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Under the influence of international green trade barriers, export scale of China's heavily polluting enterprises is reduced. How to improve the export vitality and corporate image of polluting enterprises? Different from the existing studies, this paper focuses on green merger and acquisition (green M&A) of polluting enterprises which can quickly obtain clean enterprise resources, and compares the impact of different green M&A modes on export performance and export margin by refining the frequency, scale and geographical characteristics of green M&A. First, based on propensity score matching - double difference (PSM-DID) method, this paper finds that green M&A can increase export performance. The frequency and scale of green M&A are positively correlated with export performance. Geographic distance of green M&A enterprises is negatively correlated with export performance. Second, green M&A can increase export performance by promoting green innovation, government subsidies and bank financing capacity, and reduce export performance by increasing environmental governance costs. Third, by comparing different green M&A, this paper finds that horizontal green M&A can increase more exports than vertical green M&A. Forth, further compare the impact of green M&A on export binary margin, it is found that green M&A can promote export-expansion margin and has a U-shaped relationship on export-intensive margin. The conclusion is of great significance to improve export performance of polluting enterprises, and provides an empirical basis for adjusting green M&A strategy.

Across the globe, there is increasing interest in implementing circular approaches to urban sanitation and waste management to mitigate environmental challenges and promote sustainable business opportunities. In Latin America where 80% of the population live in urban areas, there is limited investigation into the enabling factors and governance barriers that are critical to implementing circular economy strategies in urban areas. This paper aims at assessing the governance capacity to implement resource recovery from organic waste streams in the municipality of Chía, Colombia, through applying the Governance Capacity Framework in a participatory process with local stakeholders. The findings highlight the importance of local initiatives for resource recovery that allow experimentation, raise awareness and foster collaboration, as well as mechanisms available for public participation in decision-making processes as enabling factors. Meanwhile, the inadequate monitoring and assessment of environmental strategies and policies, inadequate sharing of information among stakeholders and the relative low awareness of potential benefits of recovering resources from organic waste streams, especially among public sector actors, emerge as key barriers. Beyond Chía, the results provide insights on crucial factors for ensuring sufficient governance capacity in other urban areas in low- and middle-income countries which are considering circular approaches to urban sanitation and waste management. The findings also provide an empirical basis to advance the understanding of the governance conditions necessary for implementing resource recovery from organic waste streams, upon which further applications of the governance capacity framework along with participatory aspects in other similar urban contexts could build. Across the globe, there is increasing interest in implementing circular approaches to urban sanitation and waste management to mitigate environmental challenges and promote sustainable business opportunities. In Latin America where 80% of the population live in urban areas, there is limited investigation into the enabling factors and governance barriers that are critical to implementing circular economy strategies in urban areas. This paper aims at assessing the governance capacity to implement resource recovery from organic waste streams in the municipality of Chía, Colombia, through applying the Governance Capacity Framework in a participatory process with local stakeholders. The findings highlight the importance of local initiatives for resource recovery that allow experimentation, raise awareness and foster collaboration, as well as mechanisms available for public participation in decision-making processes as enabling factors. Meanwhile, the inadequate monitoring and assessment of environmental strategies and policies, inadequate sharing of information among stakeholders and the relative low awareness of potential benefits of recovering resources from organic waste streams, especially among public sector actors, emerge as key barriers. Beyond Chía, the results provide insights on crucial factors for ensuring sufficient governance capacity in other urban areas in low- and middle-income countries which are considering circular approaches to urban sanitation and waste management. The findings also provide an empirical basis to advance the understanding of the governance conditions necessary for implementing resource recovery from organic waste streams, upon which further applications of the governance capacity framework along with participatory aspects in other similar urban contexts could build.

Urban-rural integrated development has been widely conducted in China, and plenty of resource consumption and environmental problems have arisen during this process. Meanwhile, the importance of environmental governance has been emphasized in social collaborative governance. Although existing studies have focused on the governance policies on urban and rural development, the residents’ participation willingness toward collaborative governance should not be neglected, especially in environmental governance. Accordingly, this study identified the determinants influencing the participation intention toward the collaborative environmental governance of residents in the Yangtze River Delta Region by a combined theoretical model, which added three decisive predictors from the theory of planned behavior to the norm-activation model. We collected 312 valid questionnaires and employed structural equation modeling for analysis. Results implied that, in order of significance, personal norm, behavioral attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control presented positive influences on behavioral intention. Personal norm was significantly underlain by awareness of consequence and ascription of responsibility, and the significant influence of awareness of consequence on behavioral intention was not demonstrated. This study proposes related managerial implications to improve public participation willingness regarding collaborative environmental governance during urban-rural integrated development processes in the Yangtze River Delta Region.

The improper allocation of economic and environmental resources damages the United Nations sustainable development Agenda, which remains a challenge for policymakers to stop the rot through efficient governance mechanisms. The study designed an efficient environmental governance framework by extending the different governance factors linked to the environmental sustainability ratings in the cross-section of 67 countries. The results of the two-regime based estimator show that environmental corruption (regime-1), environmental politics (regime-2), and environmental laws (regime-2) negatively correlated with the environmental sustainability rating, whereas environmental democracy (regime-1 & 2) positively correlated with the environmental sustainability agenda across countries. The government effectiveness and the country’s per capita income both escalates environmental sustainability ratings. The results align with the Demopolis theory, the effective regulatory theory, and the theory of law and politics. The causality estimates show that environmental corruption and government effectiveness causes environmental politics and economic growth. In contrast, environmental democracy and environmental regulations cause a country’s per capita income. The bidirectional causality is found between environmental regulations and environmental corruption on the one hand, while environmental regulations and environmental politics Granger cause each other on the other hand. The results show the importance of environmental regulations in managing ecological corruption and politics across countries. The variance decomposition analysis suggested that environmental politics likely influenced the environmental sustainability agenda, followed by government effectiveness and environmental democracy for the next ten years. The study emphasized the need to design an efficient environmental governance framework that minimizes environmental corruption and enables them to move towards environmental democracy, stringent environmental laws, and regulations. Government effectiveness would mainly be linked to reducing corruption and political instability to achieve clean, green and sustainable development.

