Environmental Security in the Asia-Pacific

I. Watson, C. Pandey, I. Watson, C. Pandey

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781349697236
  9781137494108
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137494122
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book focuses on both North-South and South-South relations to reveal an understanding of major climate change and climate change management issues through practices and narratives of environmental security in a specific regional context.

CHAPTER 1

Fragmented Environmental Discourse in People’s Republic of China: Identity, Legitimacy, and Local Agents

Heidi Ning Kang Wang-Kaeding

Introduction

It becomes impossible to address global climate change and environmental security without engaging China in global cutbacks in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission (Harris, 2011). China is the largest national source of the GHG pollution. It also became the world’s largest energy user in 2009, overtaking the United States (IEA, 2010). Efforts to address global climate change need China’s cooperation, as much as China needs the issue of climate change cooperation both regionally and globally. Yet responses to climate change are also based on particular perceptions and narratives of environmental security. China’s engagement in climate change results not only from ongoing international pressure but also from the relations between Beijing’s own diplomatic and domestic concerns with traditional geopolitics and the impacts of climate change on its environmental security. The Chinese government often utilizes the climate change issue to resume domestic dialogue and claim domestic and international legitimacy as an emerging BRIC nation (Zhang Haibin, 1998). Since the 1990s, a set of climate change principles has also been formulated to guide domestic policy implementation and international environmental negotiation. The National Development and Reform Committee (NDRC) outlines six principles for climate change governance that are often constrained by a myriad of national concerns (Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 Climate change principles and concerns

Principles (adapted from NDRC, 2007: 24–25)

Concerns (adapted from Harris, 2011: 9–10)

Addressing climate change within the broader framework of the country’s “national sustainable development strategy” Adhering to the principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) Addressing both climate change mitigation and adaptation Integrating climate change-related policies with programs for “national and social economic development” Relying on technological advancement for effectively mitigating and adapting to climate change Actively and extensively participating in international cooperation for climate change

Sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs Social stability and regime vitality Propaganda and support for the party and the government Demonstrating leadership among developing countries and challenging the international authority of the US Environmentally sustainable development as a medium-and long-term objective Obtaining aid and technology from developed countries

The juxtaposition of principles and domestic concerns depicts the paradoxical mentality of the Chinese political actors in dealing with climate change. On the one hand, they are eager to get involved and recognized in the international community, and on the other hand, they are reluctant to commit commensurate responsibilities. National concerns are fetters that climate change delegates “dance with” on the global stage.

Whereas climate change and its effect on the environment is claimed to be “the ultimate expression of unsustainable patterns of growth,” it is also fundamentally an issue of discourse, perceptions, and identities (Bina, 2011: 48). China often refuses having a bigger responsibility in climate change but claims a moral high ground by emphasizing the progress it has achieved and the contribution it has made in cutting emissions while being “able to maintain economic growth” (Bina, 2011: 52). This has recently been manifested with the pre-G20 target agreement with the United States. The way in which the term “security” is framed determines the amount of resources (whether more or less) to be committed to the battle against global warming. The puzzle of China’s climate change policy is between the ambitious moral claims it makes in international negotiations and the standstill situation in domestic commitments and domestic implementations. This can lead to “credibility” gaps in “soft power,” and while the recent US–China pre-G20 agreement on climate change indicates increasing China’s “responsibility,” there are still issues regarding the “narrative” of Chinese “victimhood” implied as a lack of responsibility for decades of emissions by the “first world”, as well as the issue of establishing concrete results and even whether this deal is merely “pushing the problem further into the future.”

I argue in this chapter that the domestic/international paradox results from a fragmented understanding of, and mismatch between, the transnational norm of environmentalism and the relevance of climate change to the sociocultural perspective of changing contemporary Chinese society. To show this paradox and to understand its trajectory and potential resolution, I will first map out the “green discourse” in China since the Communist revolution of 1949 and identify the changes of perceptions of environmentalism from various state-led official points of view. I will then discuss why in some instances the Chinese government tends to change its “green” discourse and location of this question by using various perspectives of mainstream and critical International Relations (IR) theories. After analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the conventional IR theories, this chapter will then proceed to apply an alternative theory or “Localization theory,” through which we provide an alternative approach to understand this “change” question and offer an alternative explanation as to the direction, limits, and opportunities that are emerging in China for addressing issues of environmental security that have regional impact.

