Local interests meet global regime: China’s subnational politics in clean development mechanism of Kyoto Protocol

As the largest CDM project destination, China takes up over 60% of the global market share, equivalent to 756 million tons of carbon dioxide emission. Over 4700 approved projects (as of October 2012) have been introduced nationwide, covering activities ranging from energy saving and efficiency improvement, renewable energy to reforestation and development of fossil fuel substitutes. While existing studies have detailed how the NDRC and other bureaucratic entities like Ministry of Finance, and Environment shape and manage the CDM projects, they tend to see the central authorities assuming primacy and have inadequately examined the plausible roles and influences of the subnational interests (government and business). Students of international environmental politics focus on the nexus between the global regime and national politics, but this overlooks subnational dynamics indispensable to translating the climate framework into practices. By contrast, recent advances on China’s environmental politics show remarkable activism of local state authorities in promoting environmental initiatives from below, and it would be a curious omission if the local parties have no significance in the different stages of CDM project cycle. Through in-depth review of existing projects in provinces like Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong, this exploratory study seeks to assess the roles of local interests that contribute to the national level involvement in the CDM and analyze the strategies and conditions to which their initiatives are effectual to center’s policy making. These affirm the relevance of local interests and help complete our understanding of the subnational dynamics underlying the global climate regime.