Innovations have the potential to help us address and overcome many of the challenges that agriculture is facing today. Yet, at the same time, they have the potential to create new, sometimes even more challenging, problems, especially when they are not governed in a sustainable way. Governing agricultural innovation sustainably requires understanding of all components that influence, and are influenced by, innovation processes, interactions across societal levels, and the normative and power dynamics that come together to shape the direction and outcomes of innovation processes. Hitherto, approaches to (agricultural) innovation and transition tend to specialize on a specific societal scale or sub-aspect of innovation or transition processes. In this article we aim to bring the strengths of some of the main approaches (Multi-Level Perspective, Agricultural Innovation Systems, Responsible Innovation, Innovation Management, Theory of Planned Behaviour) and insights from environmental governance literature together into a comprehensive framework. The framework describes seven key components and their interactions: macro context, governance system, immediate context, innovative and adaptive capacity of the actors, psychosocial factors, and the innovation process itself. Based on these, we present a subset of guiding questions that can be used diagnostically or for design purposes to support the sustainable governance of agricultural innovation processes.

Global environmental governance (GEG) forums, such as those convened through the United Nations, result in the development of monumental guiding frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Conference of Parties (COPs) Aichi and post-2020 targets. The ratification of policy frameworks by member and/or signatory states can result in major shifts in environmental policy and decision-making and has major implications for Indigenous communities. In this article, we present systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on Indigenous participation in GEG forums, and focus on the specific questions: (1) what GEG forums include Indigenous participation and (2) how do Indigenous peoples participate in GEG forums, including how their perspectives and knowledges are framed and/or included/excluded within governance discussions, decisions, and negotiations. We provide a bibliometric analysis of the articles and derive seven inductively determined themes from our review: (1) Critical governance forums and decisions; (2) inclusion and exclusion of Indigenous voices and knowledge in GEG forums; (3) capacity barriers; (4) knowledge hierarchies: inclusion, integration, and bridging; (5) representation and grouping of Indigenous peoples in GEG; (6) need for networks among and between Indigenous peoples and other governance actors; and (7) Indigenous peoples influence on GEG decisions and processes. Our findings can be used to improve GEG forums by contributing to the development strategies that address the barriers and inequities to meaningful and beneficial Indigenous participation and can contribute to future research that is focused on understanding the experiences of Indigenous peoples within GEG forums.

Taking industrial waste gas control as an example, this study explores the impact of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of local governments' environmental governance under the pressure of competition, and analyzes the role of competition among local governments and support for R&D activities. The results demonstrate that fiscal decentralization can significantly promote the efficiency of local governance on control of waste gas, and this positive effect is mainly realized through the support from local government for R&D activities. As for the influence of inter-governmental competitions, only the competition in terms of governance efficiency delivers a significant U-shaped impact, and competition in expenditure scale and economy area weakly inhibits the positive influence of decentralization, meaning that the evaluation system centered on economic growth and the imitation strategy of local expenditure will not lead to a great decline in the efficiency of the use of environmental governance. Overall, this study suggests that further fiscal decentralization, emphases on government support for R&D activities, and enhanced environmental assessment in official evaluation are all the important directions for boosting the efficiency of governance.

The Chinese government has not only been increasing investments in environmental protection, improving the quality of the ecological environment, but has also been focusing on curbing the excessive growth of medical and healthcare expenses so as to ease the economic burden of China's residents. Both aspects are significant concerns worldwide and have received much research attention individually, but the relationship between government environmental protection expenditure and residents' medical and healthcare expenditure remains unclear. Based on panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2007 to 2019, this paper empirically reveals that fiscal environmental protection expenditure is significantly negatively correlated with per capita medical and healthcare expenditure of residents (including outpatient expenditure and inpatient expenditure). This study shows that increasing the fiscal environmental protection expenditure can help curb the rising level of residents' medical and healthcare expenditure. In addition, the results of heterogeneity analysis indicate that the above relationship is stronger in provinces with a relatively low level of economic development or low proportion of the population over 65 years old. Management implications are discussed.

Prior research has documented involvement of government and civil society actors in governance processes, but has largely neglected a key player: corporate business interests. Combining insights from social-ecological systems, organizational systems theory, theories of governance and power, interest group rule-making participation, and non-state alternative environmental governance, we examine corporate involvement and power in environmental governance systems. Drawing on a sample of Twitter messages about fuel economy standards, posted between 2012 and 2020, we offer a sector-level discourse analysis of corporate power and its interaction with the sociopolitical environment. The results suggest that business interests are gaining increasing power in the participation arena of U.S. fuel economy governance processes. The results likewise indicate corporations’ response to a changing political landscape in the U.S. Taken together, our analysis advances current scholarship on power dynamics in governance processes and on empirical assessment of power, offering implications for governance system design and implementation.

