On Local Governmental Cooperation in Cross-Regional Environmental Governance

Along with the economic globalization, information technology development, regional integration and other social and ecological changes, many trans-boundary social public issues emerge in administrative divisions and involve more than one region, posing a serious challenge to environmental protection. Environmental pollution in different provinces, cities or counties flows between each other and is noticeably regional. In practical cross-regional environmental governance, there is a conflict between environmental integrity and fragmented administrative territorial management. It is concluded that cross-regional environmental problems can hardly be addressed by one local government and thus calls for local governments' cooperation. Motivation for horizontal governmental cooperation in environmental governance and ways to avoid ineffective implementation and weak integration of environmental governance policies among local governments are explored. The focus of this paper is the realization of cooperative cross-regional environmental governance among local governments on the basis of full trust.