TITLE:
Top-Down Implementation and Fragmented Bureaucracy: An Analysis of the Livestock Waste Prevention Regulation in China
AUTHORS:
Shuqin Jin, Kuoray Mao, Dongmei Han, Yu Hu
KEYWORDS:
Agricultural Non-Point Source Pollution, Livestock and Poultry Pollution Prevention, Agricultural Development in China, Environmental Governance in China, Sustainable Agriculture
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.8,
July
29,
2022
ABSTRACT: Livestock
and poultry raising is the largest source of agricultural non-point source
pollution and an essential aspect of environmental governance. To resolve the
issue, China has introduced a series of policies to promote the recycling of livestock and poultry excrement since
2014. This study uses data from government
documents, policy papers, and official husbandry statistics to understand the
effects and policy implications of husbandry waste regulations from 2014 to 2019. We examined the planning and implementation
guidelines of husbandry waste control programs and supplemented the
archival data with 29 in-depth interviews with local environmental protection
officers as well as husbandry operators in five provinces from 2015 to 2018.
Our findings indicate that the new regulatory regime has three fundamental issues:
First, the inconsistency between national and ministerial policy goals; Second,
the binding targets of these policies create unforeseen consequences in their
implementation, which has hindered the establishment of a national resource
recycling system; Third, the regulations provide few incentives to promote the
development of sustainable husbandry industry.