Forests are subject to a huge variety of often competing socio-economic demands and environmental change. This paper assesses the related conflicts that occur along what we label to be a "Global Forest Environmental Frontier". Assessing 11 contributions to a special issue on the same topic, it summarizes the main contents of these papers and concludes with an assessment of major trends. The contributions to the special issue take both a regional and topic-related approach, assessing forest environmental conflicts on all five forested continents and investigating issues such as forest biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation, environmental justice and equity, development, and forest management and conservation discourses. Taken together, they provide an overview on the multiple facets of the Global Forest Environmental Frontier, but also identify some shared patterns and trajectories, which are outlined at the end of this paper.

Peoples’ livelihood and environmental governance are interrelated and interact with each other, which is a new starting point for the study of sustainable development of urban agglomerations. Given the insufficient research on the combination of peoples’ livelihood and environment in urban agglomerations. Therefore, this study analyzes the coupling relationship of environmental governance and peoples’ livelihood to achieve the objective of sustainable development of the Yangtze River urban agglomeration. The results found that from 2008 to 2017, the coupling of the peoples’ livelihood and the environment has significantly improved, and the high-coupling area was concentrated in the central part of the Yangtze River urban agglomeration. Moreover, with the rapid development of urban agglomerations, the gap between the development of peoples’ livelihood and environmental protection was not large and the correlation between the two sides is increasing. Finally, we propose to improve the development level of peoples’ livelihood and environment, focus on the relationship between peoples’ livelihood and environment related to promote the integration of peoples’ livelihood and environment development and other inspirations, to provide a reference for urban clusters to explore a sustainable development path.

Extraction of natural resources through mining creates land use conflicts, economic upheaval and environmental harm. Environmental governance is a system developed to allocate different decision ma...

Recent research highlights the challenge of achieving environmental governance goals in the absence of collaboration among interdependent policy actors. This article explores factors contributing to the likelihood of “collaboration gaps” among actors who are interdependent because their jurisdictions overlap. Analysis of data on collaboration among organizations involved in wildfire risk governance in Oregon indicates that interdependent actors are more likely to collaborate. Despite this tendency, nearly 75 % of possible collaborations between interdependent actors were absent. In turn, these collaboration gaps tended to be brokered by third-party actors, especially those lacking the authority to manage land themselves and those for whom the benefits of brokerage may be more immediately apparent. Taken together, these findings shed light on actors’ strategies for navigating fragmented governance systems and highlight opportunities to improve risk mitigation outcomes by enabling greater coordination among interdependent actors.

In water governance, the government, downstream residents, and upstream farmers are closely associated stakeholders. The participation willingness of upstream farmers directly bears on the success of environmental policies. Xin’an River Reservoir Water Protection Zone is the second water source region of Hangzhou, China. Taking this region, for example, this paper surveys the willingness to accept compensation of local rice farmers, mainly using Choice Modelling (CM) methodology. This paper assesses the farmers’ willingness of minimum compensation amount to adopt various ecological compensation means and, on this basis, discusses the key factors determining their willingness to accept compensation. It helps to confirm that the farmer participation mainly depends on whether the government could provide satisfactory compensation incentives to cover farmers’ losses. Hence, at the ending of the paper, we call for the relevant departments of the government fully understanding the farmers’ willingness to accept compensation before formulating compensation policies, so that the compensation at least reaches the minimum requirements of farmers. Only in this way could the water source region achieve the optimal efficiency in environmental governance.

As the digital economy develops rapidly and the network information technology advances, new development models represented by the network economy have emerged, which have a crucial impact on green economic growth. However, the relevant previous studies lacked the role of analyzing the direct and indirect effects of internet development on green economic growth at the prefecture-level city level. For this purpose, this paper aims to examine the intrinsic mechanism of the impact of internet development on green economic growth and provide empirical support for cities and regions in China to increase internet construction. Furthermore, the mixed model (EBM), which includes both radial and non-radial distance functions, is applied to calculate the green economic growth index. Fixed effect model and mediation effect model are also employed to test influence mechanisms of the internet development on green economic growth using panel data of 269 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2019. The statistical results reveal that internet development has contributed significantly to green economic growth. When the internet development level increases by 1 unit, the green economic growth level increases by an average of 5.0372 units. However, regional heterogeneity is evident between internet development and green economic growth, that is, the promoting effect of internet development on green economic growth is gradually enhanced from the eastern region to the western region. We also find that internet development guides industrial structure upgrading improves environmental quality and accelerates enterprise innovation, which indirectly contributes to green economic growth. And internet development mainly achieves green economic growth through enterprise innovation. Based on the above findings, we concluded that policymakers should not only strengthen the guiding role of social actors to promote the stable development of the internet industry, but also foster the construction of the three models of "internet+industry integration," "internet+environmental governance," and "internet+enterprise innovation" to promote green economic growth.

Decentralized environmental governance has become increasingly common across much of Latin America and in developing countries more generally, yet the impacts of decentralization on wildlife conservation remain unclear. Decentralized environmental governance is thought to improve efficiency, local compliance, and democratic potential of natural resource management. However, wildlife conservation, especially that of large mammals, poses unique challenges in the context of decentralized governance: wildlife conservation is often expensive, requires large expanses of contiguous habitat, and often offers few economic benefits. We analyzed Colombia's decentralized environmental governance and its performance in conserving a contentious and border-crossing wildlife species, the Andean bear (Tremarctos ornatus). We considered both decentralized institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This analysis is informed by 67 semi-structured interviews with conservation practitioners in Colombia. We found inconsistent program implementation across the country and little information exchange among institutions. These issues quite likely contribute to exacerbated human-bear conflict and thus more Andean bear deaths suggesting that the successful coordination of large-scale wildlife conservation may yet require the leadership of strong central institutions. A few international NGOs were working to improve Andean bear conservation in Colombia, but we saw little involvement at the national level of Colombian NGOs-some of whom felt they were being unfairly outcompeted by international elites. We recommend a greater engagement with Colombian NGOs (by both donors and international NGOs) as a means through which to ensure the integrity of Andean bear conservation into the future.

