A Water Commons in China?

Abstract

The debate over China’s environmental issues has given scant consideration to already existing popular alternatives to the topdown, growth-compatible governance of the country’s natural resources. Forty years of Party-sanctified insistence on pursuing relentless economic development has seemingly suppressed alternative discourses in natural resource management. However, if we take closer look, we will find that at the grassroots there is no lack of alternatives. For instance, in contemporary rural China there are places where water is being managed as a commons.