Ant Forest—A Green Movement Led by Private Sectors and Driven by Community Currency Mechanism

• Main Authors: Zeng, Jia-Wei, 曾加維
• Other Authors: Lin, Scott Y.
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99t29y

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 應用經濟與社會發展英語碩士學位學程(IMES) === 107 === Recently, China's green policy has started shifting its emphasis to private capital, and personal carbon trading (PCT) scheme has been introduced in China's environmental governance framework. Ant Forest refers to one of the Chinese practical PCT examples initiated by the private sector. The implication of this case can be associated with the concept of Community Currencies (CCs) according to their internal logic. Accordingly, this study explored the consequences of Ant Forest for Chinese environmental governance mechanism from the CCs view, assuming that Ant Forest is a type of CCs mechanism. In the present study, how Ant Forest participates, integrates and even innovates the mechanism of environmental governance in China was primarily discussed. From the perspective of ‘new economics’ on sustainable consumption, a multi-criteria qualitative evaluation tool with five indicators was adapted for the case analysis. Subsequently, a comparison between Ant Forest and the other two similar cases — ‘Nu-Spaarpas (NU)’ and ‘Norfolk Island Carbon and Health Evaluation (NICHE)’ is to be drawn. The findings show that the mechanism design of Ant Forest can facilitate local economic cycle, cultivate environmental awareness of citizens, create community interaction and pool social capital. A “bottom-up” structure appeared to be formed in the case of Ant Forest. The study also points to potential concerns and problems of the case.