In environmental governance, the role of expertise is regarded as a crucial support to decision-making. Yet, in intergovernmental settings, studies aimed at understanding the relation between science and policy have predominantly focused on the fields of climate change and biodiversity. Through a fieldwork-based study of the Science-Policy Interface (SPI) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils (ITPS) of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), this paper investigates the role of scientific expertise in the global governance of soil and land degradation. Drawing upon the concepts of boundary organization and hybrid management, the study shows that analytical tools deriving from the Science and Technology Studies (STS) tradition provide valuable understandings of science-policy dynamics at the intergovernmental level. The results of the analysis reveal that science-policy organizations match the definition of boundary organization to different degrees and that hybrid management strategies occur with different magnitudes, with significant implications for each organization's capacity to bridge science and policy. This implies that such STS concepts should not be regarded as purely descriptive labels, but as resources that can serve broad analytical purposes in the study of global environmental governance. In this respect, the study contributes to an on-going theoretical dialogue between STS and International Relations (IR), claiming that IR scholars should consider the adoption of relevant STS theoretical tools for the analysis of global environmental institutions.

In the current era of low-carbon economy, environmental governance and energy conservation have become major issues, in which chemical enterprises with high pollution and consumption have naturally attracted much attention. The disclosure of green accounting information is indispensable to the continuous development of chemical enterprises and even the whole society. Therefore, based on existing research results, this paper analyzes the existing problems and causes of green accounting information disclosure of chemical enterprises in China under low-carbon economy, and puts forward suggestions for solutions.

As air pollution becomes more serious in China, it is critical to study its influencing factors for targeted environmental governance. Existing researchers have conducted various studies on the factors of PM2.5 (fine particulate matter with a diameter less than or equal to 2.5 microns) pollution. However, these studies mostly conducted analyses focused on macroscopic factors and lacked an impact analysis of specific entity distributions on PM2.5 pollution. Furthermore, most existing studies used ordinary regression models that ignored the spatial heterogeneity of influence of various factors on pollution, leading to biased results. To address these issues, focusing on air quality in heavily polluted city (Weifang City), this study aims to measure the influence of spatial differentiation of the impacts of four roughly classified POIs, namely, industry, restaurants, scenic spots, and parking lots, on PM2.5 pollution quantitatively by using a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model (spatial varying-coefficient regression model). The results indicate that the spatial distribution of effects of industry, restaurant and parking lot POIs on PM2.5 concentrations in Weifang are similar. The impact of all four POIs on PM2.5 is spatially nonstationary and have certain spatial trends, parking lots have the greatest influence on PM2.5 pollution. Based on the findings, pollution prevention and control measures are suggested to be designed based on the actual situation. For instance, some counties in Weifang should be encouraged to develop tertiary industries dominated by tourism. This research investigated the spatial impacts of the specific entity distributions on air pollution and provided targeted advice based on findings, which can contribute to policy-making aimed at air pollution mitigation.

This study analyses the framework model cooperation of the sister city that the Banjarmasin city government will carry out in wetland environmental governance (wetland governance). The model of sister city cooperation design that will be carried out is through the bottom-up model cooperation. This cooperation model focuses on the active participation of the community (citizen diplomacy) and community collaboration as transnational actors in managing the wetland environment (wetland governance) in Banjarmasin. Community participation (citizen diplomacy) and the active collaboration of the community with the city government as a transnational actor has become a fascinating new study in government and international relations, so it is crucial to study further. The wetland environmental management model in this model is integrated wetland environmental management. So far, the integrated wetland environmental management planning methodology has paid little attention to aspects that integrate institutions, technology, and funding. This model also describes ideally that wetland environmental management accommodates various interests of development activities, such as agricultural development, industrial interests, and environmental carrying capacity (ecological demands). The operationalisation of the integrated wetland environment concept as a planning unit in development has been limited to rehabilitating and conserving soil and water. At the same time, the organisation is still ad hoc, and the intact institutions regarding the management of the wetland environment have not been patterned. For wetland environmental management to be carried out optimally, it must involve all stakeholders and plan in an integrated, comprehensive, sustainable, and environmentally friendly manner with wetlands as a management unit. The bottom-up sister, the city cooperation model, was then made based on these problems. This collaboration is an effort to involve all parties, especially the community, so that every decision taken in planning is a collective decision and encourages mutual involvement and commitment to implement it.

The evaluation on the performance of environmental regulation is among the hottest topics in environmental economics and management. Although industrial enterprise is the major regulatory objects of pollution control, the firm-level pollution abatement effect of environmental regulation has been rarely examined by existing literature. This paper attempts to fill this research gap by investigating the moderating effects of firm heterogeneity on the pollution abatement effect of environmental regulation in China. We establish a theoretical framework which demonstrates that firm heterogeneity determines firms’ compliance capability and willingness through firms’ absorptive capacity, bargaining power, and environmental awareness and then influences firms’ environmental performance under regulatory pressure. Combining firm-level data of pollutant emission with province-level data of environmental regulation, we empirically examine the moderating role of firm heterogeneity on the performance of environmental regulation. We adopt a moderating effect model and estimate it with Logit regression method. It is found that environmental regulation performs better in enterprises with high capital intensity, high total factor productivity (TFP), as well as in state-owned enterprises, export enterprises, and listed companies. In particular, command-and-control regulation performs better in domestic firms than in foreign-owned firms, while the performance of market-based regulation is just the opposite. It is also found that the moderating effect of firm heterogeneity on the performance of environmental regulation varies with regions and industrial sectors, especially for the moderating role of capital intensity and TFP. These findings help to understand the enterprise environmental behavior and provide insights on targeted and differentiated environmental governance from a micro-point of view.

