TY - JOUR
AU - Chen,, Tong
AB - Introduction With China's fast urbanization and growth of the manufacturing industry, environmental pollution, especially water pollution in rivers, looms large as an important challenge. In recent years, public participation in community-based environmental activities attracted the attention of public managers, policy analysts and scholars (Boland and Zhu, 2012). For instance, the public and communities usually collect environmental data with reference to environmental quality and wildlife monitoring in North America (Savan, Morgan, and Gore, 2003; Whitelaw et al., 2003), as well as in the UK and Australia (Toms and Newson, 2006; Szabo et al., 2010). In addition, data from the public may be used to inform and reinforce environmental management in developing countries (Martin and Martin, 2011; Mbaiwa, Stronza, and Kreuter, 2011). Communities and the public also play an increasingly important role in environmental governance and ecological improvement (EI) in the developing world, including China. Community participation is probably one of the most widely used concepts in planning in today's world for the past few decades (Swapan, 2014). The concept of community participation is defined so that community members themselves and government authorities or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) contribute ideas for inclusion in policy development through holding discussions and open forums in advocacy (DWAF, 2005). Therefore, community participation has been regarded as the core of development initiatives in shaping the sustainable development of places (Marfo, 2008). Community participation in EI programmes emerged in the late 1960s with the start of the environmental movement in some developed countries and the growth of environmental rights theory and public trust theory (Sax, 1970). Because the community is the primary stakeholder of local ecology, community participation becomes an important approach in EI policy in developed countries today. There are many academic works that highlight community participation in EI programmes (Nare et al., 2011; O’ Reilly and Dhanju, 2012; Adhikari, Kingi, and Ganesh, 2014; Bjornlund, Xu, and Wheeler, 2014). With the recognition of communities as important stakeholders in influencing environmental management and development interventions (Agrawal and Gibson, 1999; Danielsen et al., 2010), community participation is significantly emphasized (Dougill et al., 2012; Stringer and Paavola, 2013). For instance, in some developed countries, self-directed rural communities usually take the lead in the EI of the environment or the natural resources on which they rely (Porter-Bolland et al., 2012; Rodela, 2012; McDougall et al., 2013). Tsouvalis and Waterton (2012) argue that while public participation is often portrayed with considerable optimism, it is just as often characterized as intensely disillusioning, based on experience with some real participatory practices. They further suggest that some guidelines should be established to the practice of participation (Tsouvalis and Waterton, 2012). Therefore, community participation is an effective approach in EI programmes theoretically and logically, while it has many difficult issues to face in practice. Despite the increasing attention on this general topic, community participation in water environmental improvement has not been systematically investigated in China. Community participation in EI programmes has been introduced in the 1990s by international organizations. For instance, in 1991, a training programme on environmental impact evaluation was launched by the Asia Development Bank and a public participation system was first introduced into China (Chen, 2014). Various participatory forms such as Hearing conference, internet participation and Community Consultation Groups started then though these were essentially top-down forms of community participation in EI programmes as they did not only involve the residents and NGOs in the community but also involved local government. This top-down community participation system actually worked well even though it had some serious structural deficiencies because of the lack of a bottom-up participatory approach in China. In this paper, we present a case study of the role local governments, non-government organizations and communities played in the Ecological Improvement Project (EIP) of Xiaoqing River. By reviewing the entire duration (nearly eight years) of the project, we demonstrate the specific characteristics of this government-oriented model of EI. We also discuss how the distinctive nature of communities along the River could play an important role in improving water environment. Our research enriches the EI literature by adding local communities into the improvement project. We believe that our study has important implications for both local governments and communities facing water pollution problems. This paper is organized as follows. We first review the theory of community participation and its important role in EI. Next, we briefly review the history of the EIP of Xiaoqing River. Several serious problems of the government-oriented model in the EIP are then presented, and the specific functions of the communities along the River are summarized. Finally, we discuss the findings of this paper and the implications for local governments and communities with water pollution problem of rivers. EIP of Xiaoqing River The problem of water pollution has been aggravated substantially due to the fast growth of the manufacturing industry in China. For example, according to China National Environment Statistic Bulletin, water pollution was the largest source of environmental pollution and disruptive accidents between 