Participatory Environmental Governance in China and Europe

Environmental challenges have driven both China and European countries towards the incorporation of participation in their environmental governance. With and without official sanction, and coupled with frequent state repression, Chinese citizens have engaged in a variety of participatory experiments, new institutional arrangements, and social mobilization in environmental governance in the past decade. Compared to China, participation in Europe as a means and objective of environmental governance is more institutionalized at both EU and national levels. Based on a review of published research on participatory environmental governance in China and Europe, we argue that participation in environmental governance in both China (compared to Europe) has been relatively effective in meeting its environmental and political objectives. This is based on our understanding of participation in (environmental) governance as a mode of social regulation to manage political instability and economic inequality caused by environmental issues.