In the last two decades, the 2008 Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) virus and the 2016 algal blooms crises have placed the Chilean salmon industry at risk and tested the capacity of its governance me...

Air pollution control is crucial for promoting the modernization of governance systems and efficiency. To address the subjective contrived factors and errors in the gross domestic product (GDP) data in traditional statistical almanacs, our study aims to construct a panel data model of 287 prefecture-level cities for the period from 1998–2016 (using objective nighttime light data). We also used government work report words related to environmental regulation to characterize the constraints of government environmental regulations. For this purpose, we used instrumental variables (to explore the relationship and interaction between air pollution and economic growth) and a model setting, with which we carried out regression analysis and robustness tests; the findings were validated using a transmission mechanism hypothesis. We found that that economic growth and air pollution positively influence each other and government environmental regulations significantly reduce air pollution. We also found that to achieve high economic development, environmental pollution must be controlled to avoid further damage to human and material capital. Furthermore, government environmental regulations can help improve the environmental comfort level and economic development quality. First published online 7 June 2021

Social and Social-Ecological Network Analysis (S(E)NA) have recently emerged as new methods in the environmental governance (EG) literature. By investigating networks of connections between actors, S(E)NA advances the understanding of who is involved in EG and how. We provide an overview of the EG literature applying S(E)NA and map 1) the citation network emerging from cross-references and 2) the similarity network emerging from word similarities between publications. We show that S(E)NA application in EG is in the process of developing into a field of research where publications frequently cite each other. We identify 20 publications which occupy positions as sources, storers or bridges of knowledge in the citation network. While we see S(E)NA applied in diverse resource contexts, these are mainly discussed on the local spatial level, with a focus on “policy” or “collaboration”. We discover that “power structures” and “the production of knowledge” are themes influencing the whole field.diverse resource contexts, these are mainly discussed on the local spatial level, with a focus on “policy” or “collaboration”. We discover that the topics “power structures” and “the production of knowledge” are themes influencing the whole field.

China, the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, has promised to become carbon neutral before 2060 and to begin cutting its pollutant emissions. Is China's environmental target achievable in the forthcoming 14th and 15th five-year periods (2021–2030)? Widespread attention has been devoted to end-of-pipe measurements. However, few efforts have been made to examine the optimal path of industrial upgradation with respect to the economy–energy–environment objectives. To fill this gap, this study proposes a dynamic optimization model to examine the desirable evolution path of industrial restructure. The main findings are as follows. First, to achieve the energy and environmental targets, the optimal share of tertiary industry should increase from 28% to 57% by 2030. Secondary industry should fall by 44.68%, and primary industry should be relatively stable. Second, coal will still dominate the total consumption despite a slight decline of 6.4% in the next decades. However, oil proportion may decline significantly from 26.7% to 15.2%. Non-fossil energy sources will increase from 10.6% to 28.5%. Third, with the optimization of economic structure, the GDP growth will decouple from energy consumption and gas emissions. By comparing different scenarios, it appears that the results are more sensitive to energy and emission efficiency rather than economic constraints. In the next decades, industrial upgradation will play a more important role than end-of-pipe treatment for the dual objective of economic development and environmental governance. The desirable restructuring roadmap can provide explicit guidance for future policy-making.

In western Uganda, state biosecurity measures designed for the elimination of uncertainty through monitoring, control, and eradication of plant disease merely offload responsibility for uncertainty, placing it elsewhere, often in the arms of farmers. In this paper, I explore the ways in which uncertainty is operationalized and challenged by farmers in the face of banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW), a deadly plant disease causing widespread losses across East Africa. Farmers negotiate differing claims to certainty regarding the disease and availability of agricultural extension from multiple actors, often through improvisation and experimentation. These practices highlight how knowledge networks between the state, farmers, and scientists are reshaped due to biosecurity and disease. The findings suggest the potential for a deeper entrenching of inequality as the improvised knowledge networks follow familiar patterns of state investment and social difference. Farmers with the social and economic capital to manage uncertainty are able to do so, while resource-poor farmers face a compounding uncertainty stemming from multiple sources which build on each other. On the other hand, compounding uncertainty may also produce space for strategic alliances between farmers and other actors as it draws multiple concerns together. Overall, these results reflect the importance of attending to the political ecology of knowledge in biosecurity regimes and in environmental governance more broadly.

The government's environmental governance may be affected by corruption and affect the implementation of environmental policies. Unfortunately, existing research only considers environmental regulations (ER) and ignores the role of anti-corruption (AC) in green development. Using China's provincial manufacturing industry data from 1998 to 2017 as an example, this study investigated the impact of AC and ER on the green development of manufacturing (MGD). This study first determined the MGD by combining the epsilon-based measure model and the Malmquist-Luenberger index. Then, a spatial Dubin model was used to handle spatial effects and a panel threshold model was employed to investigate nonlinear effects. The results showed that: (i) AC and ER significantly improved MGD, and the spatial spillover effect of MGD was 0.467. (ii) ER and MGD have a non-linear relationship, when AC is at a low level, the implementation effect of ER is low, and as AC increases and exceeds the threshold 3.105, the implementation effect of ER increases significantly from 0.094 to 0.171. To make the results robust, this study implements a robustness test by replacing variables. Finally, the policy implies that the government should pay attention to the role of AC in improving MGD and consider the spatial spillover effect of AC, and promote the implementation effect of ER on MGD.