2001and 2007 (Wang and Zhang, 2009). The Xiaoqing River originates from the western suburb of Jinan, flows from east to west to Beiyuan, then runs across Licheng, Zhangqiu, Zouping and other counties into the sea at Yangjiao Valley. It is one of the most important rivers in Jinan. In the past, Xiaoqing River has experienced multiple uses such as draining flood, irrigating and shipping in the history of Jinan. Xiaoqing River used to be a very busy river, named as Little Salt River for transporting salt since the Jin and Yuan Dynasties. However, in the 1980s, thousands of industrial enterprises without sewage disposal facilities were established along its banks as a result of the fast pace of industrialization in China. At the same time, the population who live on both sides of the river also grew dramatically, which resulted in increasing sanitary waste. The industry of aquiculture and lotus planting were destroyed by the extinction of aquatic life, given severe water pollution: the river was very dirty and smelly. In 2006, the provincial government established some authoritative agencies comprehensively to treat and improve the ecology of the Xiaoqing River, including the Leading Group of the Comprehensive Treatment Project of Xiaoqing River and the Construction Headquarters of the Xiaoqing Project. In June 2007, the Investment and Financing Center of Construction and Development of Xiaoqing River was formally established. The EIP of Xiaoqing River was then conducted for nearly eight years till now with more than 10 million RMB investments. However, there remain many serious ecological problems in the Xiaoqing River, according to interviews with public officials, Department of Water Environmental Improvement (DWEI) and citizens who live along Xiaoqing River, as well as recent news. These issues include the following. The water quality of Xiaoqing River is still far from the V class water quality. There are many sources of pollution in Xiaoqing River. For instance, urban domestic sewage is still discharged into the river without treatment from many direct sewage outlets. Furthermore, the water quality of most streams is below the lowest standard from domestic waste and industrial sewage. The other reason is the lack of clean water sources around the river basin. Both ecological landscape and wetland were not developed for lack of financial investment as part of the ecological construction of Xiaoqing River. At present, the four ecological landscapes are not yet attractive given its unpleasant environment. On the whole, the Western Jinan Wetland of Xiaoqing River area is far from being an ecological model. There was no policy to support the recycling programme of reclaimed water. Despite very improved technology and numerous instruments, the recycling programme for reclaimed water did not achieve its intended goals. For instance, the shares of reclaimed and reused water were still at very low levels. Furthermore, there are some other ecological problems of Xiaoqing River including a lack of public sanitation, a large quantity of ground rubbish and pollution caused by environmental changes. On the whole, the EIP costs more than 10 billion RMB. Yet pollution remains a major issue. Method To obtain rich data and insights into the Xiaoqing River EI, we used a case-study approach. The in-depth case study enabled us to understand both the current main water pollution problems and the role communities along Xiaoqing River and local governments played in the EIP. Qualitative evidence covering different types of data was gathered through both primary and secondary sources (Yin, 1984). There is very sparse literature on community participation in the EI of polluted rivers in China. A notable exception is Boland and Zhu (2012). They analysed mobilizing memories and structural incentives of public participation in China's green communities, demonstrating that ‘the participatory processes associated with such an urban environmental initiative cannot be adequately understood without reference to earlier participatory practices and broader policy priorities guiding development in Chinese cities’ (Boland and Zhu, 2012, p. 147). There is, in fact, no systematically organized data on the role of community compared to the role of government in EIPs. Hence, the secondary-sourced data were obtained via extensive archival research, including yearbooks, internet news and internal reports on the environmental improvement of water of Xiaoqing River and former research literatures. Based on the secondary-sourced data, we came up with semi-structured interview questions and visited four officials of Jinan Environment Protection Bureau (JEPB), four public officials of a street office along the river and ten residents who live by the river. For JEPB, we interviewed the manager, vice manager and two staff members of the DWEI. This department is directly in charge of protecting the water resource and improving ecology of Xiaoqing River. For the street office, we interviewed two middle-level members on the management side and two staff members. The interviews were conducted with a sufficient variety of knowledgeable informants in the DWEI and the street office along Xiaoqing River to provide multiple perspectives (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). In interviews, we asked the actual role and the ideal role of communities in the EIP as they perceived them, the current problems of community participation and its reason, what kind of incentives could enhance community participation and the role of government in encouraging community participation. The interview material provided a subjective account of developments to be compared with the initial ‘objective’ data obtained from secondary sources, such