Do regional integration plans promote joint prevention and control of air pollution? - Lessons from China’s major city clusters

Abstract

China has been actively developing its city clusters in recent years, hoping to use them as levers for both integrated economic development and the attainment of other goals such as collaborative environmental management (CEM). According to the existing literature, an important share of China’s CEM experiments focuses on air pollution abatement. However, to what extent have China’s city clusters promoted joint prevention and control of air pollution? The empirical evidence has lagged behind practice. Most of the research on China’s regional air pollution management either focuses on just the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, or discusses the characteristics of an ideal CEM framework and the challenges that CEM present. Very few have paid attention to CEM experiences from the rest of China or discussed the actual outcomes of such practices. Using a three-essay approach, this research first looks at the city clusters along the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River, also known as the Central China Triangle, and answers whether this regional integration plan and its embedded call for CEM have brought observable process changes to the involved cities’ air quality management system. It then looks at how the venture capital investors, an increasingly important type of private capital provider, have perceived this policy, and whether a more collaborative environmental governance framework has any influence on how these investors make their cleantech investment decisions. Lastly, this research creates an original dataset containing 137 Chinese cities’ information on their local environmental protection bureaus’ (EPBs’) resource adequacy and regulatory enforcement power, industrial polluters’ degree of compliance, and these cities’ average air quality outcomes for the Year 2017, and uses Structural Equation Modeling method to analyze whether clustered cities and their un-clustered counterparts exhibit observable variations, both in terms of how the enforcement-compliance mechanism functions, and how this mechanism influences the environmental outcomes. I found improvements in joint prevention and control of air pollution in both the clustered cities and their un-clustered counterparts since 2015, and learnt that certain CEM practices may mobilize private capital in cleantech investment. Moreover, I identified important elements of the enforcement-compliance mechanism that could potentially explain differences in cities’ air quality outcomes. ALTERNATE ABSTRACT: 近年来，中国一直在积极开展城市群建设，希望将其作为促进区域协同发展、城乡协调发展、生态文明共建等发展目标的核心力量。现有研究显示，中国目前大量的环境共治实践都集中在空气污染治理领域，但是，鲜少有人系统地研究城市群建设在多大程度上促进了不同区域间的大气污染联防联控。另外，大多数环境共治领域的研究主要关注京津冀地区的过往经验，或者着重讨论联防联控的先决条件和潜在困难。很少有研究深入挖掘中国其他地区的环境共治经验，以及这些实践带来的实际结果。 本研究综合定性和定量的方法进行实证分析，分三篇文章来讨论，中国近年来大力发展的国家级城市群是否给相关区域的大气污染联防联控带来实质性影响。第一篇文章分析长江中游城市群（也称“中三角”）自2015年正式上升为国家级城市群以来，是否给相关区域的空气污染治理带来系统性的变化。所谓系统性变化指的是在政策制定与执行、行政架构、人力财力等各方面的改变。第二篇文章采用实地调研的形式，采访几家国内一线风险投资公司对区域一体化政策和环境共治机制的解读，分析这些规划和机制的实施是否影响风险投资人在清洁技术领域做出的投资决策。在第三篇文章中，作者构建了一个包含中国若干个国家级城市群、共计137个城市的原始数据库，并运用结构方程模型来研究，城市群发展是否给集群中的城市带来了更好的空气质量，是否帮助当地的环保局通过增强执法能力来提高工业污染源在排污方面合法守规的程度。 核心的研究结论如下：1）长江中游城市群成立以来，城市群内外的城市在大气污染联防联控方面均取得了客观的进展，但这些进展与城市群发展的直接关联不大。2）某些环境共治的实施举措（比如区域间的联合监测和联合督察）有可能推动风险投资人进行清洁技术投资。3）环保局执法能力的某些方面能有效影响工业污染源的合法守规程度，并有望提升城市的空气质量。