As the direct responsible cadre in China’s local environmental management, the role of environmental protection bureau head (EPBH) is both critical and embarrassing. However, the profile of this gr...

Lamongan Regency is one of the regions that has issued policies on environmental management, including a 3R-based waste management system (reduce, reuse and recycle) in the form of the Lamongan Green and Clean program and the Waste Bank. This study will analyze the Lamongan Green and Clean policy in an environmental governance perspective. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative through interview techniques, observation, literature study, and documentation. The theory used in this research is the theory of public policy with the analysis model of the implementation of Van Meter and Van Horn policies. Then, the concepts used in this study are environmental governance and Lamongan Green and Clean. This study aims to describe the implementation of the Lamongan Green and Clean policy whether it has been able to apply the principles of environmental governance. From the results of this study, it is concluded that in implementing the Lamongan Green and Clean program, seen from the perspective of environmental governance, this program has not fully been able to apply the principles of environmental governance.

The unequal cost and benefit led by environmental changes may potentially set China's rural areas a "Poverty Trap." Therefore, clarifying the relationship between environmental changes and rural income distribution is of great significance to realize the organic integration of environmental improvement and poverty governance. Based on the panel data of China's coastal areas, this paper explores the mutual influence between environmental changes and fishermen's income distribution, thus testing the hypothesis of the poverty-environment trap. The results show that environmental degradation has a significant negative impact on fishermen's income. To be specific, compared with the middle- and high-income groups, the impact of environmental degradation on people with less income is more noticeable; as for the low-income groups represented by fishermen, the marginal effects of their income reduction on environmental degradation are more prominent; continuous decrease of their income together with environmental deterioration will form a vicious circle, bringing the risk of falling into the poverty-environment trap. In the follow-up environmental governance, authorities need to impose targeted measures and adopt tax or subsidy policies that are inclusive and preferential, so as to address the income gaps between fishermen and further relative poverty.

Successful nature conservation requires engagement of diverse groups of stakeholders. Attracting attention of general public and engagement of local communities that underpin sustainable development are between the most important aspects of effective communications by environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). In the modern world digital tools provide unprecedented opportunities for broadening reach of ENGO communications. In Latvia, many organizations including ENGOs use digital tools as a part of their communications mix. However, it is important to understand to what extent the power of digital strategies is utilised by these organisations. For this purpose, analysis of Latvian ENGO digital strategies was undertaken. The analysis involved evaluation of digital usage by top Latvian ENGOs in comparison to application of online communications tools by similar organizations in Western Europe and in the USA. It was found that while Latvian ENGOs actively use digital communications tools, in comparison with western organizations a range of approaches that make online strategies effective is still underutilised. This may generally reduce reach of the communications and their public appeal. Ultimately, underuse of opportunities provided by digital communication tools may weaken effectiveness of nature conservation at a regional scale. Thus, it is suggested to enhance digital communications taking an example from Western ENGOS by introducing more educational and engaging content in a variety of formats, ranging from audio to video materials. Detailed recommendations based on findings of present review are provided.

Sustainability reporting has seen increased adoption as more businesses are recognizing wider societal and environmental obligations outside of traditional shareholder commitments. Several jurisdictions such as Malaysia and Hong Kong have passed regulations to encourage or mandate sustainability reporting. Likewise, Singapore has instituted mandatory sustainability reporting for all listed companies since 2016. The development of sustainability reporting in Singapore is explored using material from government agencies, company sustainability reports, conference speeches and newspaper articles. Viewing sustainability reporting as a socio-material assemblage of heterogeneous actors, discursive practices and other policy artefacts, local corporate sustainability initiatives are framed heavily in business logics such as the ‘triple bottom line’, while being anchored to broader national sustainability campaigns and commitments under international agreements. Such an economistic framing may limit the effectiveness of efforts to drive genuine changes in corporate sustainability, as companies may merely engage in a ‘checkbox ticking’ exercise to fulfil regulatory obligations. This paper highlights the multisited nature of policymaking and the tensions that may arise in a top-down approach to implementation.

The purpose of this article is to examine the conversion of waste methane gas to renewable energy through environmental management. Processing organic waste is one kind of alternative energy that may be generated and regenerated. Garbage is a major issue for the majority of people, particularly the vast volume of market garbage. Waste processing and utilization technology is required. Implementing the 3R process of reduce, reuse, and recycle on fresh garbage not only generates useful goods, but also addresses the waste issue and generates revenue for those who wish to manage it. As a result, it is critical to evaluate the design of organic waste burners that convert methane gas to methane and to estimate the rate of combustion and heat produced by organic waste biogas

Policy goals regarding many environmental topics have undergone a shift in recent decades, from environmental protection and elimination of hazards to the enhancement of sustainability. Yet the con...

The distribution of pollution-intensive industries is a serious challenge to environmental governance of China during the transition period. However, existing studies lack the attention to the distribution and driving factors of air-pollution-intensive industries (APIIs). Therefore, based on geospatial analysis and spatial measurement models, this study explored the spatial distribution of APIIs and their socioeconomic driving factors in Zhejiang Province from 2006 to 2018. The results show that (1) the output value of APIIs in Zhejiang showed a trend of first increasing and then slowly decreasing, indicating the industry structure has a tendency toward improvement; (2) the spatial agglomeration of APIIs in Zhejiang Province has a positive spatial correlation (significant at least at the level of 10%), and the main agglomeration areas are located in cities around Hangzhou Bay, but the overall level of agglomeration is decreasing and shows a certain diffusion trend. (3) APIIs in Zhejiang Province have significant industry differences. Industries with a high degree of concentration are mainly petroleum processing, coking, nuclear fuel processing, chemical fiber manufacturing and textile, all with the Gini coefficient exceeding 0.5. (4) The improvement of labor force, capital investment, international trade level and infrastructure level will aggravate the distribution of APIIs, while technological innovation, environmental regulation and foreign investment can effectively suppress and reduce the output value of regional APIIs. In particular, for every 1% increase in technological innovation, the output value of APIIs will decrease by 0.113%, and it will also have a significant reduction effect on neighboring cities. In the future, Zhejiang needs to fully rely on technological innovation capabilities to drive the development of green industries and the upgrading of traditional manufacturing industries.