as news reports from internet or newspapers. Subsequently, some of the case histories were shared with and checked by the informants. During our primary data collection process, we interviewed the Chief Manager of JEPB. He introduced the DWEI, which is in charge of water and the EI of Xiaoqing River. Some key issues about the fiscal investment, the current crucial water pollution problems and the current situation of community participation were interpreted and discussed. Based on the qualitative data collected, we identified the key problems and explanations of community participation in this project, and its countermeasures. More specifically, the key issues examined in the case were as follows: (i) What role can communities play in the EIP of Xiaoqing River? (ii) Do you think there is community participation in this EIP? If there is, could you tell us at least one example? (iii) Do you think there is lack of community participation in this EIP? If there is, why? and (iv) What incentives of enhancing community participation should be established by local government? In Table 1, we present some selected excerpt from our interviews and minutes from some environmental conference. Table 1 Selected excerpt from interviews and minutes . (i) What kind of the role can community play in the EIP of Xiaoqing River? . (ii) Do you think there is community participation in this EIP? If there is, could you tell us at least one example? . (iii) Do you think there is lack of community participation in this EIP? If there is, why? . (iv) What incentives can be established by the local government to encourage community participation? . Officials of DWEI of City Environmental Protection Bureau (OO) ‘Community participation is very important for the EIP …. They can monitor some inappropriate activities of private enterprises.’ ‘Yes. But it is still at a very low level.’ ‘Yes. There are very serious problems in this project. I think the main reason is lack of motivation among community members.’ ‘… we should introduce more EIP knowledge to the residents in the community.’ ‘… some residents reported illegal discharging pollution through Micro-blog or Wechat of Urban Environmental Protection Bureau.’ ‘… we should take some measures to motivate students and teachers of primary or middle school, university to have a walk along the Xiaoqing River. And through such activities, citizens’ environmental protection consciousness could be enhanced.’ ‘… the main reason is the deficiency of current management system. For instance, there is seldom communication between enterprises discharged pollutions and residents along the River.’ ‘… they should be an assistant to local government who try to foster environmental protection habit or consciousness of residents.’ Officials of the Street Office along Xiaoqing River (OS) ‘The community undertook some environmental protection responsibility such as introducing EIP knowledge and organizing EIP actions.’ ‘Yes, of course. We did lots of jobs on the project, such as introducing environmental protection knowledge, organizing some environmental activities.’ ‘Yes. Community government was actually in ‘a dreadful hole’…’ ‘Urban governmental should give us much more financial investment to motivate community participation’. ‘Yes. It is an institutional problem. Urban government thinks we could do more without financial support. But the residents usually put all the responsibility to us.’ ‘… a fluent communicating system among urban government, enterprises, the residents, and street office need to be established.’ ‘… Community is an important unit in the EIP for its close relationship with residents.’ ‘Yes. We organized EIP activities at the beginning of the year, Mumm, maybe in February.’ Citizen lived along Xiaoqing River (CS) ‘… It can organize some EIP actions of Xiaoqing River and introduce some knowledge of EIP.’ ‘Oh. May be there were some kinds participation. But I did not know.’ ‘Yes. I never participated in such activities because I don't know how to do it.’ ‘I think the government should establish multiple approaches for community participation.’ ‘oh… we can report illegal pollution affairs through Wechat.’ ‘… It should be the key connector between DWEI, social organization and residents’. ‘Yes. I participated in such activities only once. Because I found it is useless.’ ‘… it should reward those residents or NGO who contribute to EIP of Xiaoqing River both voluntarily and financially.’ ‘Wechat of Urban Environmental Protection bureau??oh, maybe there is, but I don't know.’ . (i) What kind of the role can community play in the EIP of Xiaoqing River? . (ii) Do you think there is community participation in this EIP? If there is, could you tell us at least one example? . (iii) Do you think there is lack of community participation in this EIP? If there is, why? . (iv) What incentives can be established by the local government to encourage community participation? . Officials of DWEI of City Environmental Protection Bureau (OO) ‘Community participation is very important for the EIP …. They can monitor some inappropriate activities of private enterprises.’ ‘Yes. But it is still at a very low level.’ ‘Yes. There are very serious problems in this project. I think the main reason is lack of motivation among community members.’ ‘… we should introduce more EIP knowledge to the residents in the community.’ ‘… some residents reported illegal discharging pollution through Micro-blog or Wechat of Urban Environmental Protection Bureau.’ ‘… we should take some measures to motivate students and teachers of primary or middle school, university to have a walk along the Xiaoqing River. And through such activities, citizens’ environmental protection consciousness could be enhanced.’ ‘… the main reason is the deficiency of current management system. For instance, there is seldom communication between enterprises discharged pollutions and residents along the River.’ ‘… they should be an assistant to local government who try to foster environmental protection habit or consciousness of residents.’ Officials of the Street Office along Xiaoqing River (OS) ‘The community undertook some environmental protection responsibility such as introducing EIP knowledge and organizing EIP actions.’ ‘Yes, of course. We did lots of jobs on the project, such as introducing environmental protection knowledge, organizing some environmental activities.’ ‘Yes. Community government was actually in ‘a dreadful hole’…’ ‘Urban governmental should give us much more financial investment to motivate community participation’. ‘Yes. It is an institutional problem. Urban government thinks we could do more without financial support. But the residents usually put all the responsibility to us.’ ‘… a fluent communicating system among urban government, enterprises, the residents, and street office need to be established.’ ‘… Community is an important unit in the EIP for its close relationship with residents.’ ‘Yes. We organized EIP activities at the beginning of the year, Mumm, maybe in February.’ Citizen lived along Xiaoqing River (CS) ‘… It can organize some EIP actions of Xiaoqing River and introduce some knowledge of EIP.’ ‘Oh. May be there were some kinds participation. But I did not know.’ ‘Yes. I never participated in such activities because I don't know how to do it.’ ‘I think the government should establish multiple approaches for community participation.’ ‘oh… we can report illegal pollution affairs through Wechat.’ ‘… It should be the key connector between DWEI, social organization and residents’. ‘Yes. I participated in such activities only once. Because I found it is useless.’ ‘… it should reward those residents or NGO who contribute to EIP of Xiaoqing River both voluntarily and financially.’ ‘Wechat of Urban Environmental Protection bureau??oh, maybe there is, but I don't know.’ Table 1 Selected excerpt from interviews and minutes . (i) What kind of the role can community play in the EIP of Xiaoqing River? . (ii) Do you think there is community participation in this EIP? If there is, could you tell us at least one example? . (iii) Do you think there is lack of community participation in this EIP? If there is, why? . (iv) What incentives can be established by the local government to encourage community participation? . Officials of DWEI of City Environmental Protection Bureau (OO) ‘Community participation is very important for the EIP …. They can monitor some inappropriate activities of private enterprises.’ ‘Yes. But it is still at a very low level.’ ‘Yes. There are very serious problems in this project. I think the main reason is lack of motivation among community members.’ ‘… we should introduce more EIP knowledge to the residents in the community.’ ‘… some residents reported illegal discharging pollution through Micro-blog or Wechat of Urban Environmental Protection Bureau.’ ‘… we should take some measures to motivate students and teachers of primary or middle school, university to have a walk along the Xiaoqing River. And through such activities, citizens’ environmental protection consciousness could be enhanced.’ ‘… the main reason is the deficiency of current management system. For instance, there is seldom communication between enterprises discharged pollutions and residents along the River.’ ‘… they should be an assistant to local government who try to foster environmental protection habit or consciousness of residents.’ Officials of the Street Office along Xiaoqing River (OS) ‘The community undertook some environmental protection responsibility such as introducing EIP knowledge and organizing EIP actions.’ ‘Yes, of course. We did lots of jobs on the project, such as introducing environmental protection knowledge, organizing some environmental activities.’ ‘Yes. Community government was actually in ‘a dreadful hole’…’ ‘Urban governmental should give us much more financial investment to motivate community participation’. ‘Yes. It is an institutional problem. Urban government thinks we could do more without financial support. But the residents usually put all the responsibility to us.’ ‘… a fluent communicating system among urban government, enterprises, the residents, and street office need to be established.’ ‘… Community is an important unit in the EIP for its close relationship with residents.’ ‘Yes. We organized EIP activities at the beginning of the year, Mumm, maybe in February.’ Citizen lived along Xiaoqing River (CS) ‘… It can organize some EIP actions of Xiaoqing River and introduce some knowledge of EIP.’ ‘Oh. May be there were some kinds participation. But I did not know.’ ‘Yes. I never participated in such activities because I don't know how to do it.’ ‘I think the government should establish multiple approaches for community participation.’ ‘oh… we can report illegal pollution affairs through Wechat.’ ‘… It should be the key connector between DWEI, social organization and residents’. ‘Yes. I participated in such activities only once. Because I found it is useless.’ ‘… it should reward those residents or NGO who contribute to EIP of Xiaoqing River both voluntarily and financially.’ ‘Wechat of Urban Environmental Protection bureau??oh, maybe there is, but I don't know.’ . (i) What kind of the role can community play in the EIP of Xiaoqing River? . (ii) Do you think there is community participation in this EIP? If there is, could you tell us at least one example? . (iii) Do you think there is lack of community participation in this EIP? If there is, why? . (iv) What incentives can be established by the local government to encourage community participation? . Officials of DWEI of City Environmental Protection Bureau (OO) ‘Community participation is very important for the EIP …. They can monitor some inappropriate activities of private enterprises.’ ‘Yes. But it is still at a very low level.’ ‘Yes. There are very serious problems in this project. I think the main reason is lack of motivation among community members.’ ‘… we should introduce more EIP knowledge to the residents in the community.’ ‘… some residents reported illegal discharging pollution through Micro-blog or Wechat of Urban Environmental Protection Bureau.’ ‘… we should take some measures to motivate students and teachers of primary or middle school, university to have a walk along the Xiaoqing River. And through such activities, citizens’ environmental protection consciousness could be enhanced.’ ‘… the main reason is the deficiency of current management system. For instance, there is seldom communication between enterprises discharged pollutions and residents along the River.’ ‘… they should be an assistant to local government who try to foster environmental protection habit or consciousness of residents.’ Officials of the Street Office along Xiaoqing River (OS) ‘The community undertook some environmental protection responsibility such as introducing EIP knowledge and organizing EIP actions.’ ‘Yes, of course. We did lots of jobs on the project, such as introducing environmental protection knowledge, organizing some environmental activities.’ ‘Yes. Community government was actually in ‘a dreadful hole’…’ ‘Urban governmental should give us much more financial investment to motivate community participation’. ‘Yes. It is an institutional problem. Urban government thinks we could do more without financial support. But the residents usually put all the responsibility to us.’ ‘… a fluent communicating system among urban government, enterprises, the residents, and street office need to be established.’ ‘… Community is an important unit in the EIP for its close relationship with residents.’ ‘Yes. We organized EIP activities at the beginning of the year, Mumm, maybe in February.’ Citizen lived along Xiaoqing River (CS) ‘… It can organize some EIP actions of Xiaoqing River and introduce some knowledge of EIP.’ ‘Oh. May be there were some kinds participation. But I did not know.’ ‘Yes. I never participated in such activities because I don't know how to do it.’ ‘I think the government should establish multiple approaches for community participation.’ ‘oh… we can report illegal pollution affairs through Wechat.’ ‘… It should be the key connector between DWEI, social organization and residents’. ‘Yes. I participated in such activities only once. Because I found it is useless.’ ‘… it should reward those residents or NGO who contribute to EIP of Xiaoqing River both voluntarily and financially.’ ‘Wechat of Urban Environmental Protection bureau??oh, maybe there is, but I don't know.’ A top-down community participation system of Xiaoqing River EIP The river-leader system was introduced by the municipal party committee and government of Wuxi city, Jiangsu province after a large explosion of blue-green algae in Tai Lake. The blue-green algae caused the water quality to deteriorate severely. In addition, there are some other pollution sources, such as illegal discharging of industry pollution. In river-leader system, the quality of the regional water environment was monitored by street office. This worked very well in practice in China till now but this does not depend on legislation but on people in the river-leader system (Wang, 2009). Furthermore, analysis, based on the theory of institutional economics, argue that there are some institutional disadvantages including principle-agent dilemmas, a non-transparent supervision system, neglect of social forces and inefficiency in administrative accountability (Wang and Zhang, 2009). Therefore, the river-leader system should be seen only as an emergency transitional system with some structural deficiencies; the aim should be to construct a sustainable environmental improvement system which involves multiple subjects in the whole society based on the river-leader system. In the EIP of Xiaoqing River, the chief official of the local party committee and government of each street office were appointed to be chief river-leaders or Branch river-leaders with specific jurisdiction and duties. They are supervised through 184 pieces of river-leaders’ bulletins providing information from each side of the society. Statements, the Implementation Program of River Management and Improvement in Jinan and Performance Evaluation Regulation of River-leader of the City Zone in Jinan, were designed and printed explicitly to list the most important tasks such as sewage interception, pollution control, mud cleaning and landscape construction and improvement (Net, 2011). Our interviews showed that the river-leader system was complimented much more by the government side than by local citizens from communities along the Xiaoqing River. There were also quite distinct opinions on the reasons for water pollution of the Xiaoqing River. Most public officials suggested that insufficient public investment, illegal discharging pollutants of private enterprises and arbitrary rubbish dumping of citizens caused a vicious circle of repeated pollution. However, the citizens argued that the key cause of repeated pollution was the lack of supervision and effective management by public officials. This was fed by a kind of Eastern culture named as docility culture in China wherein it is hard to motivate people to participate in public affairs by themselves. Hence, river-leader is typical of top-down systems