role in all areas of conservation. This lack of administrative integration
is common cross-nationally in the management of complex environ-
mental issues. Nevertheless, some coordination is achieved through linkage
mechanisms discussed below.
Devolution to Sub-national Governments
A much noted tendency of Chinese government since the onset of economic
reform is devolution (transfer) of administrative power to the provinces and
autonomous regions (and indeed to municipalities), and this practice vastly
complicates biodiversity conservation efforts. For example, each of the
provinces has a forestry bureau and an environmental protection bureau
(EPB), and forestry and environmental protection offices are found at the local
government level too. The sub-national offices operate in a problematic
administrative context as they serve two masters: the SFA or SEPA in Beijing,
and the provincial governor (or local mayor). Because administrative control
tends to follow the source of funding, and the central government allocates
less to environmental conservation than provinces and municipalities, there is
no clear line of authority from the center to the site where problems of
endangered and threatened species conservation must be resolved. Campbell
uses devolution to explain the failure of local environmental authorities to
repair damage to the Yun Dang Lake in Xiamen:
‘In Chinese bureaucratic parlance, local EPBs have a so-called “professional” or
advising relationship with the provincial EPB, and by extension, the NEPA. In
contrast the municipal government enjoys a more commanding “leadership”
relationship with municipal EPBs. In short, municipal political authorities have
more clout over local environmental bureaus than do national-level environmental
officials, and mayors therefore occupy a critical position as the political masters of
the municipal EPBs.’^54Moreover, as noted, national laws are vague and leave much discretion to local
administrators. Clearly, given the weak bureaucratic position of EPBs, there is
little incentive for officials to rigorously enforce the law, and they adopt
pragmatic orientations. The deputy director of SEPA disclosed that heads of
local environmental protection agencies sometimes had to write to higher
authorities incognito to report violations in their own areas.^55 Whether they are
most strongly motivated by cultural factors of respect for authority, guanxi
(relationships) and face (as Ma and Ortolano contend)^56 or economic pressures,
may make little difference in the decision-making context.
Provincial and local environmental offices are relatively well-supplied with
personnel – from 60000 to 120000 in the early twenty-first century.^57
However, most encounter pressures that put them at odds with national
environmental goals.^58 In Chapter 5 we discuss the problems they encounter
The framework for biodiversity conservation 85