关键词: 领域, 环境政治, 环保组织, 环境治理, 权力, 社区

Abstract: The existing literature on environmental governance have mostly examined interactions between and strategies of different actors, with a particular focus on power relations between the state and environmental organizations. However, few have investigated the spatial characteristics of power deployed in the process of territorial construction and their practical impacts. Based on a decade-long water conservation project conducted by an international environmental organization, this paper demonstrates evolving community-based strategies for territorial construction and how the process of territorialization influences the formats, scope and effectiveness of environmental governance. The findings suggest that (1) the environmental organization adopted differentiated strategies in dealing with different levels of governments and constructed a relatively independent territory for conservation activities, but the autonomy and independence also created a barrier between the environmental organization and the village that restricted further development of the project; (2) the environmental organization adjusted its strategies by integrating into a local social network which expanded the territorial scope at the cost of autonomy and independence; (3) the environmental organization chose to nurture a local grassroot group as a proxy to maintain its influence in the community due to its organizational values and resource constraints, but the proxy was unable to operate as a result of territorial reconstruction that reduced autonomy and independence, thus limiting the scope and effectiveness of public participation. From the perspective of territorial construction, this paper explains characteristics of environmental governance and the development of environmental organization and offers new insights into the relationships between the state, environmental organization and communities.