Study Of Environmental Management In Mining Areas From The Perspective Of Holistic Governance

China is a country of big mineral industry.The serious environmental destruction caused by mineral resources exploitation and utilization makes it important and urgent to restore the environment in mining areas.The restoration and rehabilitation of ecological environment in mining areas,however,are more than an environmental issue for a mining area is a whole in which the economic system,the social system and the environmental system interact with each other.The ecological environmental restoration in mining areas requires not only advanced science and technology but also the regulation of interest relations between man and man,and between human and the nature.Environmental management in mining areas refers to the institutional arrangements for environmental rights conflicts resolving,including the system,the institutions,and the measures concerning environmental protection in mining areas.Based on theories such as holistic governance,principal-agent theory,bureaucracy and meta-governance,this dissertation studies the fragmentation problem in mining areas environmental management and its countermeasures,using research methods like literature method,case study,game analysis,on-the-spot investigation and so on.The main findings and conclusions are listed below.(1)The holistic analysis framework put forward in this dissertation is composed of four dimensions including the subject,the object,the values and the effect.(2)It is found that fragmentation is a prominent problem in organization,institution,and measure level on the basis of the reflection of the system,the laws and the concrete measures concerning environmental management in China's mining areas.But the ecological environment in a mining area is a whole in which air,water,land and mine interact with each other.And these environmental elements cannot be treated separately.The conflict between the management mode and the issue situation,thus,makes mining areas environmental management less efficiency.In reaction to the fragmented management,there are some cooperation practice in mining areas environmental management.Although the reform is holism-oriented,it is still in its early stages.Existing cooperative mechanisms are incomplete and unsystematic.They fail to fulfill the four-dimensional purposes of an overall reform that is supposed to cover the subject,the object,the values and the effect.Besides,these mechanisms are imperfect themselves.(3)In an attempt to construct a more refined overall environmental management system of mining areas,this dissertation analyses the issue situation of environmental protection.In the subject dimension,the mining enterprises,the government,and the residents living in mining areas make decisions on the basis of their own interests,which,therefore,makes mining areas environmental protection difficult to carry out.In the object dimension,mining areas environmental problems should not be tackled separate from their socio-economic background.In terms of the dimension of the values,that “fixing past wrongs without adding new ones”,for a mining area,today,means the transformation of values and the construction of micro mechanisms in accordance with the values.With regard to the effect dimension,in the face of the high-level spillover effect of public responsibilities,it no longer works in the information society that a governmental agency focuses only on its own cost and benefit in dealing with a mining area environmental problem.(4)This dissertation discovers the reform strategies oriented by holistic governance and discusses the practice of environmental management in Pingshuo opencast mine site.What should be emphasized is that there is not going to be an overnight change in the institutional framework in that complex historical contexts account for the way a governmental agency runs.Within the current institutional framework and the transitional period,consequently,collaborative mechanisms should be perfected and strengthened so as to promote the integration of mining areas environmental management,and,then,to prevent spillovers of public responsibilities in this field.