A Study On Countermeasures For Public Participation In Community Environment

Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, put forward the overall objective of the reform as “promoting the modernization of national governance systems and governance capacity." As one of the government’s basic public functions, environmental protection has become an essential part of the modern national governance system.For a long time, China’s environmental management has been exercising a single center model. Serving as the main body of management, our government has long been playing the role of an "All-round Government", which not only seeks to keep rapid economic growth, maintain social stability, and ensure rational allocation of resources, but also shoulders the responsibility of protecting the environment.However, excessive concentration of government power exerts a negative impact upon market order and limits the development of non-governmental organizations.Since environmental protection organization lags behind, the general public could hardly get access to participate in environmental governance. Due to a lack of sense of participation and identity, people gradually lost their passion for the cause of environmental governance, thereby regarding it as the sheer responsibility of the government. Although totally relying on the government in this regard, they take an indifferent attitude towards the environmental policies issued by the government.Currently, the biggest problem for environmental policies in China lies in implementation. While the government dominates the formulation and implementation of policies, the public is more or less passive on the matter.Consequently, in implementing the policies, a lack of public participation is likely to cause misunderstanding, distortion of the policies, and even conflict or confrontation,greatly affecting the implementation. This paper is going to take Lengshuitan,Yongzhou City as an example, to give a comprehensive analysis of its successful experience and existing problems in community environmental governance with public participation. The goal is to explore how to promote public participation in small and medium-sized cities, so as to provide reference for urban governance decision-makers.This paper is divided into five parts: The first chapter is introduction, offering an introduction of the background and significance of this topic, as well as domestic andinternational research status, ideas and methods. The second chapter introduces the theoretical basis and definition of concepts. In this chapter, concepts such as governance, community, public participation are defined. Moreover, it gives a brief account of the public participation theory and analyzes its merits and specific application in this paper. The third chapter discusses public participation in community environmental governance, including the main body, major ways,significance and feasibility of public participation in environmental governance. The third chapter is case analysis. Taking Lengshuitan, Yongzhou City as an example, the achievements and existing problems of its public participation in environmental governance are analyzed. The forth chapter provides the countermeasures to promote public participation in community environmental governance in view of the its present situation in our country. The fifth chapter deals with research conclusions and deficiencies.