inactive. The transaction costs involved in co-ordinating a semi-autonomous polycentric system are seemingly difficult to overcome in low- to middle-income contexts and need investment in resources and accountability mechanisms.

How does public environmental supervision affect the industrial structure optimization?

Based on the panel data of 278 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005 to 2017, this study takes the environmental information disclosure policy implemented in 2008 as a quasi-natural experiment and uses the difference-in-difference method to examine the impact of public environmental supervision on industrial structure upgrading. This study found thatpublic environmental supervision has indeed significantly promoted the industrial structure optimization. It is noteworthy that, the impact of public environmental supervision on industrial structure optimization is heterogeneous across regions and corresponding to the intensity of environmental regulations. Public environmental supervision in the eastern region has significantly promoted the optimization of the industrial structure, while the promotion effect in the central and western regions is not obvious. Besides, the effect of public environmental supervision is more significant in the cities with relatively tight traditional environmental regulations. The mechanism analysis shows that public environmental supervision promotes industrial structure upgrading mainly by influencing the level of urban technological innovation, and the level of technological innovation plays an intermediary role between public environmental supervision and industrial structureoptimization. This study has important reference significance for further improving the environmental information disclosure system and constructing an environmental governance system with the government as the leading body, enterprises as the main body, and the public as the common participation.

Towards carbon neutrality by improving carbon efficiency - A system-GMM dynamic panel analysis for 131 countries’ carbon efficiency

Given that improving carbon emission efficiency is the cost-effective measure to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutrality, achieving carbon peak/neutrality with minimal economic costs demands a more comprehensive understanding of the factors affecting carbon emission efficiency. In this work, a dynamic panel data analysis with generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation was developed to investigate the effects of industrialization, and renewable energy on carbon emission efficiency, to uncover the interactive and influence channels among these influencing factors using 131 countries’ panel data. The results show that: (i) although urbanization and population aging are not conducive to the improvement of carbon emission efficiency in higher-income countries, they are conducive to the improvement of carbon emission efficiency in lower-income countries. (ii) Trade openness in the global community will have a negative impact on carbon emission efficiency. However, trade openness plays a vital role in improving the carbon emission efficiency of high-income economies. (iii) The rise in renewable energy and industrialization has improved carbon emission efficiency, and the utilization and development of renewable energy in higher-income countries is generally higher than in lower-income countries, and the environmental governance system is relatively sound.

Spatial-temporal Evolution and Its Influencing Factors of Tourism Eco-efficiency in China

Eco-efficiency is an invaluable indicator for the measurement of the relationship between production activities and environmental depletion. This study measures the tourism eco-efficiency of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2020 based on the super-efficiency SBM model, and explores its spatial-temporal evolution characteristics using the kernel density function, standard deviation ellipse, and center of gravity model. Then, the influencing factors of the tourism eco-efficiency in China are analyzed by Tobit regression model. The results show that the tourism eco-efficiency of China is generally fluctuating upwards, but has not yet reached the maximum production possibility frontier. The kernel density curve shows a unimodal-bimodal-unimodal pattern, while the inter-provincial differences have been decreasing and becoming more balanced. The center of gravity of tourism eco-efficiency is located at the junction of Henan and Hubei province and generally moves to the south (slightly to the southwest). Meanwhile, it is revealed that the level of economic development and the tourism eco-efficiency has a significant inverted U-shaped relationship. The level of economic openness, traffic conditions, and tourism eco-efficiency is positively correlated. The environmental regulations and industrial structure have a negative but limited impact on tourism eco-efficiency. Finally, recommendations and suggestions for policy formulation to promote quality and sustainable development of the tourism industry are put forward, such as increasing investment in ecological protection and governance in tourism development, improving capacity-building in allocating green and low-carbon technologies and resources, strengthening tourism infrastructure construction, and enhancing environmental governance systems and mechanisms.

Impact of Environmental Regulation on Coastal Marine Pollution—A Case of Coastal Prefecture-Level Cities in China

Based on the data on the level of environmental regulation and the degree of coastal marine pollution in 46 coastal prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2016, this study uses the mediation effect model and the spatial Durbin model to analyze the impact and role of environmental regulation on offshore pollution from multiple dimensions and mechanisms. The findings are as follows: (1) Environmental regulation has an inverted “U”-shaped nonlinear effect on coastal marine pollution, which first intensifies and then inhibits. (2) Promoting green technology innovation is an important mechanism for environmental regulation to improve the quality of the marine environment, and the impact of environmental regulation on green technology innovation is characterized by a “U” shape. (3) Environmental regulation of coastal cities can affect coastal marine pollution in adjacent areas through spatial spillover effects, and the impact trajectory also shows an inverted “U”-shaped curve. This study proposes that in the process of marine environ-mental governance, first, a scientific and strict environmental regulation system should be constructed, and differentiated environmental regulation policies should be implemented. Second, giving full play to the conduction effect of green technology innovation and promoting the research and development, diffusion, and application of green technology are necessary. Third, we must attach importance to the cross-regional transfer and control of offshore pollution and promote regional joint prevention and control work.