Recovery and conservation of threatened species require adequate institutional responses. We tested an approach to systematically identify and measure how an institutional framework acknowledges threats and required responses for the recovery of endangered species. We measured institutional functional fit with a drivers-pressure-state-impacts-response (DPSIR) model integrated with a quantitative text mining method and qualitative analysis of statutory instruments to examine regulatory responses that support the recovery of 2 endangered species native to Australia, the bridled nailtail wallaby (Onychogalea fraenata) and the Eastern Bristlebird (Dasyornis brachypterus). The key components of the DPSIR model were present in the institutional framework at statutory and operational levels, but some institutional gaps remained in the protection and recovery of the Eastern Bristlebird, including feral predator control, weed control, and grazing management in some locations. However, regulatory frameworks varied in their geographic scope and the application and implementation of many instruments remained optional. Quantitative text mining can be used to quickly navigate a large volume of regulatory documents, but challenges remain in selection of terms, queries of co-occurrence, and interpretation of word frequency counts. To inform policy, we recommend that quantitative assessments of institutional fit be complemented with qualitative analysis and interpreted in light of the sociopolitical and institutional context.La recuperación y la conservación de las especies amenazadas requieren de respuestas institucionales adecuadas. Evaluamos una estrategia para identificar y medir sistemáticamente cómo un marco de trabajo reconoce las amenazas y las respuestas requeridas para la recuperación de las especies en peligro. Medimos la aptitud funcional institucional mediante un modelo de fuerzas motrices-presión-estado-impacto-respuesta (DPSIR) integrado con un método cuantitativo de extracción de textos y un análisis cualitativo de los instrumentos legales para examinar las respuestas regulatorias que apoyan a la recuperación de dos especies en peligro nativas de Australia: Onychogalea fraenata y Dasyornis brachypterus. Los componentes clave del modelo DPSIR estuvieron presentes en el marco de trabajo institucional a niveles legales y operativos, pero algunos vacíos institucionales permanecieron en la protección y recuperación de D. brachypterus, incluyendo el control de depredadores ferales, el control de malezas y el manejo del pastoreo en algunas localidades. Sin embargo, los marcos de trabajo regulatorios variaron en cuanto a su enfoque geográfico y la aplicación e implementación de muchos de los instrumentos siguieron siendo opcionales. La extracción cuantitativa de textos puede usarse para navegar rápidamente un gran volumen de documentación regulatoria, pero todavía existen obstáculos en la selección de términos, consultas sobre la coocurrencia e interpretación de los conteos de frecuencia de palabras. Para orientar a las políticas recomendamos que las evaluaciones cuantitativas de la aptitud institucional estén complementadas con análisis cuantitativos e interpretadas a la luz del contexto institucional y sociopolítico.

Wetlands are regulated by a plethora of specific environmental management Acts (SEMAs). The mandate of these Acts sits within various environmental affairs departments. Thus, the same resource is regulated and managed by a series of different legislation and environmental administrators. The National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998 (NEMA) is the national environmental framework Act and stresses in its purpose the need for cooperative environmental governance (CEG) which, arguably, raises no concern for the way wetlands are currently regulated and managed, as long as this is done in a manner that promotes CEG. Section 2 of NEMA sets out a series of sustainable development principles that all organs of state must apply in all matters relating to the environment; “environment” is read throughout to include wetlands. Section 2(4)(l) is dubbed the “co-operative governance principle” and mandates the “intergovernmental co-ordination and harmonisation of policies, legislation and actions relating to the environment”. With this in mind, this note, by way of a document analysis, seeks to ascertain whether legislation and policies and action relating to the wetlands regulation and management are in fact coordinated. The presented findings indicate that coordination is lacking, which consequently adversely affects the management, conservation and protection of wetlands in South Africa. The recommendations aim to bring about law reform to improve coordination that bolsters wetlands management as well as their conservation and protection, while simultaneously promoting the objectives of section 41 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 (the Constitution).

Twenty-five years after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force, what impact has it had on the US-Mexico border environment? This paper asks what lessons NAFTA offers to contemporary debates about trade and environmental governance through analysis of time series data and expert perceptions on the environment of the US-Mexico borderlands. In the early 1990s, scholars and activists argued that NAFTA would have mostly negative impacts on the US-Mexico border, creating water scarcity and increasing air, land and water pollution; degrading ecosystems; and causing health problems. The debate over NAFTA was part of the larger discussion on the environmental impacts of trade and globalization. In response to these concerns, several governance institutions were created to monitor the environment (the Commission for Environmental Cooperation) and to certify and fund improvements to environmental infrastructure along the US-Mexico border (the Border Environment Cooperation Commission and North American Development Bank). NAFTA was recently replaced with a new trade deal (the USMCA). In this paper we review trends in environmental conditions over the past 25 years, mostly on the Mexican side of the border where greater impacts were anticipated, through datasets, institutional reports and scholarly literature. We also present and discuss the results of semi-structured interviews and surveys with 49 experts (researchers, activists, government personnel, and other border institutional actors) to understand the varied legacy of NAFTA on the border environment at 25 years. Although missing data and challenges in attribution complicated our analysis, we found both positive and negative trends in environmental indicators and the literature.

