Environmental cosmopolitanization ‘with Chinese Characteristics’: a possible legacy from recent environment policy developments and experimental collaborative projects?: time span 2000-2010.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to discover whether or not engagement in cosmopolitanization processes between China and international environmental organizations, especially the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), might have helped remedy the dilemmas posed by China’s environmental predicament in the decade 2000-2010. I chose Ulrich Beck’s concept of cosmopolitanization processes in risk societies to examine the ‘spacial and temporal dimensions’ (Goldstein, 1989:537) of the Chinese environmental arena in this decade. China’s environmental crises were multifarious and often catastrophic in their effects on local populations. The central government needed funding, environmental expertise and technology. Exchanges with organizations like UNEP were frequently adversarial. There were historical, economic and political reasons for this state of affairs. National and international issues influenced the authoritarian central government to decide that national concerns would take precedence in international environmental agreements. However, despite these and other international exchange difficulties, the Chinese government accepted the United Nation’s program of Sustainable Development and attempted to implement it because the program might benefit the environment but still permit maintenance of economic growth. Implementation of environmental projects was always fraught with formidable impediments but policy developments did begin to include cosmopolitanization possibilities in a series of experimental environmental projects which, despite often negative evaluations, did introduce collaborative ventures involving international assistance. Citizen participation in local environmental projects was a central concern in this study, but despite policy exhortations to promote their involvement, actual participation was limited to groups of officials and particular environmental organizations. It was obvious that had public participation existed in practice the collaborative projects would have encouraged stronger cosmopolitan exchanges. Nonetheless, by about 2012 there was some evidence of an opening up that improved engagement with international environmental regimes and this change, while not transformational, could encourage more useful cosmopolitan relationships during the 21st conference in Paris in 2015.