May Tan-Mullins

The potential of corporate environmental responsibility of Chinese state-owned enterprises in Africa

Drawing upon empirical data collected in China and Africa, this article evaluates Chinese overseas corporate social responsibility strategies and their effectiveness in mitigating environmental impacts in parts of Africa. China’s enhanced role within the global economy has profound environmental implications for the world. In particular, China has rapidly expanded its environmental footprint in Africa, largely because of its burgeoning economic presence through trade and aid projects such as infrastructure and public works. These large-scale projects, commonly managed by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), tend to be in sectors that are environmentally sensitive such as oil and gas exploration and construction of major infrastructure. At the international level, global financial institutions along with growing pressure from civil society organizations are encouraging China to demonstrate a commitment to addressing the environmental impacts of its overseas projects. At the domestic level, growing awareness of such issues has generated an emerging trend of Chinese entities promoting and adopting corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. These moves seek to improve the environmental and social impacts of Chinese overseas investments. However, research has shown that the outcomes of Chinese overseas CSR strategies (particularly in environmental protection) vary widely due to the operating procedures of the Chinese SOEs in combination with specific local political and social structures. In general, environmental protection is weak and so there is a need for the Chinese and African governments to create a legislative and institutional framework to address Chinese investment in Africa especially in the area of natural resource extraction.

Re-mapping the politics of aid: the changing structures and networks of humanitarian assistance in post-tsunami Thailand

The 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami caused massive human and economic destruction. In this paper we argue that the international response to the tsunami exemplifies a shift in the way humanitarian aid is sourced and delivered, and tease out a framework for understanding the continuities and discontinuities that led to differential distribution across a range of sites in southern Thailand. On the one hand we examine the degree to which we can understand differential aid distribution in terms of persistent characteristics in the political economy, such as lack of transparency and corruption . We also consider the importance of ‘traditional’ structures, networks and resiliences and their role in influencing aid distribution. But these sorts of explanations must be nuanced in light of the emergence of new aid linkages and networks, particularly the move from formal organizations to individualized and direct donations. We suggest these patterns reflect new abilities of communities to mobilize trans-national networks, a more participatory approach to aid donation and an opportunity to re-map the multi-scalar politics of aid.

Political economy, poverty, and polycentrism in the Global Environment Facility’s Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) for climate change adaptation

Abstract Climate change adaptation refers to altering infrastructure, institutions or ecosystems to respond to the impacts of climate change. Least developed countries often lack the requisite capacity to implement adaptation projects. The Global Environment Facility’s Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) is a scheme where industrialised countries have disbursed

Evaluating the Behaviour of Chinese Stakeholders Engaged in Large Hydropower Projects in Asia and Africa

934.5 million in voluntary contributions to support 213 adaptation projects across 51 least developed countries. But how effective are its efforts—and what sort of challenges have arisen as it implements projects? To provide some answers, this article documents the presence of four “political economy” attributes of adaptation projects—processes we have termed enclosure, exclusion, encroachment and entrenchment—cutting across economic, political, ecological and social dimensions. Based on extensive field research, we find the four processes at work simultaneously in our case studies of five LDCF projects being implemented in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, the Maldives and Vanuatu. The article concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of the political economy of adaptation for analysts, program managers and climate researchers at large. In sum, the politics of adaptation must be taken into account so that projects can maximise their efficacy and avoid marginalising those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Voices from Pattani: Fears, suspicion, and confusion

Hydropower dams are back in the spotlight owing to a shifting preference for low carbon energy generation and their possible contribution to mitigating climate change. At the forefront of the renaissance of large hydropower dams are Chinese companies, as the builders of the worlds largest dams at home and abroad, opening up opportunities for low- and middle-income countries. However, large hydropower dams, despite their possible developmental and carbon reduction contributions, are accompanied by huge economic costs, profound negative environmental changes and social impacts. Using fieldwork data from four hydropower projects in Ghana, Nigeria, Cambodia and Malaysia, this paper evaluates the behaviour of Chinese stakeholders engaged in large hydropower projects in Asia and Africa. We do this by first exploring the interests of the different Chinese stakeholders and then by investigating the wider implications of these Chinese dams on the local, national and international contexts. The paper concludes that hydropower dams will continue to play a prominent role in future efforts to increase energy security and reduce energy poverty worldwide, therefore the planning, building and mitigation strategies need to be implemented in a more sustainable way that takes into account national development priorities, the needs of local people and the impacts on natural habitats.

