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Stakeholder dialogue, as an alternative institutional strategy for environmentally and socially sustainable development, has received little attention from researchers and practitioners in developing countries such as China, even though the dialogue strategy can potentially lead public governance to a more efficient level. This paper first discusses the potential of stakeholder dialogue as an institutional tool for promoting sustainable development in China, and then presents a pilot program of stakeholder dialogue recently developed in China-the community environmental roundtables. Community leaders organize roundtable dialogues where representatives from government agencies, companies and the local residents exchange their views toward certain environmental issues they are facing and discuss possible ways to resolve the issues. Informal agreements are reached during the dialogues and implemented after them. This community roundtable dialogue strategy has been piloted in dozens of Chinese municipalities, addressing various environmental issues. A survey of dialogue participants shows that significant impacts have been generated on environmental protection, community management, as well as social and institutional development at the community level. Mutual understanding and trust among the government, companies, and local citizens are enhanced, environmental and social conflicts are reduced, and the public performance of various parties has been improved. This approach is expected to help solve other conflicts and public governance issues in China as well. The potential challenges of institutionalizing such a program in China are also discussed in the paper.

Civil Society --- Energy --- Environment --- Environmental Economics & Policies --- Environmental Protection --- Governance Indicators --- National Governance --- Parliamentary Government --- Social Conflict --- Stakeholder Dialogue --- China

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May 2000 - Community pressure may be as strong an incentive for industrial firms to control pollution in China as pollution levies are. Wang evaluates the strength of the effect that community pressure and pollution charges have on industrial pollution control in China and estimates the marginal cost of pollution abatement. He examines a well-documented set of plant-level data, combined with community-level data, to assess the impact of pollution charges and community pressure on industrial behavior in China. He constructs and estimates an industrial organic water pollution discharge model for plants that violate standards for pollution discharge, pay pollution charges, and are constantly under community pressure to further abate pollution. He creates a model and estimates implicit prices for pollution discharges from community pressure, which are determined jointly by the explicit price, the pollution levy. He finds that the implicit discharge price is at least as high as the explicit price. In other words, community pressure not only exists but may be as strong an incentive as the pollution charge is for industrial firms to control pollution in China. Wang's modeling approach also provides a way to estimate the marginal cost of pollution abatement. The empirical results show that the current marginal cost of abatement is about twice the effective charge rate in China. This paper - a product of Infrastructure and Environment, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study environmental regulation in developing countries. The author may be contacted at hwang1@worldbank.org.

Abatement --- Brown Issues and Health --- Demand --- Empirical Analysis --- Empirical Studies --- Environment --- Environmental --- Environmental Economics and Policies --- Environmental Protection --- Environmental Sciences --- Green Issues --- Incentives --- Industrial Water --- Industry --- Marginal Abatement --- Pollution --- Pollution Abatement --- Pollution Charges --- Pollution Control --- Pollution Discharge --- Prices --- Public Sector Development --- Regulation --- Standards --- Water --- Water and Industry --- Water Pollution --- Water Resources

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Stakeholder dialogue, as an alternative institutional strategy for environmentally and socially sustainable development, has received little attention from researchers and practitioners in developing countries such as China, even though the dialogue strategy can potentially lead public governance to a more efficient level. This paper first discusses the potential of stakeholder dialogue as an institutional tool for promoting sustainable development in China, and then presents a pilot program of stakeholder dialogue recently developed in China-the community environmental roundtables. Community leaders organize roundtable dialogues where representatives from government agencies, companies and the local residents exchange their views toward certain environmental issues they are facing and discuss possible ways to resolve the issues. Informal agreements are reached during the dialogues and implemented after them. This community roundtable dialogue strategy has been piloted in dozens of Chinese municipalities, addressing various environmental issues. A survey of dialogue participants shows that significant impacts have been generated on environmental protection, community management, as well as social and institutional development at the community level. Mutual understanding and trust among the government, companies, and local citizens are enhanced, environmental and social conflicts are reduced, and the public performance of various parties has been improved. This approach is expected to help solve other conflicts and public governance issues in China as well. The potential challenges of institutionalizing such a program in China are also discussed in the paper.

Civil Society --- Energy --- Environment --- Environmental Economics & Policies --- Environmental Protection --- Governance Indicators --- National Governance --- Parliamentary Government --- Social Conflict --- Stakeholder Dialogue --- China

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January 2000 - People in Sofia are willing to pay 4.2 percent of their income or more for a program to improve air quality. Through a survey, Wang and Whittington study willingness to pay for improvements in air quality in Sofia, Bulgaria. Using a stochastic payment card approach - asking respondents the likelihood that they would agree to pay a series of prices - they estimate the distribution of willingness to pay various prices. They find that people in Sofia are willing to pay up to about 4.2 percent of their income for a program to improve air quality. The income elasticity of willingness to pay for air quality improvements is about 27 percent. For comparison, they also used the referendum contingent valuation approach. Results from that approach yielded a higher estimate of willingness to pay. This paper - a product of Infrastructure and Environment, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the economics of pollution control in developing countries. Copies of the paper are available from Hua Wang may be contacted at hwang1@worldbank.org.

Environmental policy.

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Millimeter wave devices. --- Silicon --- Millimeter wave communication systems. --- Electric properties. --- Communication systems, Millimeter wave --- Telecommunication systems, Millimeter wave --- Microwave communication systems --- Telecommunication systems --- Electronic apparatus and appliances --- Microwave devices --- Millimeter waves