The Research On The Environmental Protection Function Of The Local Government In The Chinese Decentralization

The construction of ecological civilization is the problem that any country andgovernment must face and pay attention to, whether in the west or in China, for dealingwith the problems of ecological environment, these countries generally take the modedominated by the central government and making local governments as the main body.In other words, the local government is an important and indispensable role inenvironmental protection.However, in China the performance of environmental protection fuctions of localgovernments is far less positive and effective than the central government expects, eventhese fuctions are vacancy. First of all, environmental group events should be theconflict between the enterprise and the government, because of the different rights andinterests.However, in China environmental group events are often reflected as thedialogue and confrontation directly between the citizen and the local government, thatis because of the Chinese Decentralization (i.e. economic decentralization and politicalcentralization are coexisting),local governments burden the great pressure ofachievement for economic development,which makes local governments and enterprisesbe economic interests of alliance so easily and directly. The local government alsoundertakes the legal responsibility of environmental protection, so environmental groupevents are evolved into the game between the local government and the public. But thelocal government deals with the tension between itself and the pepole caused byenvironmental problems inefficiently and negatively, which is disadvantageous to notonly the legitimate rights＇expression for the pepole, but also the conduction ofenvironmental governance in China. In addition, environmental group events as thesocial conflict, affect social stability, and their risk and the performance evaluationsystem of the "one vote veto" system about social public security can not be reconciled,which often have the negative impact on the performance evaluation results for localgovernments, so based on the considerations of the legitimacy and officials＇politicalfuture, local governments fail to facing the environmental group events. Secondly, dueto the decentralization of central authority, local governments have become the executive subject of environmental policy, but differring in the attitudes andexpectations of the central government in environmental governance, when localgovernments formule and implement environmental policies, the"under the policy to the countermeasure " often appears. And the "fragmentation" oflocal government decision-making process in environmental protection is closelyrelated to the fact that the official performance evaluation system of the localgovernment regards environmental protection as the soft indicator.Once again,environment and resource crisis in China, although is caused by the blind pursuit ofeconomic development, but it is also related to the ineffective environmental lawenforcement of local governments. For a long time, in China the legislative departmentstend to fuzzy legislation, which makes the law lack of maneuverability, and the result isthe unclear division of environmental protection function of departments, either shirkingtheir responsibilities, or struggling for power, and the official performance evaluationsystem that pay more attention to economic development than environmental protection,which is not only against environmental protection function of every level ofgovernments, but also not conducive to the rational distribution of environmentalgovernance. Finally, the region of environmental problems and the local administrativeregion do not completely overlap, the environmental pollution may affect the couple ormultiple local governments, and may also involve different levels of local governments.For local governments, this kind of cross-regional environmental governance is thepublic goods. And the current officials performance evaluation system ignored theenvironmental and resource costs of the economic growth, so local governments lackthe dynamic of ecological collaborative governance, or omission, or mutual shirkresponsibility, with the phenomenon of "organized irresponsibility".Usually the action of the local government is mainly affected by three factors,the first is the central government’s instructions and attitude, the second is the will of thelocal government, and the third is the ability of the local government,and through thesame way we can analyse the environmental governance behavior of the localgovernment.The attitude towards environmental protection of the central government isactive and serious, and the decentralization reform of the central government not onlygave great autonomy of economic development for the local government, but also madethe local government have the power to deal with public affairs, such as thedecision-making of environmental protection. However, the central government＇semphasis will not necessarily become a successful environmental policy, whichindicates that the core factor of environmental governance of the local government inChina is not the central government, but is decided by the local government’s will andcapacity. Firstly,the main factor affecting the will of environmental governance of the local government, is the incentive mechanism that affects the political promotion oflocal officials, that is political motivation namely, or called "the political tournament".The characteristic of the political tournament is that the performance evaluation of theofficials focuses on the economic development of a region, although the public isconcerned with environmental protection more than ever before, but under thegovernance of the local government, the citizen cannot directly decide to appoint localofficials or not, but the superior government has the power to appoint and remove localofficials, so this issue is hard to be paid attention as the economic growth for localofficials, and the current official assessment mechanism can not guarantee local officialsmake adequate and effective response to the preference for residents. And, theperformance evaluation of the local government is dominated by the superiorgovernment or the central government, so in order to exhibit high levels of performancecompared with other local governments,the local government competes with each other.Competition among local governments in some kind of significance is the competitionof local "top leaders".In order to obtain political recognition and trust from higher levelsof governments, and increase the chance of promotion, local officials must compete tocomplete the tasks. When the efforts of local officials are hard to be recognized byhigher levels of governments, the super governments must prefer to the explicit, easyindicators, such as economic indicators, according to the indicators they can judge theability and effort of local officials, and determine their political destiny.Becauselocal officials at the same administrative level are in a game of political promotion, anofficial can win in the political promotion or not, mainly depends on hisperformance ranking, so local officials would rather vicious competition withcompetitors,in order to maintain relatively economic leading.In addition, despite theinevitable competition is among local governments, but there is a kindof coordination, that is so-called collusion, or called "dynamic group". In order to copewith the pressure from the assessment,local officials usually have two choices: one isto work hard for the realization of the policy and task, but if the price is too high, or thetask is not attractive or can not be completed, they can make the secondchoice, i.e."adjusted" the assessment results, which need the officials act with unitedstrength. In other words, evaluation mechanism can strengthen the localintergovernmental group consciousness and collective action, and the collectiveidentity has been enhanced. In addition, the incentive system of "joint responsibility" mechanism may also increase the consequences of exposuring to risk, andentice local governments to avoid risk through collusion when the task can not becompleted. The joint responsibility mechanism makes local governments " be boundtogether for good or ill",it is because of the interests of the community, if any, not only the direct responsible person need to assume corresponding responsibilities, but also thesupervisor’s leadership need to take some responsibility, so in the environmental field,for the "joint responsibility" mechanism of "one vote veto" system,andenvironmental protection is a long-term and arduous project, localgovernments are likely to having a consensus, that is for local governments negativeenvironmental management will reduce the risk of environmental governance, so theirwillingness of environmental governance is too low.So in China, the driving force ofenvironmental protection of local governments is seriously insufficient.However, agovernment action, in addition to its intention,we should also follow its ability. Toestablish and improve the environmental friendly society, local governments need tohave the high level of ability of environmental governance. Professor Xie Qingkuipointed out that the measure of government＇s ability is mainly from two aspects, that isthe government itself and the satisfaction of the public. On the one hand, althoughenvironmental protection is a kind of public goods provided by the local government,but its effect needs long-term to be shown, and difficult to be quantified, which makethe environmental protection be the long-term performance. Therefore, the localgovernment may pay attention to environmental protection less than the economicdevelopment, and the capacity of environmental governance is improved difficultly; onthe other hand, influenced by Chinese decentralization and the performanceevaluation mechanism, the local government often develop economy at the expense ofthe environment, and the deterioration of the environment makes the rights oflife,survival and development are infringed for the public, causes public discontent,even intensifing the contradiction between the public and the local government, so theeffectiveness of the capacity of environmental governance is greatly reduced.The main subject of environmental governance--the local government＇ｓwilland capability are not strong, and this problem is difficult to be improved because of theChinese decentralization and the performance evaluation mechanism, that is to say, thelocal people is more effective than the central government to supervise theenvironmental governance of the local government, so the strength of environmentalgovernance which can be responsible for the people and make up for the localgovernment＇s fuctions needs to be looked for to solve the environmental problems ofChina at present, and the non-governmental environmental organizations can cater theneed. In China, non-governmental organizations appeared later, the most criticizedcharacteristic is the "non-governmental" state, which has been doped with thegovernment. And environment protection is the earliest and the mostactive field ofnon-government organizations, which has provided a relatively safe space for the risingand the playing a positive role of non-governmental environmental protection organizations in China.Different from thewestern, Chinese non-governmental environmental protection organizations have takena less confrontational approach, most of them protect environment earnestly, and toachieve their goals by the close cooperation with the government, that is tosay,non-governmental organizations need to obtain the approval from the nation and thegovernment for their legitimacy and political influence,and the government also need toshave strong ties with the community by depending on non-governmentalorganizations. The "embeddedness" of non-governmental organizations inenvironmental protection shows that non-governmental environmentalorganizations exist depending on the government＇s support, but compared with thegovernment, the non-governmental organization is superior in the functions. Firstly inthe economic level, the current performance evaluation mechanism makes the focalpoint of local governments still on the area short-term economicdevelopment, while non-governmental environmental organizationsadvocate sustainable economic development on the basis of environmentalprotection. Secondly in the social level, when formulating public policy,the government often has the choice of "orientation", which is on behalf of the interestsof most people, but when treating vulnerable groups, as the external role thegovernment has a longitudinal angle from top to bottom, they do not know thespecific needs of vulnerable groups; while non-governmental organizations are in thehorizontal perspective equally to this group, they can exchange and communicate withvulnerable groups deeply，and can understand the true problem comprehensively.Fornon-governmental organizations in the field of environmental protection, its intentionis to protect the vulnerable groups from environmental pollution, which are thespecialized organization of processing environmental vulnerable groups＇affairs, and maybe become the social core force together with the government to solveenvironmental problems. Thirdly in the political level, non-governmental organizationsin China through nonpolitical ways participate in the decision-making of thegovernment, i.e. give up any radical, face-to-face confrontation or publicmobilizing strategies to achieve political goals, but play the political leverage throughthe embedded activism way, because of the interests expression beingorganized, non-governmental organizations effectively broaden the channels of interestsexpression for vulnerable groups, and strength the effect of the interests of thegame, which prompt the interests to be fair. Finally, in the cultural level, fornon-governmental organizations, through the way of social mobilizationand advocacy from bottom to top, the concept of environmental protection has wonsupport among the people, and encouraged the news media to supervise the government effectively, besides, to participate in various public welfare activities by the forms ofcharity,charitable donation and launching a volunteer and so on, which canmobilize social resources, and maximize the support and commitment.In China, due to the "embedded" feature, non-governmental environmentalprotection organizations can be harmonious with the government, so if the originalpattern of interests of the non-governmental organizations and the government does notbeen changed, to ascend the importance and influence of environmental governance fornon-governmental organizations through their own constructions, may provide aneffective supplementary power for environmental protection of the government inChina.