Conservation or Decarbonization? Small Hydropower and State Logics of Green Development in China

Through an analysis of small hydropower (SHP) in China, I argue that logics of green development offer a framework for analyzing why, how, and to what intended effect the state pursues different green agendas over time and space. For decades, China’s central and provincial governments framed SHP as a model of green development, but in 2016 they instituted SHP restrictions due to ecological impacts and electricity waste, a situation blamed on local officials haphazardly approving too many plants. This interpretation, however, ignores a major shift in state logic for promoting SHP, first for conservation-based development in rural areas and then for low-carbon development in urban areas. These logics—which I abbreviate as conservation and decarbonization—are based on different political–economic problems that green development is meant to solve for the state, different places targeted for intervention, and different distributions of benefits and costs. Using this framework, I argue that a shift to decarbonization in the mid-2000s incentivized cash-strapped local governments in rural western China to build as many SHP plants as possible to export electricity and build local industries, leading to a subsequent “bust.” I illustrate this trajectory using case studies of three prefectures in Yunnan province. This article thus enriches scholarship on state–nature relations by theorizing the role of the state in shaping dominant discourses and practices of green development across space and their uneven outcomes. Key Words: China, conservation, decarbonization, green development, renewable energy.