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China and UN environmental policy: institutional growth, learning and implementation

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Abstract

The focus of this article is on whether, and to what extent, the major UN bodies for environmental issues—the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD), and the Global Environmental Facility (GEF)—have had any impact upon how China addresses and approaches its environmental issues. The UN bodies seem to have had some degree of day-to-day influence in a range of fields. UNEP has provided assistance in terms of policy formulation, technical assistance, training of personnel, public awareness and networking. The CSD seems to have made fewer practical and concrete contributions to China’s environmental policies; it serves as an arena for learning and discussion of environmental issues, rather than as a body for policy implementation. The GEF, on the other hand, has been an important source for the implementation of environmental policies in China. As to China’s contribution to environmental issues on the global arena, China does not seem to give priority to the international level of environmental policies. It is an active participant and stakeholder in international bodies such as UNEP and the CSD, but it is currently not providing any leadership. This is in clear contrast to domestic policy, where environmental issues are becoming increasingly important, attracting the attention of the media, policy-makers and the public. The article concludes that should this trend consolidate, establishing the management of the environment and natural resources as major issues in Chinese politics, it is reasonable to expect that China will in the future aim to play a leading role in environmental politics at the international level.

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Notes

  1. The Four Modernisations: agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology.

  2. Chinese official figures for the population living below the Chinese poverty line (Office of the United Nations Resident Coordinator 2004).

  3. However, the estimated level of income using purchasing power parity (PPP) is much higher. According to the CIA World Factbook, GDP per capita (PPP) amounted to USD 6,800 in 2005. See www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html

  4. China is in the category of lower-middle-income economies (USD 876–USD 3,465). The World Bank uses the Atlas method to measure gross national income (GNI—formerly referred to as GNP). The purpose of the Atlas conversion factor is to reduce the impact of exchange rate fluctuations in the cross-country comparison of national incomes. See www.worldbank.org/ and World Bank, World Development Indicators database, 1 July, online at http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0,,contentMDK:20535285∼menuPK:1192694∼pagePK:64133150∼piPK:64133175∼theSitePK:239419,00.html

  5. The equivalent of USD 1702 is obtained using the average exchange rate of the 2005 period. Data from the Asian Development Bank, Key Indicators of Developing Asian and Pacific Countries, China, People’s Republic of: http://www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Key_indicators/2006/pdf/PRC.pdf

  6. RMB 625, Office of the UN Resident Co-ordinator, Millennium Development Goals.

  7. Wen 2003.

  8. In addition, national departments can issue ‘measures’ and ‘notifications’ in order to clarify a law. Examples used to clarify environmental laws include regulations (fagui), decrees (guizhang), orders (mingling), provisional measures (zhanxing banfa), measures (banfa), decisions (jueding), resolutions (jueyi), directives (zhishi), notifications (tongzhi), and administrative circulars (tongbao) (see Ma and Ortolano 2000, footnote 6, p. 31).

  9. There are basically four important actors in the environmental law-making arena in China: SEPA, the NPC, the State Council (SC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Ma and Ortolano 2000, pp. 13–18).

  10. SEPA took over responsibilities from the abolished Ministry of Forestry (which became the Forestry Administration) for biodiversity, nature reserve management, wetland conservation; received increased rights to control marine pollution two miles from shore from the State Oceanographic Administration; as well as for effects from mining, and assumed a more important role in influencing nuclear energy developments (Jahiel 1998, p. 774).

  11. The Five-Year Plan (jihua) is now called the Five-Year Programme (guihua), which indicates that the targets should be considered more as guidance than as mandatory goals, and more in line with a market-based economy.

  12. According to Qu Geping, former administrator of NEPA, the Conference marked a turning-point in China’s environmental record. See China Environmental Yearbook 1990.

  13. The Beijing Declaration asserts that poverty, underdevelopment and overpopulation are the main causes of environmental degradation; the developed countries have the main responsibility for the environmental problems facing the world; the developing countries have the right to develop.

  14. On the China Council are Ministerial or Vice Ministerial officials, several eminent Chinese experts and senior international figures. The Chairman is Zeng Peiyan, Vice Premier of the State Council. In addition, several task forces have been established, with both Chinese and international experts (http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/dlam/).

  15. Chinese environmental NGOs have been actively lobbying the government to stop the construction of dams on the Nu River.

  16. China’s Programme of Action for Sustainable Development in China in the Early 21st Century was approved by the State Council in January 2003 (see Heggelund 2003).

  17. Author’s interview with SDPC (now NDRC) official, October 2002.

  18. This a common way to organise work in China: for example, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is in charge of climate change, coordinating the work and input of the many other institutions involved.

  19. Interview with government official Beijing, November 2006.

  20. Xie Zhenhua had to step down in December 2005 following the chemical spill accident in the Songhua River. Zhou Shengxian, former director of the State Forestry Administration, was appointed new SEPA minister. (Li 2005 and Xinhua 2005).

