Environmental Conservation or the Treadmill of Law: A Case Study of the Post-2014 Husbandry Waste Regulations in China

Abstract

As industrialized animal agriculture expanded rapidly in the last decade, the resultant pollution has generated widespread despoliation of natural resources and environmental victimization in rural China. This study examines the formulation and implementation of national environmental regulations from 2014 to 2019 and finds that the juxtaposing ministerial and provincial jurisdictions resulted in conflicting interpretations of the scale and evaluation criteria of the national policy. We argue that the regulations are more than centralized conservation programs designed to reduce environmental pollution caused by the expansion of animal husbandry. Instead, these regulations are fundamentally state-led rural development initiatives that utilize the designations of ecological protection zones to reconfigure land use and promote scale-up production in agricultural structural adjustment initiatives. The enforcement of these environmental regulations, therefore, constitutes a treadmill of law (ToL) that accelerated the geographical specialization and function intensification of the Chinese husbandry sector.

Top-Down Implementation and Fragmented Bureaucracy: An Analysis of the Livestock Waste Prevention Regulation in China

“…Nevertheless, research on environmental governance in China reveals that the effectiveness of the state's environmental policies has been weakened by a fragmented governing structure, where national policy goals became diluted by competition among government departments (Kostka & Mol, 2013;Mao et al, 2022;Zhu et al, 2015). Moreover, the contradiction in environmental governance can be traced to political decentralization, which has caused lower-level governments to prioritize economic interests and social stability over environmental protection (Ran, 2013;Mao et al, 2020a).…”

Wildlife Trade and COVID-19: Towards a Criminology of Anthropogenic Pathogen Spillover

“…In 2018, China became the world’s largest producer and importer of meat ( United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization 2019 ). By weight, pigs were the species most produced, with all of the dreadful environmental harm, pathogen transmission and social disorganization that accompanies intense industrial animal production ( Fitzgerald et al 2014 ; Mao et al 2020 ). Since mid-2018, deadly tick-hosted African swine fever has been sweeping through China’s pig herds.…”

“…Moreover, it will encourage a recategorization of some wild species as livestock or poultry, thereby escaping the ban. A permanent ban will perhaps be just as unenforceable as recent legislative attempts to regulate environmental waste in rural areas ( Mao et al 2020 ). Will financial compensation to poor peasant farmers for the loss of their farmed wildlife inventory be sufficient to persuade them to comply with the ban?…”

An Integrated Assessment of Different Types of Environment-Friendly Technological Progress and Their Spatial Spillover Effects in the Chinese Agriculture Sector

“…1 Document" particularly emphasized that China needs to establish a long-term mechanism for environment-friendly agricultural development, increase agricultural ecological protection, and allow over-exploited resources to recuperate to promote the development of environment-friendly agriculture [5]. Among them, the use of new knowledge and new technologies to reduce environmental pollution, improve resource utilization efficiency, and promote energy conservation and emission reduction through the advancement of environment-friendly technology are important means for the development of environment-friendly agriculture [6,7]. Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture of China issued a notice of "Technical Guidelines for Environment-friendly Agricultural Development (2018-2030)" which proposes technologies for new varieties of high-efficiency and high-quality multi-resistance environmentally friendly and high-efficiency fertilizers, agricultural drugs, and biological agents [8].…”