Framing Green Discourse in China

Environmentalism in China is highly institutionally fragmented and localized, usually characterized by broad definitions with a preference toward a more “non-confrontational approach” (Ho, 2001: 898). Across “the rise of the rest” countries in the Asia-Pacific, there has been an assumption that a rising middle class will eventually lead to more democracy and to a greater interest in environmental issues or “post-material” issues. Yet often this approach has perhaps underestimated how in the so-called middle-income countries, distinctive territorial pockets with often unequal and different levels and rates of development (as well as tensions between local urban and local rural areas) undermine “national” response strategies. Yet there are also emerging issues regarding how the new Chinese middle class may not want to question the very economic and political system that has given them such leverage and wealth opportunities.

Yet, localizing environmentalism also has an international purpose and the Chinese government has viewed the environmental issue as a platform to rewrite the “Western” geopolitical and Westphalian international order and redefine international discourse as a non-Western “Chinese” approach to hierarchical sovereignty (while Beijing simultaneously upholds the UN principles of sovereign equality). Li Xue, the then deputy director of the Environmental Protection Commission in 1991, viewed the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro as an opportunity “leading to changes in the present state of international relations” (Economy, 1997: 33). Through its involvement in the international environment negotiation, China hopes to at some point establish a “new and equitable international economic order” (Beijing Ministerial Declaration on Environment and Development, 1991: 54).

Zhang Haibin also observes that in the 1970s and early 1980s environmental discourse was at its embryonic state as then there was not enough attention from the state and coherent principles were not yet formulated. The late 1980s also witnesses the beginning of a professionalization and proliferation of green words, such as “sustainable development,” “green GDP,” and “circular economy.” However, it is not enough for the Chinese government to imitate the West if it holds the ambition to change the current international order. In the twenty-first century, the Chinese government has proposed the “made in China” green discourse such as implementation of Scientific Outlook on Development and eventually ecological civilization. Table 1.2 demonstrates a changing vocabulary of party leaders when addressing environmental problems. Domestic developments on environmental governance in China are located in the international context, marked by monumental events in the global environmental governance.

A History of Localizing Environmentalism

The process of localizing environmentalism has been through a diversification of green words and then an adoption of a unified and overarching concept. The discourse has mushroomed between 1972 and 2007, converging toward a “grand discourse” of ecological civilization. Table 1.2 documents the processes of the evolving green discourse, which has been transformed from inward to outward orientated, from passive to active orientated, and from instrumentally modeling on the West to inventing new non-Western approaches and terms. Discourse before the transnational norm of environmentalism was “imported” in 1972 relied upon various local myths and folklores to depict the overwhelming power of human beings vis-à-vis nature. Yu Gong Yi Shan (or “foolish” old folk moving mountains) was taught at schools and widely circulated in the society. Indeed, Cai and Voigts (1993) observe that the hidden agenda of China’s debut in the UN Conference on Human Environment in 1972 is to promote socialism rather than environmental protection. Therefore, the environmental issue was seen as an entry ticket for China to the global arena. It is a story about the determination of a senior citizen to rid the giant mountains for the convenience of his family. His determination impressed the Heaven and the mountains were, therefore, moved with the assistance of the heavenly guardians. This kind of folklore is often used by the Communist Party to mobilize the people into the processes of rapid industrialization, often at the cost of the environment. This kind of folklore is so culturally specific that it is often not understood by people outside of China, but it is clearly effective for domestic political mobilization and local government legitimacy.

Table 1.2 Green discourse evolution in China

From 1972 onwards, the language regarding the relationship between human beings and the environment has been increasingly green and international. The concept of environmental protection was then brought back to China by the Chinese delegates at the UN Conference on Human Development (Xia Hongbao, 2009). Transnational norms of environmental protection then started to be localized in the form of institutions (e.g., National Conferences on Environmental Protection) and laws (e.g., Environmental Protection Law, 1989). Sustainable development, introduced by the Club of Rome in 1972 and redefined in the seminal Brundtland Report in 1987, also became a borrowed national Chinese development strategy. Moreover, the “circular economy,” a concept developed by Walter Stahel and Genevieve Reday, and presented to the European Commission in 1976, was identified and inserted in as a national policy in the 11th Five Year Plan in 2006.

