Abstract
As an important way to promote economic growth and to improve ecological environment quality, industrial agglomeration strategy has been widely accepted and implemented in various regions of China. In theory, industrial agglomeration is conducive to reducing pollution emissions. However, this needs to be tested in reality. The purpose of this paper is to test the impacts of manufacturing industry agglomeration on the quality of water ecological environment in 17 prefecture-level cities downstream of the Three Gorges Dam. Therefore, a theoretical model was established to test the direct and indirect effects. Empirically, results show that the direct effect of manufacturing agglomeration on the quality of water ecological environment is −0.426, which provides statistical evidence for the important role of manufacturing agglomeration in improving the quality of water ecological environment. The indirect effect of manufacturing agglomeration on ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N) is 0.118% through technological innovation, the indirect effect on NH3-N is 0.114% through economic growth, and the indirect effect on NH3-N is 0.254% through industrial structure. Due to the low overall level of the manufacturing industry and its reliance on dirty technologies, the indirect effects of industrial agglomeration are not conducive to improving the quality of the water ecological environment. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a long-term mechanism to promote the evolution of the regional economy along a path that is conducive to the improvement of the water ecological environment.
Highlights
With urban economic growth and population expansion, series of ecological and environmental problems such as water pollution, land occupation, soil degradation, air pollution, and reduction of biodiversity have become more and more obvious (Dai et al, 2016; Wu et al, 2019, 2020a)
NH3-N, the concentration of ammonia nitrogen discharged from the water; IA, manufacturing agglomeration degrees; population size (POP), the total population registered in each city; PGDP, the ratio of gross domestic product to registered population
For every 1% increase in the level of manufacturing agglomeration, technological innovation increases by 1.010%, economic growth decreases by 0.350%, and the proportion of the secondary industry increases by 0.227%, indicating that manufacturing agglomeration still has a positive effect on technological innovation, but the current manufacturing agglomeration has a certain degree of diseconomies of scale
Summary
With urban economic growth and population expansion, series of ecological and environmental problems such as water pollution, land occupation, soil degradation, air pollution, and reduction of biodiversity have become more and more obvious (Dai et al, 2016; Wu et al, 2019, 2020a). In April 2018, General Secretary Jin-Ping Xi hosted a symposium on in-depth promotion of the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in Wuhan, pointing out that the high-density layout of heavy and chemical industries along the Yangtze River has long been a concentrated area of heavy chemical industry in China. He said that we must do a good job in the restoration of the ecological environment of the Yangtze River, explore new ways to coordinate the promotion of ecological priority and green development, and promote the high-end and green development of the chemical industry in the Yangtze River Economic Zone. In 2018, the 510 water quality sections monitored in the Yangtze River Basin were classified as national standard IV∼V and the inferior class V accounted for 12.6%
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