Dynamics of International Aid in the Chinese Context: A Case Study of the World Bank's Cixi Wetlands Project in Zhejiang Province

Abstract By December 2005, violence in the South of Thailand had taken the lives of more than one thousand people. In this article, the voices of southerners are presented as they were recorded during the authors two-year stay in Pattani Province and various Malay-Muslim villages in southern Thailand. Verbatim excerpts from tok imams (religious teachers), overseas scholars, academics, fisherfolk, and locals of various ethnicity and religious groups illustrate perspectives and frustrations about the violence. Fears, suspicions, and confusion are the most prominent emotions embedded in these conversations. These excerpts illustrate the foremost concerns of the common people in the South, among them, impertinent threats to livelihood security and peaceful ethnic coexistence in the region.

Armed Conflict and Resolutions in Southern Thailand

Environmental degradation in China, intensified by open-door reforms and industrialization, has been increasing at an alarming scale. Domestically, environmental governance has been poor, often due to institutional constraints and lack of “good practices.” However, recently there have been studies on how the “foreign factor” might have profound positive effects on capacity building in China and how international actors could lead to the successful introduction of good environmental governance. In this article, we present a study of a successful case: the World Bank Global Environmental Facility Cixi Wetlands project in Ningbo, China. The article examines the following: (a) the unique local context enabling the diffusion of international norms; (b) the factors which contribute to the World Banks leverage role in restructuring local project governance; and (c) the changes in local environmental governance arising from the Banks involvement. By evaluating this project, the article will demonstrate how the World Bank managed to introduce and socialize local actors into project-specific policy dialogues and procedures that enhanced local compliance with its international practices and standards.

Changing Contexts and the Future of China—Africa Relations

Since January 2004, southern Thailand has grabbed news headlines as a violent conflict zone, where the insurgency movement has taken the lives of more than 3,500 people. Stemming from various factors ranging from historical resistance to the Thai government to human rights abuses and socioeconomic marginalization, the shadowy movement has managed to infiltrate and gain sympathy among local communities; however, the majority of the local population remains resistant and resentful toward the perpetrators. This article aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the upsurge and dynamics of the violence in southern Thailand in a two-part process. First, through focusing on the evidence obtained during my three-year stay in the Pattani province, I demonstrate how geopolitical dimensions intensified the separatist sentiments in the region. In the second section, I propose a proactive and preemptive set of resolutions as a roadmap to avoid further conflict and bloodshed.

Evolving Aid Diplomacy in Africa

These two extracts from speeches delivered on the African continent by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the UK Prime Minister David Cameron thrust the nature of China’s involvement in Africa into the global media spotlight again. Criticizing both China’s domestic and overseas capitalist practices, these western politicians reiterated the inability of the Chinese political and economic model to meet the global norms around good governance and the demands of its citizens. The comments also reconfirm our introductory statements that popular perceptions of China-Africa relations are still very much presented from the perspective of western powers and interests. Despite this apparent continuity in discourses around China things have changed, particularly our understanding of how China’s domestic agendas shape its interventions in Africa and how the mediation of such interventions by African actors conditions the impacts on the ground.

Introduction: Mediating China—Africa

So far we have discussed how Africa has gained in importance and the ways in which the Chinese are among a number of rapidly industrializing nations that see the continent in strategic economic and political terms (Carmody 2011). With this seems to have come a renewed interest in the role of aid in enabling development marked by a raft of publications dealing with Africa and/or the failure of aid (e.g. Calderisi 2007; Easterly 2007; Riddell 2007; Bolton 2008; Collier 2008; Easterly 2008; Warah 2008; Amin et al. 2009; Moyo 2009; de Haan 2009; Sorensen 2010). Those dealing with aid in general (Easterly 2008; Riddell 2007) focus on Western donors and those of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). The Chinese are not members of DAC and, as we will see, Chinese aid levels are still relatively low, but given the entwining of aid with other financial flows and market dynamics it is having a significant impact on the development fortunes of Africa.