With the increasing attention of the government on environmental issues and the deterioration of environmental damage, public environmental protests have increased 29percent each year since 1996 (Meng Si, 2012). The Chinese government is seemingly pressurized by “the people,” particularly new middle classes, to solve environmental problems, and, by the international community, to make more commitments to fight against the adverse effects of climate change. Western concepts were being localized by the 2000s with the introduction of scientific and diagnostic outlooks on development. However, these terms are vaguely linked to environmental protection and are not institutionalized and implemented. The most recent and comprehensive concept is ecological civilization, used as a replacement of Scientific Outlook on Development because it directly links environmental concerns with the Chinese civilization.¹ The purpose of this term is to complement the technological fix and to transcend bureaucracy and leadership transition, and to institutionalize society. It indicates that China has the historical chromosome and cultural superiority for environmental governance, whereby it can lead the world to a new era of sustainable development.

Indeed, the table surveys this evolving of green discourse, and yet there is no consensus among policy-makers and society regarding what environmentalism is and to what extent this “foreign norm” is and can be localized in China. The prevalent opinions can be divided into three groups of logic: ecological modernization, eco-socialism, and ecological civilization. These three streams are interlocked and also contradictory, thus constituting a fragmented cognition of environmental issues within the sociocultural dimensions, which makes it difficult for the Chinese government to generate a unified voice to negotiate in international environmental cooperation. The following section will, therefore, examine different logics behind the localized environmentalism and how political actors in China make use of them.

Fragmented Perceptions of Environmental Issues

What is required is an attempt to solve the problem that the perceptions of environmentalism are, as a result, too fragmented to reach a consensus within the government and between the government and social organizations. Perceptions of environmental issues and expectations of environmental governance can result from different ways of solving environmental problems. Advocates of ecological modernization theory, including writers such as Arthur Mol, rely on technology and science as their panacea for the “disease” of environmental pollution, but without challenging the capitalist or state system. Eco-socialists contend that the root of the environmental problems is the capitalist system itself and, therefore, the change of the economic and social structure of capitalism is the answer to environmental problems. Proponents of ecological civilization seek a “spiritual therapy” from Chinese tradition, history, and culture, and try to institutionalize the traditional wisdom into governance. A mixture and juxtaposition of science, social structure, and tradition encompass the green discourses that are displayed in the above-mentioned table, which represents the fragmented perceptions of environmental issues in China, thus affording an understanding of the Chinese government’s stance on climate change.

Ecological Modernization: Adapting to the Market Logic?

Ecological modernization (EM) reconciles economic development and environmental protection, focusing on how to include rising environmental awareness into a reorganized societal structure established for future economic growth. The school of EM, particularly from Northwest Europe, is a broad church roughly divided into four streams (Murphy, 2000). The first phase is represented by the work of Joseph Huber, the founding father of the EM school. His 1985 signature theory proclaimed that the advancement of science and technology can solve environmental problems so that “the dirty and ugly industrial caterpillar will transform into an ecological butterfly” (cited in Mol, 1995: 37). The second branch shifts away from technological determinism and emphasizes the macroeconomy structure. Scholars in this branch suggest a restructuring of national economies (Janicke, 1985; Simonis, 1989), from resource-intensive to knowledge-intensive industries (Gouldson and Murphy, 1997: 75). The third division factors in institutional capacity building as an improvement of environmental governance (Spaargaren and Mol, 1992). The last branch dilutes the technological determinism and considers EM as a political strategy and social construct, instead of a “grand solution” (Boehmer-Christiansen and Weidner, 1995; Gouldson and Murphy, 1996; Weale, 1992).

Modernization is a familiar concept in the experiences of the Chinese people. The idea of modernization was introduced in the self-strengthening movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Modernization has been intensified and made tangible since the foundation of the People’s Republic. The first premier Zhou Enlai iterated the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Environmental Security in the Asia-Pacific
• 1. Fragmented Environmental Discourse in People’s Republic of China: Identity, Legitimacy, and Local Agents
• 2. Considering Fuel Subsidies as a Threshold Input for Social Capital Development: Conceptualizing Ownership Rights in Resource Rich Asian Economies
• 3. Climate Change in South Asia: Green Bridging between Nepal and India
• 4. Green Growth and Asian Donors: From Japan to Korea
• 5. Environmental Security and the Contradictory Politics of New Zealand’s Climate Change Policies in the Pacific
• Conclusion
• Index