The Pollution Caused by Protection: The Unintended Consequences of the Local Governance of the Urban Drinking Water Source Protection in Tianjin, China

This paper examines how the hierarchical way of governing erodes and distorts the function of environmental policies by analyzing the unintended consequences of the governance of the urban drinking water source protection in Tianjin, a mega-city in China, as a case study. Since the 1990s, Tianjin Municipal Government and Jixian Government (China) have setup a series of local measures for environmental governance to protect Yuqiao Reservoir, which is the water source of Tianjin and its surroundings. In general, the measures fall into three categories: water management, residence management, and the waste management. The governing principle is “no use, no pollution”. However, according to the field study, unintended consequences come along: some new kinds of pollution, from both household and production, occur in this area as a result of the implementation of these measures. Through the combination of functional analysis and the unintended consequences approach, three responsible factors have been found: Firstly, the absence of local residents in the whole decision-making process leads to distrust of the government, especially at the grass-roots level. Secondly, the “no use, no pollution” logic vastly reduces the reservoir’s utility and significance to the local residents, which leads to “no use, no protection”. Thirdly, the collapse of the traditional rules of mutual supervision also contributes to the deterioration. In conclusion, the typically hierarchical way of governing in this area leads to inevitable unintended consequences. This paper starts by summarizing relevant literature on local protective governance of the environment, especially in China, focusing on the consequences and their causes, in relation to research done in the area of unintended consequences of purposive social action. Then, following the empirical objects and the data collection methods, we present the case study in Yuqiao reserve, Tianjin, China, and analyze the unintended consequences. Moving to the result, the three reasons for the occurrence of the situation are shown. The last part is a discussion of the relevance of the findings in relation to the current urban governance study in China, and some practical suggestions are also given to point out a pathway for work in the next steps.