depending solely on the positive attitude and actions of public officials and citizens but without their participation. Ecological Model Zone Movement In order to improve the water environment and sustainable development, a movement of Ecological Model Zone (EMZ) was advocated by each Street Office1 and neighbourhood committee.2 In this movement, the street offices and neighbourhood committees are guided and motivated to undertake some parts of ecological responsibility in the region of Xiaoqing River. For instance, the EMZ programme is implemented with the requirement of provincial government. Ecological Civilized Village, Good Ecological County and EMZ are to be important administrative actors with strict environmental standards set by public officials. And as of now, sewage treatment facilities have been constructed or are being constructed in the twenty counties of the Xiaoqing River region. Furthermore, some regulations were supplemented to enhance the utility rate of reclaimed water and implement ecological wetland programmes. For instance, the Jinan City Water Saving Management Act was published to formalize the processing of the reclaimed water treatment facility. Till the end of 2014, 170 reclaimed water facilities were already constructed. On the whole, the EMZ programme is necessary for the sustainable development of Xiaoqing River, while there is still a long way to go to achieve the final targets of the programme given financial, human resources, institutional and other limitations (JEPB, 2012). Community and internet education of EI In the interviews, residents commented that one major approach they use to monitor the situation of water environment along Xiaoqing River is through internet platforms, such as micro-blog and Wechat of JEPB. For example, the Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) of Huaiyin District, Jinan City, designed the first Wechat named Fall in Love with the Blue Sky and Green Lake of Huaiyin Street, started in June, 2014. Wechat is a very popular communication application as smart phones have become widely used in China. According to the financial statement of year 2015 of Tencent, the number of active customers per month was nearly 5.49 billion including the domestic and overseas customers in the first quarter of year 2015 and 46.3 per cent respondents use Wechat as their favourite APP (Curiosity China 2015). Thus, it can be an effective and efficient approach to enhance environmental monitoring, environmental knowledge education and public participation. And it is also a very good communication platform between local governments and citizens. In addition, public officials from the District EPB actively advocated and executed the programme of Environmental Protection Education move into Community. In January 2015, officials of EPB from Changqing District went into each green community to promote environmental protection knowledge by Notebook of Environmental Protection Service for Citizen and other actions such as environmental knowledge bulletins, environmental protection slogans and ecological promotion. Community residents showed great interest and enthusiasm to join the community promotion actions of environmental protection. Social organization participation of EI The Green Qilu Non-profit Service Centre of Environmental Protection was established in Jinan in April 2014, formerly known as Green Qilu Action Research Centre. It is a non-profit environmental protection organization sponsored by a group of citizens. Green Qilu is committed to promoting the environment of Shandong Province, and advocates having green life every day. The duties of Green Qilu include rapid intervention in environmental emergencies, advocating public participation in environmental education, supporting stakeholders, sending out the views of the independent voices of NGOs and devoting itself to local environmental protection. Since 2012, Green Qilu organized ‘Have a Walk along Xiaoqing River’ sessions periodically to monitor and record the general situation of water quality and pollution of Xiaoqing River, then publish the effectiveness and problems on their website for the first time, as well as report them to public officials of DWEI of JEPB. It not only encouraged the citizens to gain more information about EIP of Xiaoqing River; but also played an important role of social supervision on the municipal environmental protection programme. Green Qilu is the social organization that most frequently participated in the EIP of Xiaoqing River activities till now. Hence, in this project, the role of social organizations remains relatively limited. Discussion Local government dominance in EI Our interviews and literature review show that there are two main characteristics of the EIP of the Xiaoqing River. First, public officials, especially from local government undertook both the role of planning and the role of executing at the same time. Other important stakeholders including private enterprises, community and citizens living along the river were not involved in the project from planning stage, and only passively afterwards. Second, the financial investment in EIP of Xiaoqing River mainly came from local public finance, at more than 10 billion RMB. Conversely, the financial investments of corporate enterprises or social organizations were too small to be counted. Most social organizations were small in size, lacking funding. For example, the registered capital of Green Qilu is only 10,000 RMB, and it received very few donations. In the first quarter of 2015, receiving only 1283 RMB in total (Qilu, 2015). However, greater government involvement might increase the risk of excluding even further vital community participation (Rawlins and Westby, 2013). It is a