Economic development and environmental quality—A case study of china prefecture‐level cities

Abstract

Understanding the relationship between per capita income and various environmental indicators is becoming increasingly important for sustainable development. There is a new trend of moving from a cross‐country or country‐level study to a regional level study. In this article, the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality in 56 prefecture‐level cities of China from 2011 to 2012 has been studied. Per capita GDP was used as a marker of economic development at the city level. Besides the commonly used SO2 emissions, per capita water consumption and COD emissions were also included as typical environmental indicators. While the per capita GDP in these cities increased remarkably, there was no significant change of per capita water consumption, but a significant decrease was achieved for SO2 and COD emissions. There is a strong correlation between per capita GDP and per capita water consumption, which fulfills the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. However, there was no significant relationship between per capita GDP neither SO2 emission nor COD emission. There was also no regional difference for per capita GDP and per capita water consumption, but SO2 emission and COD emission are division‐dependent. Generally speaking, the emissions reduction policy for SO2 and COD in these cities showed tangible results. The control of per capita water consumption remains a major task for local governments. Besides the strict control of pollution emission, a series of water‐saving measures should be included in the environmental protection policy to reduce the per capita water consumption. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 36: 1290–1295, 2017