As profit-seeking corporations, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have incentives to maximize profits from economic activities. However, subject to state ownership, SOEs are expected also to be more accountable for public welfare than their private counterparts. This study examines whether SOEs’ relative provincial dominance reinforces government’s demand to reduce air pollution in China, in the context of anticorruption and performance management. The results suggest that greater relative SOE dominance reduces sulfur dioxide emissions, but this effect is significant only in provinces with a low level of corruption case investigations. Performance management has no discernible moderating impact on the effect of SOE relative dominance.

In the midst of global change uncertainties, Indonesian spatial planning authorities are developing 20-year strategies. However, the lack of collaborative engagement of stakeholders and unclear methodology around using futures studies in addressing land management undermine such plans and affect environmental governance. A crucial question is how to link a future-oriented process with governance transformation processes, particularly related to land-use planning and management. To address this issue, we used a co-elaborative scenario-building approach, referred to as participatory prospective analysis (PPA), to facilitate the creation of local multistakeholder platforms considering future-oriented perspectives. The PPA design combines equally the knowledge of local communities, technical experts and decision-makers, and was applied in a series of sequential multistakeholder workshops in two regencies in Indonesia, followed by public consultations on the main results. In both regencies, participants agreed on a common topic related to spatial planning in their jurisdiction to be explored with a 20-year time horizon. They reached consensus on relevant variables, analyzed their dependence/influence, and developed several plausible yet contrasting scenarios for land management and road maps with guidelines for the implementation of desired outcomes. The PPA approach stimulated stakeholder engagement and ensured that more local voices were not only heard but also duly included in the process. It allowed participants to consider strategies that would otherwise have been less readily accepted by their respective organizations. It showed that it is possible to improve existing spatial planning processes in Indonesia by integrating tools for a more inclusive and long-term future-oriented collaborative approach.

The environmental stressors associated with the cross-provincial transfer of coal resource-based enterprises (CREs) have become a critical concern for the green, sustainable, and high-quality development of resource-rich areas in central and western regions. This study referred to socioeconomic statistics and carried out an interview survey, literature review, and systematic analysis to clarify the mechanism underlying environmental stressors arising from the cross-provincial transfer of CREs. The intervention factors associated with such environmental stressors were identified, and the study conducted an empirical analysis of relevant data related to the coal-resources industry in three central and western provinces in China for the period 1997-2016. Research findings: (1) The intensity ranking of the influencing factors associated with environmental stressors caused by cross-provincial transfers of CREs has certain rules. The 'level of the enterprise's investment in environmental protection' is the weakest, the 'enterprise's development mode level' is slightly stronger, the 'enterprise scale' is stronger, and 'environmental regulation' is the strongest. (2) Stricter endogenous and exogenous policy regulations for environmental governance in rich coal resource-based regions are associated with weaker negative externalities in respect of resource development and the intensity of stressors. (3) Larger CREs are associated with a better green mining capacity, environmental repair cost advantages, social constraints, self-discipline, and thus, a weaker stress effect. (4) CREs that adopt more superior modes of development that focus on the utilization of the 'three wastes' are associated with a weaker stress effect. (5) The higher the level of investment by CREs in environmental protection technology, facilities, and equipment, the weaker the stress effect. The conclusions of the study can provide a theoretical basis to assist the Chinese government to develop relevant regulations to control inter-provincial transfers by CREs and to thereby diminish environmental stressor effects.

Community-based monitoring (CBM) programs are increasingly popular models of environmental governance around the world. Accordingly, a handful of review papers have highlighted the various benefits...

Because national governments have limited power to regulate the conditions of production abroad, voluntary certification schemes have come to play a significant role in transnational regulation of many global supply chains, particularly in the food sector, where multiple regulatory issues are in play and different certification schemes compete. However, we still know relatively little about the political‐economic factors that shape the construction of certified citrus markets for these competing standards. Based on an original dataset from a comparative survey of US and Dutch importers, this paper investigates factors that shape the construction of certification markets for citrus, focusing on the construction of markets for different kinds of certification schemes including Fair Trade, Organic, and GlobalGAP certification. The paper investigates from a comparative perspective whether the construction of markets differs across the US and Dutch political economies. The results show both the enduring effects of national political economies and the importance of global value chain dynamics. Across competing schemes, the industry‐sponsored business‐to‐business certification systems have outcompeted consumer‐facing label systems.

The study's overarching objective was to identify the pitfalls and bottlenecks in ensuring environmental justice on an equal basis embedded in the existing legal, policy, and institutional framework. The environmental victims were examined, and the opinions of the line experts were garnered. The study revealed that ordinary people could not seek justice to the court directly for environmental damage due to bubbles in the legal and policy framework. The courts suffer from various challenges like fuzziness in the jurisdiction, lack of legal advisors, and workloads. On the other hand, the court has no power to take cognizance of an offense independently. The wealthy and influential polluters are reluctant to respect the law due to insufficient punishment prescribed by the statutes. The victims are rarely compensated, and there are a few options to resolve the dispute in alternative ways. The provision of legal aid for the poor and disadvantaged people is not much helpful. The public departments are stuck with a lack of logistics and human resources. The jurisdictional overlapping, underlapping, and conflict of interest among the departments worsen monitoring, control, surveillance (MCS), and effective coordination. The regulatory framework does not welcome the community in decision-making and natural resource management. Hence, the study recommends legal and institutional reform. Policy initiatives are warranted for effective environmental governance, green growth, campaign, and volunteerism.