  21. On March 1 2006, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the shortlist of candidates for the position of UNEP Executive Director. The list included: Børge Brende, Norway’s former Minister of the Environment; Carlos Manuel Rodriguez Echandi, Minister of Environment and Energy, Costa Rica; Shafqat Kakakhel (Pakistan), UNEP Deputy Executive Director; Rajendra Pachauri (India), Director-General of the Energy and Resource Institute; and Achim Steiner (Germany), then Director-General of IUCN. On March 15 2006, Steiner was appointed Executive Director of UNEP. See http://www.iisd.ca/coming_goings/appointments.htm

  22. At its eleventh session, the Commission on Sustainable Development decided that its multi-year programme of work beyond 2003 would be organized on the basis of seven 2-year cycles, with each cycle focusing on selected thematic clusters of issues, as set out in the table on the CSD website. http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/csd11/CSD_mulityear_prog_work.htm

  23. Incremental costs are additional costs associated with transforming a project with national benefits into one with global environmental benefits. See http://www.gefweb.org/Operational_Policies/Eligibility_Criteria/Incremental_Costs/incremental_costs.html

  24. African Development Bank (AfDB), Asian Development Bank (ADB) European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). See http://www.gefweb.org/Partners/Exe_Agencies/exe_agencies.html; www.adb.org/Documents/Periodicals/NGO_Newsletters/2002/Vol2_Issue6.asp; www.adb.org/Media/Articles/2004/5297_others_access_to_gef/default.asp

  25. See also GEF’s website, though it has not been updated recently. USD 452 million is the current figure (www.gefchina.org.cn/assembly/file/Projects in china.doc).

  26. GEF’s website states that, by the end of June 2002, China had received GEF grants of about USD 350 million (regional and global projects not included), which amounts to about 8% of GEF’s total grants. Forty single country projects had been carried out, including 13 on biodiversity (USD 54.9 million), 22 on climate change (USD 278 million), 3 on international waters (USD 47.85 million) and 2 in multiple focal areas (covering different GEF focal areas) (USD 5.7 million). See www.gefchina.org.cn/assembly/file/Projects in china.doc; www.gefchina.org.cn/assembly/file/projects%20in%20china.doc; www.gefchina.org.cn/gef/english/more/details.asp?id=6#Projects in China

  27. According to Chinese officials and academics we have interviewed.

  28. For examples of concrete projects in the energy sector see Chap. 3 in Sugiyama and Ohshita 2006; Ohshita et al. 2006. See also Birner and Martinot (2005) for experiences from GEF project implementation.

  29. For an overview of GEF biodiversity projects in China and more details on the China Biodiversity Programming Framework, see http://gefonline.org/projectList.cfm

  30. The programmatic approach, which aims to provide “phased and sustained support for the implementation of a multi-year (medium to long-term) programme that serves to better integrate global environmental objectives into national strategies and plans” (e.g. biodiversity strategies, sustainable energy plan, etc.) (GEF 2002).

  31. See the GEF project document on the China End-Use Energy Efficiency Project, http://gefonline.org/projectDetails.cfm?projID=966

Abbreviations

ADB:

Asian Development Bank

CSD:

Commission on Sustainable Development

EPBs:

Environmental Protection Bureaux

GEF:

Global Environment Facility

IAs:

implementing agencies

IBRD:

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

MOF:

Ministry of Finance

NDRC:

National Development and Reform Commission

NEPA:

National Environmental Protection Agency

NPC:

National Peoples’ Congress

SEPA:

State Environmental Protection Administration

SETC:

State Economic and Trade Commission

UNDP:

United Nations Development Programme

UNEP:

United Nations Environment Programme

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the interviewees in China for their time and helpful comments. We are also grateful for very useful comments from two anonymous reviewers, and to Steinar Andresen for invaluable input during the research and the write-up. Thanks to Susan Høivik for language editing, and to Maryanne Rygg for assistance with formatting. We also wish to thank the Research Council of Norway for providing funding for this work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fridtjof Nansen Institute, P.O. Box 326, 1326, Lysaker, Norway

    Gørild Heggelund

  2. Norwegian Ministry of the Environment, Oslo, Norway

    Ellen Bruzelius Backer

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  1. Gørild Heggelund
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  2. Ellen Bruzelius Backer
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Correspondence to Gørild Heggelund.

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This article does not in any way represent the views of the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment, and the content is the responsibility of the authors only.

Appendices

Appendix on projects

The GEF section in this article draws on the following projects:

  • Beijing Second Environment Project (ongoing), implementing agency: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (World Bank Group). The Beijing Second Environment Project is the largest project in which the GEF has ever been involved in terms of total financing, work units involved and areas covered. It is closely connected to the environment improvements for the 2008 Olympic Games.

  • Renewable Energy Development Project (ongoing) implementing agency: IBRD. The Renewable Energy Development Project is designed to substitute energy for power stations with much cleaner energy, like wind power and solar power. It is another big project that reflects the problems of collaboration between the GEF and China.

  • Coal-Bed Methane Development Project (completed), implementing agency: UNDP. Coal-Bed Methane Development Project demonstrated, at three sites, various techniques and technologies that China’s coalmines can employ to reduce atmospheric methane emissions and recover methane as a fuel. The project published a detailed assessment of China’s coal-bed methane resources, and strengthened national capacity to conduct such assessments routinely.

  • Sichuan Gas Development and Conservation Project (completed), implementing agency: IBRD. Sichuan Gas Development and Conservation Project was a programme to promote energy conservation and renewable energy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2020. Its project made an important contribution to increasing gas reserves and gas production capacity in Sichuan province.

  • China Energy Conservation Project (ongoing), implementing agency: IBRD. This is a collaborative project organised and implemented by the Chinese government, the World Bank, and the GEF. The objectives are to improve energy efficiency, and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases as well as other pollutants. It involves the demonstration and dissemination of a new mechanism of ‘Energy Performance Contracting’.

Interviews 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006

GEF China office; Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Ministry of Finance; National Development and Reform Commission; SEPA GEF office; Project Management Office, World Bank/GEF China Energy Conservation Project; UNDP Beijing; UNEP Beijing. Interviews with GEF project managers were carried out; but we have chosen to keep the names of specific institutions anonymous. Interviews were conducted several times with some respondents.

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Heggelund, G., Backer, E.B. China and UN environmental policy: institutional growth, learning and implementation. Int Environ Agreements 7, 415–438 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-007-9053-3

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