My first semester at UW I took a class called Government of China. This class taught me that there are people out there who understand how the Chinese government works (the textbook writers, some political scientists), but I think it’s byzantine, and I can’t bear to try to puzzle it out for too long, even if it makes me a better person for trying. The water governance system is no different, called “nine dragons administer the water,” a charming name hiding a tangled hairball of bureaucracy. (It's worth noting that the offices are most likely called "dragons" in reference to the ancient myth of the Dragon King, who lives in an underwater palace and controls the water. I might write more about this in a later blog post, because it's way more interesting than writing about government.)
I’m using two different sources for this summary. The first source is my professor at Sichuan University, in the Department of Environmental Engineering. I think she is taking her basic info about the water management structure from the different ministries’ publications. All the Chinese ministries have up-to-date websites in both Chinese and English--I'm working on putting the links here, but I'm limited by the wireless here at Pete's Tex-Mex and the unreliability of my Russian-administrated VPN. The other source is this really dry (har) 2006 report in the journal Water Policy, published by a group of professors affiliated with Yunnan University.
The nine dragons and their responsibilities:
National Development and Reform Commission 国家发展和改革委员会
Can you imagine how powerful this branch of government is? Is anything in China more important (at the official level) than development and reform?
One of the responsibilities of the NDRC is to approve and oversee large construction projects, like the Three Gorges Dam project and the South-North Water Transfer.
Ministry of Water Resources 中华人民共和国水利部
The MWR is responsible for the overall water resource management and exploitation, including hydropower, shipping and transportation, and resolving the conflicts that occur at the lower levels of water management. The MWR has sub-offices at the province, county and city levels. Within the MWR there are also river management committees for each major river, which are subdivided into river section management committees.
Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development
The M-HURD (I’m not sure if that’s the real acronym, but I like it, because it sounds appropriately like the ministry that handles the “herd”) is in charge of the water inside of cities. They work with the local-level offices of the SEPA and the MWR to deal with pollution.
State Environmental Protection Administration 中华人民共和国环境保护部
Deals with water pollution, ob, and establishes the national standards for pollution control.
Ministry of Agriculture
The MF deals with irrigation and non-point source pollution, as well as the environmental health of fisheries.
Ministry of Construction
Deals with water projects, including supply infrastructure and sewage disposal.
State Forest Bureau
The Forest Bureau controls watershed protection, i.e. planting trees to protect the rivers from erosion and flooding.
State Electric Power Company
Hydropower! Controls large and medium-scale projects, mostly dams.
Ministry of Communication
The MC controls pollution from ships on rivers. This is kind of a weird place to house this responsibility. Why doesn’t it fall under the MWR’s control over shipping?
Ministry of Health
The MH controls drinking water standards—no easy task, I’m sure.
Wait, are you counting? That’s ten! Ten dragons! Where’d the extra dragon come from? The Yunnan University report doesn’t include the M-HURD, but these city officials definitely have a say over urban lake and river management. They can even request increases in the amount of water coming into the city by buying "credits" from reservoirs upriver.
It’s no wonder it’s so hard to get water pollution problems addressed in such a bureaucratic system, even with lots of money available (what's left after embezzlement and kickbacks). I hate to end on this cynical note, so I'll end with a cautionary water proverb:
水能载舟，亦能覆舟
Water floats a boat, but it can also sink it.
No comments:
Post a Comment