serious problem faced by the EIP of Xiaoqing River. This suggests that stakeholders should participate in the process as early as possible from project concept development and planning to implementation, monitoring and evaluating outcomes in order to increase the quality and robustness of decisions. For instance, in Japan, local social organizations, NGOs and residents are the major players in the process of developing local environmental improvement movements. Especially, social organizations play a very important and effective role in local environmental improvement through public service including environmental service delivery (Kook Hyun and Dong Kyun, 2004). Therefore, the EIP of Xiaoqing River calls for comprehensive cooperation between local governments, communities, social organizations and citizens. Lack of legal basis of river-leader system In any society, laws are necessary to ensure appropriate behaviour. The government and other intermediary institutions play a role in bringing together all the stakeholders by creating the legal and institutional platforms for engagement, particularly in cases where communities and common property are involved and user rights are uncertain (Kolinjivadi and Sunderland, 2012). Hence, any good political system should be based on good laws. Both the government and citizens have come to understand this key point in China. In recent years, some environmental protection laws were established in China, but there is no law of river-leader system till now. In the EIP of Xiaoqing River, the river-leader responsibility system consists of two levels of river-leaders including each chief executive of party committee and the street office (JEPB, 2012). In practice, the river-leader system faced some institutional dilemmas, such as the lack of executive power and institutional guarantees, without any legal basis for this arrangement. This resulted in conflict amongst and between each stakeholder including the local government, private enterprises, social organizations and citizens; and it also resulted in opposed opinions between the government side and the society side. The government side noted that enterprises and citizens should account for the water pollution; on the contrary, the society side claimed that the key accountable player should be local government. On the whole, in reality, the EIP of Xiaoqing River is not governed by law but by the people in a river-leader system. Therefore, the river-management system should be legalized and supplemented with some detailed legal provisions. Institutional deficiencies of the EI system As a typical top-down executive system, there is a lack of bottom-up institutions or pathways to join the EIP of Xiaoqing River. Furthermore, the environmental accountability system of each county also is a hierarchical system in which executive officials were supervised by their superiors (JEPB, 2012). We reviewed some typical cases of urban environmental improvement project overseas, such as the Reconstruction of Ruhr Industrial Base in Germany. In that project, most of the experts, scientists and local government noted that the central driving force for the project was comprehensive cooperation and participation by those multiple stakeholders such as local enterprise, social organization and residents (Liu, 2008). However, river-leader system could not provide this kind of community participation approach for those multiple stakeholders. Gulick, a social scientist in the field of organization management, argued that ‘in any practical situation the problem of organization must be approached from both top and down. … In that case one would develop the plan of an organization or reorganization both from the top downward and from the bottom upward, and would reconcile the two at the center’ (Gulick and Urwick, 1937, p. 10). Even though the river-leader system worked well till now, its institutional deficiencies would be a dilemma in the future given potential inconsistencies in leadership and funding priorities. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the river-leader system by improving the community participation approach. The small scale and size of social environmental organization It is well established that NGOs play an increasingly prominent role in EI, participating in many activities—negotiation, monitoring and implementation—traditionally reserved to states (Raustiala, 1997). Some claim that the expansion of NGOs in these policy areas may signal an end or at least a fundamental challenge to the concept of state sovereignty and to the primacy of the state in international law and relations (Cameron and Mackenzie, 1995). However, the number of environmental NGOs in Jinan is still at a very low level, a picture reflected across the world. For instance, one of the managers of Green Qilu initiated the first environmental NGO named as Walk into the Nature both in Jinan and Shandong Province in June 2002. But it was difficult to run the NGO and in March 2013; it was legally closed for non-conformity with regulations at its annual inspection. At present, Green Qilu is the only active and effective environmental NGO in Jinan. Therefore, the extent of community participation is also restricted by the limited numbers of environmental NGOs in Jinan. This is also a common issue across China. Implications from the study Our study suggests a number of implications for local environmental protection government and communities with environmental pollution problems. First, our study shows some good experiences of EIP of Xiaoqing River, such as the river-leader system, Wechat, Green Qilu. The river-leader System is a brand new system innovated by Chinese governmental officials and it operated very well in some areas