Managing mercury through multilevel governance: Norway and China

Mercury is a heavy metal with serious health effects and is a global challenge, also for Norway. The research project is a collaboration between Norwegian and Chinese researchers. Our objective is to examine the public policies and instruments at different management levels in Norway and China: national, bilateral and international. The project examines the role Norway can play at various governance levels with the aim of reducing mercury emissions internationally. As a net importer of mercury with strict existing rules to regulate the release of mercury it is clearly in the self-interest of Norway to play this role. As the largest exporter of mercury emissions it makes sense to target China as a main focal point for Norwegian interests and priorities in this regard. China is also an interesting case as it has embarked on an increasingly proactive role in global environmental governance and ratified the Minamata Convention in 2016. The overall research question is how can Norway contribute to a more effective global mercury policy? The work is organized in four parts: 1. Global governance and the role of science: In this research, published in Asian Perspective (2020), we examine the role of science in the Chinese decision ratify the Minamata Convention and in China?s domestic mercury policies. In 2016, China became the 30th Party to the Minamata Convention on Mercury that entered into force in 2017. During the Minamata negotiations, China unexpectedly shifted their position, from opposing to supporting a legally binding instrument on mercury. Our research concludes that China has generated domestic scientific data on mercury emissions, to nuance the international scientific information, that strengthened its foundation for the negotiations, and to explore domestic solutions to the problem. We conclude that scientific information constitutes a significant factor for explaining China?s support for the Minamata Convention. 2. Implementation of the Minamata Convention: China has undergone a major shift in its position on dealing with mercury as an environmental problem over the last decade. From almost ignoring the issue 10 years ago, the country is a central player in the Minamata negotiations and mercury pollution is higher on the domestic environmental agenda. With ratification, China has committed to implement the treaty objectives . Still, we have little systematic knowledge about what are the main factors helping or hindering implementation of the international objectives in China, national and subnational levels. We look into the implementation process, focusing on the coal sector. The research differentiates between indirect effects from other policies and direct efforts to implement obligations. Other policy areas may indirectly impact the state of mercury emissions, such as air pollution. Our explanatory factors suggest a reasonable level of willingness to implement the Minamata Convention in China. China has been moving in the direction of stricter regulations of mercury emissions and direct implementation of the Minamata Convention in the coal sector. Yet, there is need for enhancing local implementation capacity. The research article is accepted for publication in Asian Perspective (2022). 3. Bilateral cooperation: The research looks into the drivers behind the bilateral ten-year collaboration between China and Norway, initiated in 2006. We look investigate how the scientific cooperation come about, and how it affected China's mercury policies. The project looks at the drivers behind bilateral cooperation, both in China and Norway. The study analyses the role of important actors and strategies in the Sino-Norwegian cooperation, and concrete results. Our conclusion is that the cooperation with Norway has been instrumental in the development of mercury policy in China both nationally and internationally. The bilateral cooperation likely contributed to China's increasingly active participation during the international negotiations. The Norwegian-Chinese cooperation aimed to strengthen knowledge about mercury and build capacity, and developed from scientific cooperation to a political dialogue on mercury. Our article contributes to a better understanding of the importance of bilateral cooperation, which is less researched compared with multilateral cooperation. The article will be submitted to a journal in autumn 2022. 4. Flexibility under the Minamata Convention: This paper, part of a PhD, explores the role/drivers of time-limited exemptions under the Minamata Convention, as an example of flexibility. We examine the role of such flexibility measures, how they are negotiated and designed. The paper, with China as case, underlines exemptions may seriously impact the objective of the Convention. Yet, the paper concludes that through finetuned bureaucratic craftmanship in the negotiations, the practical implications of such potential loopholes was significantly reduced.

Prosjektet er nybrottsarbeid da det har bidratt til tverrfaglig forskning på et lite studert emne- Minamatakonvensjonen/kvikksølv-mellom forskere i Norge og Kina: FNI, NIVA, Tsinghua U. og Peking U. Samarbeidet bidro til felles artikler med kinesiske og norske forskere. Forskningen kombinerer naturvitenskap, statsvitenskap og sinologi. Kompetansen for kvikksølvproblematikken er styrket, og la et godt grunnlag for videre forskningssamarbeid. Forskningsresultatene er formidlet til/mottatt med stor interesse hos forvaltningen. Resultatene kan bidra direkte inn i det pågående samarbeidet mellom Norge og Kina. De gir økt forståelse for nasjonal politikkutforming, implementering og aktører, samt for Kinas globale rolle og premissene for landets globale deltagelse i internasjonale fora og konvensjoner. Vårt arbeid vil kunne spille inn i utforming av norsk strategi/politikk på Kina. Gjennom forskningen har vi etablert dialog med brukere i Norge og Kina.

Empirically this research project examines the role Norway can play at various governance levels with the aim of reducing mercury emissions internationally. As a net importer of mercury with strict existing rules to regulate the release of mercury it is clearly in the self-interest of Norway to play this role. However, it also squares well with the Norwegian ambition of being a frontrunner in international environmental politics, not the least in the chemical cluster. As China is the largest exporter of mercury emissions it makes sense to target China as a main focal point for Norwegian interests and priorities in this regard. China is also an interesting case in its own rights as it has embarked on a much more proactive role in this issue area than used to be the case. Theoretically, two lenses are particularly important, the multi-level governance approach and the focus on implementation. States may still be the predominant actors domestically and internationally. However, with globalization a number of new types of actors have emerged at various governance levels and this framework takes as its point of departure the increasing complexity of actor networks in public and private sectors. This forces state actors to develop new strategies of policy coordination, not least as it raises new challenges for accountability. Regarding implementation, this has for long been the weakest point in global environmental governance. Ambitious goals are often adopted but lacking will and/or capacity of relevant target groups to implement them tend to hamper effectiveness. Here we focus on various causal pathways in order to analyze factors at various governance level that may inhibit or enhance efforts of implementation. The project is interdisciplinary as it combines political science, law, natural science as well as sinology.