The Decoupling of Resource Consumption and Environmental Impact from Economic Growth in China: Spatial Pattern and Temporal Trend

Zilong Zhang,Xingpeng Chen,Bing Xue,Jiaxing Pang

doi:10.3390/su8030222

Abstract

Unprecedented economic achievement in China has occurred along with rising resource consumption and waste productions levels. The goal of sustainability requires the decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption (resource decoupling) and environmental degradation (impact decoupling). For this paper, the performances of resource decoupling (energy and water) and impact decoupling (wastewater, SO2 and CO2) in China were evaluated, and the spatial pattern and temporal trend of decoupling performance were investigated by using the rescaled range analysis (R/S). The results indicate the following. (1) The performance of resource decoupling during the investigated period is worse than that of traditional impact (SO2 and wastewater) decoupling, but better than that of the CO2 emission. Additionally, the decoupling performances of energy consumption and related pollutant emission (except CO2) are better than that of water usage and wastewater discharge; (2) The decoupling performance of energy consumption, SO2 and CO2, has substantially improved from the 10th Five-Year Planning Period (FYP) (2001–2005) to the 11th FYP (2006–2010), which indicates that the decoupling performance is highly related the environmental policy; (3) The spatial disparities of the performance of resource and impact decoupling are declining, which indicates the existence of cross-province convergence in decoupling performance; (4) The decoupling performance of SO2 and water usage in most of regions shows an improving trend. Inversely, the decoupling performance of energy consumption, CO2 emission, and wastewater discharge in most regions show a decreasing trend; (5) China needs more stringent water-saving targets and wastewater discharge standards; better policy efforts to improve the water recycling level both in agricultural, industrial and municipal level are required to prevent the decreasing trend of the decoupling performance.

Highlights

IntroductionThe increasing environmental pressures, damage, and resource depletion calls for urgent policy initiatives to decouple economic growth rates from the rates of resources consumption (resource decoupling) and environmental degradation (impact decoupling) and to achieve the goal of sustainable development [1]
The increasing environmental pressures, damage, and resource depletion calls for urgent policy initiatives to decouple economic growth rates from the rates of resources consumption and environmental degradation and to achieve the goal of sustainable development [1]
The probable reasons for this are that: (1) The waste production could be effectively reduced by end-of-pipe treatment and other recycling means [11]; (2) the government and the public are more inclined toward waste production control due mainly to the direct relation between pollution and human health; (3) more stringent regulations and standards for emission reduction than those for resource saving in China

Summary

Introduction

The increasing environmental pressures, damage, and resource depletion calls for urgent policy initiatives to decouple economic growth rates from the rates of resources consumption (resource decoupling) and environmental degradation (impact decoupling) and to achieve the goal of sustainable development [1]. The unprecedented change that happened in China provides a unique opportunity to uncover the relationship between economic growth and resource consumption and environmental pollution, and its spatial pattern and temporal trend, which is very important for achieving environmental sustainability both for China and the rest of the world [6,7,8]. Nowadays, decoupling economic growth from environment impacts has become one of the most important topics related to sustainable development and has been proposed as the core objective of environmental governance and resource strategy. The Factor 4 and Factor 5 set the absolute decoupling goals for resource consumption at the end of the 20th century [14]

Methods

Results

Conclusion