Research On Effects Of Fiscal Expenditure In Environmental Risk Governance In China

The Environmental Governance is actually the response to environment risk, no matter the public pollution control in western countries since the 1940s, nor the water pollution control in China since the 1970s. We can learn from practice that the essence of Environmental Governance is to deal with the risk, then how to governance risk should become the function of Government Expenditure as it's the main undertaker of government functions. In this regard, Public Risk Theory provides a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon that the Government Expenditure depends on public risk with the purpose of minimizing the risk.According to the Public Risk Theory, Environment Expenditure and Government Expenditure directly and indirectly deal with environmental risks. Actually, when we expand the scale of Government Expenditure, environmental risk doesn't reduce accordingly but conversely gradually accumulate and lead more systemic risk which will bring more damage. How to explain this phenomenon? What are the really governance effect of China government expenditure? And what are the influencing factors? To answer these questions will be helpful to solve the environmental problems in China.With these purposes, this paper will focus on the risk governance effect of Environmental Expenditure and Government Expenditure and try to find the influencing factor from institutional and behavioral perspectives. The main research conclusions and recommendations include:1. The environmental problem has been transformed as systematic risk which emphasizes the important of risk management.In the process of continuous accumulation, the independent small environmental problems has gradually transformed as systematic risk which will spark greater crisis. Therefore, we should retreat the environmental problem from the risk perspective and pay more attention to the prevention of risk rather than dealing with the crisis.2. The Environmental Risk Index shows that the pollution reduction doesn't mean the risk reduction. This paper provides the Environmental Risk Index from National and local level by establishing a comprehensive environmental risk evaluation system. The results show that the total emissions of major pollutants keep shrinking, while the environmental risk is increased by the risk of environmental degradation and ecological overloaded. Regionally, the environmental risk in East and West China are greater than the central region. The environmental risk in East China more result from the environmental pollution and social events, while in West China it's mainly from the depletion of resources and ecological deterioration.3. The biggest problems of governance effect of government expenditure and environmental expenditure are positive and negative effect both existing and non-significant lags effect.As to the Environmental Expenditure, expanding expenditure scale will be helpful to reduce environmental risks, while weakened by the fragmentation of environment governance duty and "intrinsic inertia" results from the strong preference of economic development. As to Government Expenditure, expanding expenditure scale couldn't reduce environmental risks, while increasing the proportion of non economic expenditure will be helpful to improve the positive effect of environmental governance. The lag effect of the expenditure is not significant, which means that we can't count on expenditure to continual improve the ecological environment quality and should pay more attention to the risk prevention.4. In the short term, the suggestion is to enhance governance effect by adjusting the government expenditure structure under certain expenditure scale. From environmental expenditure level, increasing the proportion of environmental risk prevention expenditure to emphasize the combination with end treatment and source control. From government expenditure level, gradually increasing the proportion of non-economic government expenditure to emphasize the balance of different risks.5. In the long term, the suggestion is to promote multiple co-government in environmental risk governance between government, market and society. With the gradual improvement of the market mechanism, adjusting the relationships among market and government, and mobilizing the enthusiasm of the individuals, company and social organizations to encourage them to participate in environmental risk governance, which is the fundamental way to solve environmental problems in China.6. From long-term consideration it suggests that strengthening the risk management in the framework of national governance. Taking the public risk minimization as the goal, gradually establishing risk management system to monitor public risk in the process of economic and society development, make risk assessment before making a decision and evaluate effectiveness of the risk management, then promoting the transformation of government's role from risk respond-er to risk manager to achieve more development opportunities.The innovation of this paper is to provide a unique research perspective of environment governance based on Public Risk Theory, which is useful to improve the Public Risk Theory and promote the theory's application in the current reform and development, while the shortage is the lack of comprehensive grasp of the public risk which may lead to the limitation in the standpoint and is worth further study.