with polluted rivers in China, such as Wuxi, Jinan, Harbin. However, more problems have emerged as time goes by, such as the negative attitude of some public officials and the lack of legitimacy for these initiatives. Hence, some institutions including a clearly legitimate basis for the river-leader system, an incentive system of community participation and social environmental organization should be developed in China. On the whole, while a top-down community participation system has some advantages such as much more efficiency and effectiveness, it also has some serious deficiencies for its relative weak bottom-up participation system. Second, a lack of community participation is a quite common problem of EIP in many developing countries, including China. Community participation is effective in EIs in some other Asian countries such as Japan and (South) Korea and the promotion of community participation has been the focus of critical attention for many years now (Arnstein, 1969; Pretty, 1995; White, 1996). The specific analysis of community participation in EIP of Xiaoqing River presented in our paper suggests that government should pay more attention to how to enhance the positive attitude and active participation of private enterprises, citizens and social organizations in communities along polluted rivers. Third, approaches to community participation of the EIP of Xiaoqing River should be expanded. Some practitioners have proposed a wide range of participatory approaches for different levels of stakeholder engagement (Lynam et al., 2007) such as promoting social learning (Blackstock, Kelly, and Horsey, 2007), co-generation of knowledge, increasing the participant's capacity to use this knowledge (Greenwood, Whyte, and Harkavy, 1993) and decision-making that is fair, holistic and encompassing a diversity of values and needs (Richards, Blackstock, and Carter, 2004). In the EIP of Xiaoqing River, the approach of community participation is very limited and there is a need to establish some bottom-up institutions to promote community participation. Finally, the case of EIP of Xiaoqing River also illustrates an alternative route to improving community participation in preventing river pollution. River-leader obviously is a top-down management system which was designed by local government, and the higher level of the party organization and government appoints chief members from the grass-roots level of the Communist Party of China as river-leaders. The study revealed that members of the Communist Party played a very important role in preventing water pollution and promoting EI in China. Therefore, it is in this sense an effective top-down participation system in EI programme terms. But the sustainability and stability of that system remains an open question and it should be supplemented with strong bottom-up participation institutions for adoption in other similar projects elsewhere. Conclusion In this paper, we illustrated how the Chinese environmental protection government (especially local) pioneered the innovation of a top-down system called the river-leader system. We also showed both the advantages and disadvantages of this top-down system in water environmental improvement. We found that the river-leader system, born out of the Chinese party system and political institutions, played a much more dominant role than the bottom-up system consisting of community, social organization and citizens in the case of the EIP of Xiaoqing River. Our findings showed that the dominant position of local government, lack of participative motivation of public officials and citizens, and the low level of social environmental organization are all areas of concern for community participation in EIP of Xiaoqing River. Thus, we suggest that the river-leader system should be improved by supplementing it with a sound legislative basis, incentive systems and a cooperative approach involving social environmental organizations. While the river-leader system is quite different from cases in other countries, it seems to work well in China till now and might also lend some experiences to countries with serious water pollution problems. Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge Yuzhong Xie, Cong Li, Shaokai Li, Wenhai Chang and Lu Wang for their unconditional support and help for data collection and interview arrangements. The authors would also like to thank public officials of Urban Environmental Protection Bureau of Jinan, Department of Water Environmental Protection, Wendong street office and residents we interviewed. The authors are very grateful for the invaluable comments and advice given by Prof. Xinjian Bao, Prof. CaiYun Wang and Prof. Guixiang Chang during the revision of the paper. 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Google Scholar Google Preview OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat COPAC Author notes * " Yanlei Hu is at the College of Economics and Management, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China. * " Cathy Yang Liu is Associate Professor at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA. * " Tong Chen is Professor at the College of Economics and Management, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China. © Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal. 2016. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Ecological improvement and community participation: lessons from Xiaoqing River Ecological Improvement Project in Jinan, China
JO - Community Development Journal
DO - 10.1093/cdj/bsw049
DA - 2017-01-14
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/ecological-improvement-and-community-participation-lessons-from-G0VWCmzgYd
SP - 21
VL - 52
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -