State power and environmental initiatives in China: Analyzing China’s green building program through an ecological modernization perspective

This paper applies the ecological modernization (EM) framework to analyze China’s green building program. EM focuses on the effective institutionalization of environmental objectives into respective political and economic systems, and thus provides valuable insights into the roles of the state and other stake holders in environmental regulation. Since the mid-2000s, the Chinese government has advanced an aggressive green building campaign, which is distinguished by its speed, scale, and evolution from one of voluntary participation to a top-down implementation through administrative hierarchies. While this has resulted in a remarkable growth of green building projects, questions remain about the effectiveness and sustainability of such a state-centered approach. Though interviews with officials, planners, architects, real estate developers, and property managers in several Chinese cities, data analysis of the green building stock, and surveys of architects, this paper analyzes Chinese green building patterns and situates such patterns among the contradictory motivations of different levels of government and their relationships to different stake holders. This research finds that the top-down state apparatus is not sufficient to overcome these contradictions and the profit motives of the property developers. However, many under-developed opportunities exist to leverage property developers, building professionals, and the public to engage in green building practices. In the end, I argue that the state must embrace reform to build flexible and collaborative movements with other parties with strong public participation. China’s ecological modernization process may feature a stronger state and faster changes, but it is not exempted from the need of political modernization.     

Governing minorities and development in Xishuangbanna, China: Akha and Dai rubber farmers as entrepreneurs

In Xishuangbanna, southern Yunnan, Akha and Dai farmers, regarded in China as “backward”, passive recipients of state-led development, have been “getting rich” on rubber and expanding rubber cultivation into neighbouring Laos. State cash crop campaigns to raise minority farmers’ incomes inadvertently turned minority farmers into dynamic entrepreneurs. This paper builds on Vinay Gidwani’s use of development as a “regime of value” to raise social and economic value to analyze these unexpected results. Local state agents believe they are the agents of development, bringing modest social and economic improvements to minority farmers of obdurate backwardness. Minority farmers see themselves as improving their own incomes and “quality”, a term in China for social value, in an era when they are responsible for their own development. National development discourse encourages citizens to raise population quality by becoming entrepreneurial, a message heard by minority rubber farmers as well as urban elites. Through creative, post-Fordist production models and agile deployment of land, labour, and capital, minority farmers have achieved incomes that exceed those of workers on state rubber farms, large plantations whose Fordist production models are losing out in the uneven transition from a planned economy to a more capitalist market assemblage. Akha and Dai rubber farmers, the “backward” minorities on China’s periphery, have unexpectedly become the forerunners of flexible production arrangements that are prevailing in the arena opened up by China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization.     

Repackaging globalization: A case study of the advertising industry in China

This paper analyzes the transformation of China’s advertising industry as a result of China’s economic reforms and the globalization of the advertising industry. Spatially clustered in the city-regions of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the industry has been structurally and operationally integrated with the global advertising giants, as well as developing local strategies to attract the interest of local consumer markets. While the entry of global multinational advertising businesses has compelled China’s advertisers to accept and adapt to the industry’s globalized institutions, standards, operational procedures and corporate culture, the transformation of China’s advertising industry is best understood as a consequence of the interaction between globalization and localization.     

On China’s growing geo-economic influence and the evolution of variegated capitalism

China’s growing geo-economic clout globally has attracted significant research attention over the past few years. Rather than strictly adopt a national-specific and path-dependent perspective, this paper offers a nuanced perspective on the rationale of Chinese economic expansions overseas. I propose we view China’s growing geo-economic influence as a relational development, inextricably connected to broader changes in global capitalism, especially the failure of the US government to maintain confidence in the dollar. The paper probes critically the underlying logics of two recent developments: (1) the role of the China Investment Corporation (a new sovereign wealth fund) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in accessing new markets worldwide; and (2) the policies to extend the global reach of the Chinese yuan. I argue that these phenomena are concatenated to China’s broader aim to secure domestic economic security, given its vast holdings of dollar reserves and its macroeconomic constraints through the maintenance of a fixed foreign exchange regime. These developments in turn contour and sustain the evolution of the variegated global system of capitalism.     

The dilemma of decontamination: A Gramscian analysis of the Mexican transgenic maize dispute

An intense environmental dispute surrounds the maize-fields of Mexico. Mexican maize traditional varieties (or ‘landraces’) constitute a global genetic resource that may well be critical to future agricultural development and corn breeding. Many environmentalists, farmers, and consumers in Mexico are therefore concerned that their maize landraces may have been ‘contaminated’ by imported transgenic maize, grown in the USA. The criticisms of this transgenic technology are complex and call into question the nature of the boundary between political and ecological (i.e. scientific) disputes. Our paper surveys these criticisms, and this political-scientific boundary, in a three-part analysis. First, we turn to Gramsci’s notes on science from his eleventh prison notebook to rethink the political ecology of transgenic maize, i.e., the way the ecological analysis of transgenic introgression is treated as politics. Second, we present the multiple criticisms of transgenic maize as scalar phenomena. Third, we review the recent scientific literature on transgene introgression to evaluate recent calls for the ‘decontamination’ of Mexican maize. Our reading illustrates two dilemmas facing the group that occupies the hegemonic subject-position in this dispute, ecological scientists. First, the popular desire to ‘decontaminate’ Mexican maize exceeds their capacities (due to complications involved with sampling). Second, although the political debate surrounding ‘contaminated’ Mexican maize exceeds science, the boundary between the dispute’s scientific and parascientific elements cannot be adjudicated scientifically. In other words, the boundary between science and politics is porous. Thus in two respects the dispute is ecological, yet beyond the capacity of this science to resolve. Yet, following Gramsci, these findings should not lead us to see science as mere ideology, or apolitical, or encourage a retreat into metaphysics. Rather it points to the need for a social transformation that sees science as “humanity forging its methods of research … in other words, culture, the conception of the world.” By exploring the dilemmas of decontamination, the dispute over transgene introgression in Mexican maize-fields provides an opportunity to elaborate upon Gramsci’s neglected insights into the politics of science.     

生态系统评估的国际案例及其经验

为了给决策者和公众提供客观的生态系统状态信息,国际上开展了一系列的生态系统评估项目。这些生态系统评估可以归结为两个发展方向,一是从科学的角度客观公正地评估生态系统的状态,其主要代表是美国国家生态指标研究和美国生态系统的状态评估;二是在生态系统状态评估的基础上进一步分析生态系统与社会经济系统的联系以服务于后续的政策干预,其主要代表是千年生态系统评估和UNEP全球环境展望。综合分析这些案例发现,这些生态系统评估项目存在如下几个方面的特点或经验：①合适的生态指标是生态系统评估的科学基础;②合理的概念性评估框架是生态系统评估的核心支柱;③将生态系统与社会经济系统联系起来使评估结果能直接服务于政策;④生态系统管理的复杂性和长期性要求必须对生态系统进行连续滚动评估;⑤多利益相关方的参与是使生态系统评估的结果得到广泛认可和应用的最有效途径。如果能够将这两个发展方向结合起来,生态系统评估将能更好地服务于生态政策制定和区域可持续发展。     

Approaches for Monitoring and Assessment of Ecological Benefits of National Key Ecological Projects

In recent decades, due to the combined effect of human activities and climate change, the ecosystem of our country has been continuously degraded, seriously affecting the sustainable economic and social development. In order to protect and recover the ecosystem, China has invested heavily in launching a series of key ecological programs and projects including North Shelter Forest Program, Grain for Green Project and integrated ecosystem management of rock desertification. How to comprehensively and timely grasp the ecological effects and existing flaws of the implementation of key ecological projects so as to scroll the implementation of ecological projects and ensure the implementation effect of the projects, and promote the follow-up ecological engineering deployment of being scientific and space-oriented is a major imperative for the country. Therefore, the National Key Research and Development Program of China set up the project of “Monitoring and Assessment of Ecological Benefits of Key Ecological Engineering in China”. Through the implementation of this project, we will establish an indicator system for monitoring and evaluating the ecological benefits of key ecological projects, developing various technical systems for monitoring and evaluating the ecological benefits of key ecological projects, quantitatively evaluating the ecological benefits of key ecological projects, and concise the technical approaches to enhancing ecological benefits. We will provide a scientific basis for future planning and management of key ecological projects.     

The ecological modernisation of SMEs in the UK’s construction industry

Ecological Modernisation (EM) theorists argue that businesses in industrialised nations are ecologically restructuring in response to market signals, and that economic actors increasingly perceive a business case for sustainability. Whilst UK policymakers urge companies to undertake environmental measures voluntarily on the basis that it will be good for business, a qualitative study exploring the environmental practices of small and medium-sized construction firms found that the opinions of owner-managers had little resonance with this ‘win-win’ rhetoric. Respondents did not perceive the financial returns to be gained from eco-efficiency measures to be significant enough to warrant the short-term investment in time and resources required to pursue them. Moreover, the market was not signalling that product value could be raised or that customers could be won by embracing environmental best practice. The paper concludes by questioning the UK government’s faith in EMs ‘win-win’ ideology to encourage the greening of industry.     

Identifying China’s leading world city: a network approach

This paper reports our research on China’s world cities. Formal network analysis of air passenger linkages for recent years among China’s most populous cities and among many of the world’s largest cities allows us to identify the country’s leading world city from among the leading Mainland candidates, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. We theorize our findings about China’s world cities in relation to both global forces (and China’s increasing entanglement with them) and the policies and actions of the national state. We examine the national and global urban network through a longitudinal, two-level analysis of airline passenger travel for four time points between about 1990 and 2005. We show that Beijing was China’s leading world city at the beginning of the time period, a status it lost nationally in as early as 1995, and then globally 10 years later. On the other hand Shanghai became China’s leading world city, and it acquired this status first nationally in 2000, and then globally in 2005. The changing status of the Chinese capital corresponds to the country’s increasing involvement with the capitalist world economy. Shanghai’s ascendance as the leading world city in China may indicate that global forces have come to play an increasingly important role relative to that of the developmental state.

湖泊蓝藻水华生态灾害形成机理及防治的基础研究

湖泊具有供水、渔业、旅游、维持区域生态系统平衡等功能,是支撑我国经济和社会发展的重要资源之一。但是近30年来,湖泊富营养化所导致的蓝藻水华频繁暴发,生态灾害事件频发,严重影响湖泊功能的发挥, 制约区域经济可持续发展。针对国家在保障区域水安全和生态安全、保护人民健康及建设和谐社会等方面的重大需求,国家重点基础研究发展计划项目“湖泊蓝藻水华生态灾害形成机理及防治的基础研究”于2008年7月正式立项。项目拟解决的关键科学问题包括：①湖泊蓝藻水华主要衍生污染物的形成机理、迁移转化规律和毒理效应;②蓝藻水华导致湖泊生态系统结构变化和功能退化的机理;③蓝藻水华生态灾害评估及调控机理。针对上述科学问题,项目以蓝藻水华污染物的产生、湖泊生态系统结构与功能的响应以及生态灾害的评估与调控为研究主线,重点开展以下几个方面的研究：①蓝藻水华衍生污染物的产生及其环境过程;②蓝藻水华衍生污染物的毒理效应与生态和健康风险;③蓝藻水华导致湖泊生态系统结构变化与功能退化的关键过程和机制;④蓝藻水华灾害治理和调控的的技术原理和途径。项目的实施和完成将为我国湖泊蓝藻水华生态灾害的预防与控制提供理论和技术原理支撑。     

Research Advances of Coastal Ecological Carrying Capacity Evaluation Based on Sustainable Projects Plan

Coastal area is the region with the highest degree of economic and social development and the largest ecological stress in current China, where the proportions and the spatial patterns of developed coastal resource and environment are determined by projects planning. Ecological carrying capacity evaluation is the necessary prerequisite for sustainable utilization of natural resources and protecting ecological environment to ensure healthy and sustainable economic and social development to project planning. Based on the pressure types of projects planning on resources and environment, the concept and contents of coastal ecological carrying capacity were redefined for enhancing the practical value of ecological carrying capacity evaluation. The domestic and foreign research progress and advances related with coastal ecological carrying capacity evaluation were reviewed, which included habitat suitability evaluation, suitability assessment of construction land development, reclamation suitability evaluation and assessment of sea water environmental capacity. The conclusion noted that domestic research of coastal ecological carrying capacity needs to build a complete system of ecological carrying capacity evaluation methodology based on extensive reference to foreign research results, and quantitative evaluation and spatial visualization research related with coastal ecological carrying capacity should be carried out to provide strong support for ecological civilization process of economy and society in coustal areas.     

Ideological and volume politics behind cloud water resource governance – Weather modification in China

Weather modification operations are the intentional alteration of weather and cloud water conditions using technologies such as cloud seeding. Post-socialist authoritarian China is the world’s leading user of state power for rainfall enhancement through weather modification, with diverse purposes including agriculture production, water security, ecological preservation, and mega events. We argue that weather modification in China needs to be understood as a facet of ecological modernization, in which the authoritarian state believes that precipitation can be controlled through the use of advanced technologies, thus transforming clouds into a kind of cloud water resource. Two political dimensions are highlighted to understand precipitation control and utilization of cloud water: the first is a new ideological politics of the changing human-weather relationship from ‘adaptation to the weather’ to ‘taming the weather”; the second is volume politics that presents unique characteristics of airborne water as opposed to terrestrial and groundwater.     

Situated justice in environmental decision-making: Lessons from river management in Southeastern Australia

The practical application of environmental justice in natural resource management depends upon moving beyond generic principles to situated understanding. This understanding in turn requires knowledge of both historical and geographical contexts, including how decision-making frameworks develop and the nature of the biophysical environment itself. This paper examines these requirements based on case material from the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. In the Hunter Valley, the colonial history of river management was one of the creation, and subsequent inclusion and exclusion, of particular ‘stakes’ from the decision-making process, resulting in a narrowly defined ‘community of justice’ that became institutionalised at the catchment scale. However, even within this restricted community, distributive injustices occurred due to a failure of policy to engage with environmental variability at both spatial and temporal scales. This combination of procedural injustice and environmental variability also resulted in ecological injustice - that is a disconnected or even antagonistic human-nature relationship that restricted the opportunity to redress the severe degradation of riverine ecosystems that had occurred since European settlement. In the light of these examples, broader challenges in the application of environmental justice to river management are explored in terms of ecological complexity and contested perceptions of environmental health. Based on this material, a historically and geographically situated, ecologically informed vision of environmental justice is proposed as an essential part of sustainable river management.     

济南破损山体概况及生态修复技术研究

城市破损山体不仅造成了大量陡坡岩面裸露,恶化了城市自然生态环境,而且还带来了坍塌、滑坡等安全隐患,是城市建设发展中亟待解决的问题。该文首先对济南城市破损山体现状及修复情况进行了调查分析,结合破损山体具体的生态修复工程实例,较详细总结研究了破损山体生态修复的技术和方法。经过几年的生态修复建设与养护管理,济南破损山体的生态景观功能得到了极大的恢复提升,该文筛选总结出的台地续坡式等治理方式及挂网喷播等生态修复技术,可为类似破损山体的生态修复提供借鉴。     

Golf and the environmental politics of modernization

In this critical review we reflect on findings from a socio-historical study of golf’s relationship with the environment. We focus especially on the golf industry’s pursuit of modernization from the early 1900s to the present. Golf’s quest to ‘be’ modern, we contend, has specifically constituted three particular ‘turns’: a first turn in the early 1900s involving the scientific rationalization of golf course development and maintenance; a second, ‘exemptionalist’ turn in the post-war years whereby science and technology fueled a perception of immense control over nature; and a third, more recent turn to ecological modernization (EM) whereby science and technology are leveraged toward environmental stewardship – or at least claims thereof. We ultimately argue that the golf industry’s recent adoption of EM principles in their environment-related work has political implications, as it ‘protects’ the industry from more radical environmental alternatives.     

Participation in payments for ecosystem services: Case studies from the Lacandon rainforest, Mexico

Understanding people’s willingness to participate in projects and programmes of payments for ecosystem services (PES) has not been a key analytical concern of the scholarly literature around this new field of environmental policy and practice. This paper analyses participation in four communities benefiting from payments for biodiversity and carbon fixation in Mexico, and contrasts the results for each case with neighbouring communities that do not receive payments. We take a holistic approach that accounts for procedural rules, actors’ interactions, institutions and values, and individuals’ characteristics. We show that the nature of PES rules and the effectiveness of communication with government officers and NGOs influence resource managers’ ability and willingness to participate. We highlight community size, resource managers’ ability to diversify livelihood activities and local perspectives on the conservation of common forests, particularly sacred values and intergenerational concerns on forest conservation, as critical participation drivers. This analysis provides insights on why and how these new institutions may be attractive for some resource managers and permits to draw some recommendations for the future design of PES projects and programmes.     

Beyond techno-science: Transgenic maize in the fight over Mexico’s future

Disputes about genetically engineered crops are linked to wider debates about the globalization of agro-food systems and its consequences for food security, social equity, and rural life. Biotechnology expert discourse rarely addresses these wider issues. An exception is the assessment of transgenic maize by the NAFTA Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC), which recommended a moratorium on Mexican imports of US-grown maize. Controversy about “contamination” of indigenous maize varieties by US-grown transgenic corn has been intensified by rising Mexican discontent with the terms of regional economic integration. In this context, scientists and officials were pressured to consider not only risks to maize biodiversity but also the ecological, and cultural characteristics of maize in its Mexican settings and the implications of asymmetric power in North American agricultural trade. In contrast to most narrowly-framed biotechnology risk assessments, the review took account of interventions by rural social movements. While the new moratorium was not adopted by the state, continuing conflicts over GMOs in Mexico have blocked introduction of transgenic maize and have enlarged the political space for debate over Mexico’s development direction. These conflicts reflect the differing interests of various state actors and economic sectors with regard to trade liberalization. They also reveal contrasting food-system paradigms: further agricultural modernization, export competition, and food-import dependence versus an alternative vision of revitalized rural life, farmers’ rights, and national food sovereignty.     

“We Don’t Take the Pledge”: Environmentality and environmental skepticism at the epicenter of US wind energy development

This study analyzes pro-wind, “anti-environmental” discourses prevalent among key stakeholders in Nolan County, Texas, the epicenter of US wind power. We draw upon interviews conducted within a Q-method study to examine environmental views held by key actors in wind-farm development. We frame our analysis within the theoretical field that engages the formation of environmental subjects, defined as the process through which individuals and communities align their environmental practices with state ends. We argue that this is a process that can be incomplete or in tension with other subject positions, which together may lead to unexpected environmental views. We introduce “environmental skepticism,” defined as a rejection of ecological science steeped in deep anthropocentrism and possessive individualism, as a dominant counter-narrative informing certain environmental subjectivities. The remainder of the paper describes Texas wind stakeholders’ views or subject positions on energy and the environment and reveals how environmental skepticism is not overturned even as renewable energy supports the local economy. We analyze wind stakeholders’ environmental subjectivity in terms of emergent subject positions as “reflexive environmental skepticism,” a view that accepts the economic products, processes, and policy innovations advocated by ecological modernization without accepting the core claim that innovations are required to adapt to environmental change.     

The decline of a model community-based conservation project: Governance, capacity, and devolution in Mahenye, Zimbabwe

This paper reports the results of our research, conducted from June to August 2004, on the community-based conservation project in Mahenye, Zimbabwe. Previous studies have described this project as a model example of Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE program. We explore the project’s recent performance within the context of the country’s post-2000 political and economic crisis and address the implications of our findings for arguments supporting devolution of authority for natural resource management to the community level. These issues are related in that calls for devolution are at least partly contingent on the demonstrated capacity of local institutions to manage projects in the community interest despite difficult circumstances. In our research, we found that outcomes in Mahenye have deteriorated sharply from conditions described in earlier studies. We found further that local failures of leadership combined with the withdrawal of outside agencies responsible for oversight and assistance may be more to blame for this decline than the ongoing national turmoil. Our results suggest that even in apparently successful conservation and development projects, local participatory decision-making institutions are fragile and require continuing external support. Consequently, we argue for caution in promoting full devolution of authority to the community level without safeguards to maintain good governance and adequate capacity.     

The Politics of Nature in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest

Environmental politics, argues French philosopher Bruno Latour, have been a ‘disappointment’. Rather than trying to bring environmental concerns into a political world split into two - between Nature/Science and politics/society - Latour argues that environmental movements ought to focus on destroying this two-house collective, and develop ‘an understanding of ecological crises that no longer uses nature to account for the tasks to be accomplished’. In this paper I put my research on the politics and science of the Great Bear Rainforest (GBR), a large tract of temperate rainforest on the central and north coast of British Columbia, into direct conversation with Latour’s arguments about science, epistemology and environmental politics. The GBR was a site of intense political struggle focused predominantly on the scale and scope of industrial forestry, a struggle which ‘ended’ in 2006 with what some call a historic compromise between some high-profile environmental groups, First Nations, the Provincial government, and the forest industry. This paper focuses on two interlinked questions: do the environmental organizations at the centre of the struggle demonstrate the maladies identified by Latour; are they too preoccupied with representing Nature through Science? And second, do these maladies help us explain or understand the politics over the GBR? Were the politics of the GBR limited by environmentalist invocations of a singular Nature through Science, what Latour calls ‘Naturpolitik’? The encounter between theory and practice leads to a more cautious and critical assessment of the environmental politics in the GBR, but also tempers Latour’s arguments. Environmentalists in the GBR do exhibit Latour’s maladies, but in tracing the Politics of Nature there, it seems that Naturpolitik is not as powerful as Latour argues.