Discussion on NIMBY Phenomena and Governance Strategies

NIMBY phenomenon is a resistance to the polluting factories, public infrastructure and service facilities by the local residents. With the rapid development of China's industrialization and urbanization, NIMBY phenomenon will no longer be the case, while the research about the NIMBY phenomenon by domestic scholars has just started, especially on the various types of empirical research. Therefore, based on the reviews of literature, the author proposed classification of NIMBY and different hedging strategies for different NIMBY phenomena. KEYWORD: NIMBY environmental justice governance strategies International Conference on Social Science, Education Management and Sports Education (SSEMSE 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 954 2 THE CLASSIFICATION OF NIMBY PHENOMENA According to functions of facilities, service levels and whether it has publicity, this paper divide NIMBY facilities into the following. 2.1 According to functions of NIMBY facilities (1) Energy facilities. These facilities mainly include nuclear power plants, coal-fired power plants, refinery and petrochemical plant and so on. Energy facilities can bring lots of benefits to the local residents, but since their external costs will bring great harm to the residents surrounding these facilities, especially harm to their health. Conflicts caused by these facilities happened in the whole process of China’s industrialization, especially in those suburban and margin areas, such as PX project happened in the city of Xia Men recently. (2) Waste disposal facilities. These facilities mainly include refuse incineration plants, sewage treatment plants, and nuclear waste disposal fields and so on. These facilities may affect the living qualities of local residents, threatening their safety and health, or devaluating their houses. Along with stronger awareness of environmental health, the amount of social conflicts caused by these facilities is growing rapidly, such as the abortion of a garbage transfer station which located at the gate of one community in a city of Guang Dong Province in 2008. (3) Transport infrastructure facilities. These facilities mainly include Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), subway, high way, rail way, airport and so on. Improving travel efficiencies, these facilities also bring some negative effects to the local resident, such as noise pollution, declining of air quality and so on. With the accelerating process of China’s urbanization, NIMBY movements caused by transport infrastructure facilities are increasing rapidly. The most typical one is the abortion of maglev railway which is from Shanghai to Shanghai Hangzhou in 2007. (4) Social services facilities. These facilities mainly include crematoriums, funeral parlors, mental hospitals, special education institutions and so on. With the function of meeting needs of public life, these facilities will let residents nearby feel unhappy or even disgust, then are not willing to live nearby. 2.2 According to service levels (1) Neighborhood facilities. In order to develop local level communities, these facilities are built to provide social services in a small scale, such as garbage transit station, small sewage disposal factories, and small parking lots and so on. (2) City-wide facilities. These facilities are built to meet needs of developing cities, such as large garbage incineration plants, large sewage disposal factories, and infectious disease hospitals and so on. (3) Regional-wide facilities. These facilities are built to meet needs of developing the whole regional, such as industrial parks, roads, railways, airports and so on. (4) National-wide facilities. These facilities are built to meet needs of national strategies, including nuclear power plants, petroleum reserve bases, and grain reserve bases and so on. 2.3 According to whether it has publicity (1) Profit-oriented commercial facilities. Since these facilities are commercials and can bring lots of economic benefits to local governments, they are always supported by the authorities. But they can also generate some potential risks to the residents that are living nearby. These facilities mainly include energy development projects, such as the exploitation of coal, petroleum and so on. All these projects may cause serious environmental problems, affect the lives of local residents. (2) Nonprofit-oriented public facilities. Built by governments or NGOs, these facilities can meet the need of national development strategies, at the same time, they also include the facilities built to improve living qualities of local residents, most of them are public infrastructures, such as transportations, garbage and some hazardous waste disposal facilities. Facilities built by NGOs mainly include variant kinds of special medical institutions, such as metal hospitals, AIDS treatments and so on, which may also result in NIMBY phenomena. 3 DIFFERENT ACTION STRATEGIES OF AVOIDING NIMBY PHENOMENA Theoretically speaking, the only principle to avoid this paradox predicament is the principles of Pareto optimality and fairness. What Pareto optimality is that there is no other methods of the conflicting party to better off, but will not make any other parties’ situations worse; and Pareto fairness means that the conflicting parties or the arbiters won’t put forward reasonable protests. Based on the principles of Pareto optimality and fairness, how to avoid the NIMBY phenomena? From the perspectives of the existing literatures, most scholars advocate the methods of the publicity of government information, the third party intervention, public participation, reasonable compensation and so on. Though these methods and strategies can ease the extension of NIMBY phenomena in some extent, yet they didn’t propose different avoidance mechanisms and action