A Study On The Construction Of Actor Network In Environmental Governance

In recent years,the ebola epidemic in west Africa,the spread of wildfires in Australia,the volcanic eruption in the Philippines,the plague of locusts in East Africa,the snowstorms in Canada,the torrential rains in Indonesia,and the outbreak of COVID-19 have all rung the bell of environmental protection.As environmental problems pose a growing threat to human survival,environmental governance has become a strategic action project to build a community of shared future for mankind and an important step towards a new era of ecological civilization in human history.This dissertation is a basic research,focusing on the basic theory construction of environmental governance,trying to form a systematic theoretical framework and basic action concept of environmental governance from the perspective of activism.In the historical process of globalization and post-industrialization,the increasingly serious environmental pollution,the poor effect of government governance and the demand for diversified social governance to participate have prompted the collaborative governance to become a new solution to complex environmental problems.Faced with the symbiosis,cross-domain and mobility characteristics of environmental issues,how a government,as the guide of environmental governance,maintains a good collaborative relationship with multiple governance requires theoretical researchers to make new explorations.It is not limited to the strategic discussion of legalization,marketization or socialization.Therefore,based on the background of globalization and post-industrialization,this dissertation is based on the era of globalization and post-industrialization,and considers the issue from the perspective of environmental collaborative governance: In order to achieve effective governance of environmental issues related to the fate of the entire human community,what kind of organization should we construct to effectively organize the multiple actors ?Since modern times,under the guidance of the concept of "anthropocentrism" advocated by modern western philosopher such as Descartes,Kant and Hegel,a modern industrialization process that started in western capitalist countries has been expanded globally.It is undeniable that hundreds of years of industrial development indeed created a brilliant industrial civilization,but the concept of "anthropocentrism" has caused heavy environmental costs to humanity for supporting the exploitative and predatory economic development mode of western developed countries.In the 1960 s and 1970 s,Silent Spring,Limits to Growth and other books on ecology and environmental protection were published,which were very helpful for promoting people's awareness of environmental protection.Subsequently,a vigorous global environmental protection movement was launched.After decades of accumulation of thoughts and ideas,people reached a basic consensus of the low carbon environmental protection,established International Environmental Alliance to deal with global environmental problems,represented by United Nations Environment Programme,Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,and formulated a series of conventions and agreements related to the protection of environment and policy.However,since the late 20 th century,the frequent occurrence of environmental crisis events and the advent of environmental risk society show that the earth's homeland on which human beings have survived has not been fundamentally improved with the improvement of environmental awareness,environmental protection efforts and environmental governance technologies.In the face of the earth full of economic development,Morris Berman pointed out that we are at the crossroads of economic development and ecological protection.He thought there are two ways to save the earth: one is to win the earth's salvation through science and technology;the other is to protect the earth through all kinds of people.As for these two choices,American eco-political scientist Coleman firmly supports the latter.He believes that the technological environmental governance mode guided by the modern scientific world is only to meet the expansion and control needs of capitalism.Therefore,in order to promote the universal realization of environmental equity and justice,we must explore a new world view adapting to the future order of environmental governance.In the historical transition from industrial society to post-industrial society,the Communist Party and government of China have put forward a historical mission of ecological civilization construction.The purpose of which is to effectively solve the prominent environmental problems caused by China's industrialization and urbanization since reformation and opening.We think,the concept of replacing industrial civilization with ecological civilization is consistent with Coleman new worldview requirements.We believe,going down this path,we can form an environmental governance path to protect the earth's environment,so as to bring human beings into a new era of ecological civilization construction,and make every one become an active actor in ecological protection and environmental governance.In order to effectively organize the environmental activists,such as the government,enterprises,non-governmental organizations,community,media and public.From the angle of environment management system reform,this dissertation puts forward a suggestion to construct an equality and openness environmental governance actor network,to replace the closed and centralized bureaucracy.In dealing with highly complex and highly uncertain environment problems,it is obvious that we must face up to the failure of bureaucratic organization as a typical form of industrial social organizations.From the perspective of the evolution of human community,this dissertation firstly analyzes the causes and the development trend of environmental problems,the historical necessity and realistic necessity of environmental governance mode from the cooperative governance with the single government subject to the collaborative governance with multiple subjects.Secondly,after objective analysis of the characteristics and goal of collaborative environmental governance corresponding to the bureaucracy organization,we formed such a view:although bureaucratic organizations can prevent and reduce the occurrence of environmental problems by emphasizing instrumental control methods such as "authority--command","responsibility--obligation","technology--process" and "leadership--incentive",but it is still difficult to promote the effective governance of environmental problems,due to the core — periphery environmental governance structure,the logic of institutional environmental governance and approach of technical environmental governance which excludes and limits the effective participation of diverse social activists.Next,this dissertation discusses the theoretical basis and practical conditions of replacing traditional bureaucratic organization with environmental actor network,we believe that the structure of the network actors formed by the multiple environmental governance subjects is characterized by equality,high cohesion,weak linkage and flexibility,so it is very easy to effectively gather each environmental governance actor on the network node,then form a huge field of environmental governance action and strong environmental governance action force.Again,make a deep analysis on environmental actor network adaptation of collaborative mechanism,let people fully understand the importance of actor network in environmental risk management on the basis of clarifying the internal logical relationship between "structure--power relationship--institution--action".At the same time,in the context of the new era of ecological civilization construction,this dissertation gives an in-depth and specific explanation of the characteristics and advantages of collaborative organizations that adapt to the network structure of environmental actors.Finally,take regional and global environmental governance as example,exploring the difficulties that may be faced in putting the environmental actor network into practice,and consider the functions and roles of the government from the two dimensions of action goal and action concept,as well as think deeply about the action plan and direction of environmental cooperative governance.As we all know,the research on the environmental governance theory has fundamental significance to the practice of environmental governance.From the perspective of theoretical research on environmental governance,it can not only put forward many views with referential significance to environmental governance,but also play a guiding role in environmental governance practice.However,from the general situation of current research on environmental governance,it is no doubt that there is a research tendency of "emphasizing empirical evidence rather than theory".As a result,the practice has created a problem that should be paid attention——Success has been achieved in specific environmental governance projects,while the overall environmental problem has not improved or even more serious.Therefore,we urgently need to strengthen the research on the basic theory of environmental governance.In order to construct a set of environmental governance theory suitable for China and adapt to the new era of ecological civilization construction,this dissertation under the guidance of the activist paradigm,with environmental governance organization system reform as the breakthrough point,criticized and deconstructed the bureaucratic organization that is suitable for industrial society and corresponding environmental cooperative governance model.After that construct a set of theoretical routes that can adapt to environmental governance under the conditions of high complexity and high uncertainty-the actor network structure of multi-subject collaborative governance.This means that the starting point of this dissertation is different from the existing researches on the application of actor network to analyze environmental governance problems at home and abroad.On the one hand,only human with subjective initiative are the actors in the network structure of environmental governance.Because ecological destruction and environmental pollution are caused by human behavior,the actors protecting the ecology and environment from destruction can only be moral people.On the other hand,all the actors involved in ecological protection and environmental governance are equal nodes in the network of actors.In other words,the network of environmental actors constructed in this dissertation is an action system without center,authority and control.Only in such an action network can all actors of environmental governance be motivated to participate in the construction of ecological civilization and their autonomy,initiative and creativity can be brought into full play.In this process,the government plays the role of guide and server.