Redai dili (Feb 2022)
A Review of Regional Environmental Governance Research in the West and Its Enlightenment to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area
Abstract
Since the 1990s, with the region becoming an important space for governance, people have become more and more aware of the importance and urgency of environmental coordination and promoting sustainable development on the regional scale. Different from the traditional environmental governance model, which regards administrative divisions as boundaries, regional environmental governance actively responds to regional environmental changes across administrative divisions, adapts to the new requirements of regional sustainable development, and effectively complements environmental governance on local, national and global scales. Therefore, a growing attention has been paid on the regional environmental governance research in the West. Since the 40 years of reform and opening-up, the economy and society have developed rapidly in China, especially in the eastern region, which puts forward higher requirements for regional environment and its governance. However, domestic geography research pays insufficient attention to regional environmental governance. This article systematically combs the research progress and frontier issues of western regional environmental governance, in order to promote the research of regional environmental governance in China and provide a conceptual framework for the research of environmental governance in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Firstly, it analyzes the concept, importance and challenges of regional environmental governance, explains what regional environmental governance is, and focuses on the complementary relationship between regional environmental governance and local, national and global environmental governance. Then it analyzes the development progress of regional environmental governance theory, and expounds the regional environmental governance model and impact effect. Based on the above research progress, it is considered that the research on environmental governance in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area should focus on the following four aspects: (1) The organizational framework under the "one country, two systems" policy with Chinese characteristics that leads the formulation and implementation of regional environmental policies and coordinates different stakeholders; (2) The geographical factors for intergovernmental cooperative environmental governance and jointly implementation of environmental strategies in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Great Bay Area led by the government under the background of urbanization and globalization, which are different from western countries under the influence of strong non-governmental organizations; (3) The potential impact of the implementation of regional environmental governance on China's current economic transformation and development and spatial reconstruction;. (4) The institutional arrangements that are conducive to the balanced development of economic development and environmental protection and can promote regional sustainable development. The research on regional environmental governance will help to expand the research on domestic regional environmental governance, and has important practical significance for understanding the contradiction between economic development and environmental protection and exploring sustainable development policies since the in-depth development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and even China.
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