Whether Urban Development and Ecological Protection Can Achieve a Win-Win Situation—The Nonlinear Relationship between Urbanization and Ecosystem Service Value in China

Yingtao Wu,Maogang Tang,Baijun Wu,Zhonghao Zhang

doi:10.3390/su11123277

Abstract

Most of the existing research on urbanization suggests that urbanization leads to a decline in ecosystem services values (ESV). However, the impacts of industrial structure and changes in land use patterns on ESV have often been ignored. Using provincial data in China from 2003 to 2015, this study demonstrates the possibility of achieving a win-win situation regarding urbanization and ESV enhancement at the global and regional scales. The negative effect from production processes and the influence of residents’ preferences are considered in the evaluation of ESV. The impact of urbanization on ESV is empirically analyzed by using a spatially adaptive semi-parametric model in order to mitigate both endogeneity of the parametric model and the curse of dimensionality in nonparametric model. The results show that there is a U-shaped curve relationship between urbanization and ESV for the whole country. However, most provinces of China are still located at the left side of the U-shaped curve where urbanization reduces the ESV per capita. Central and local governments should strengthen differentiated land use policies, environmental regulations, and finance and tax policies to transform the industrial structure, so that each province may achieve a win-win situation regarding urbanization and ESV enhancement. Such policy changes would promote sustainable development in China.

Highlights

With rapid economic development in many developing countries such as China, urbanization has placed pressures on ecosystem services [1]
The relationship between ecosystem service values (ESV) per capita and the urbanization rate can be characterized as a U-shaped curve (Figure 4)
This outcome suggests that most provinces in China are still undergoing urbanization such that ESV per capita is declining

Summary

Introduction

With rapid economic development in many developing countries such as China, urbanization has placed pressures on ecosystem services [1]. The question of how to coordinate the relationship between urban development and ecosystem service values (ESV) enhancement, to realize a win-win situation for both, needs to be studied systematically. Much of the existing literature has described negative relationships between urbanization and ESV [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] These studies have indicated that urbanization leads to land use transition with a decline in ESV [1,2,3]. The change in land use structure would lead to changes in ecosystem function structure, and affect the biogeochemical cycle, soil renewal, water cycle and other ecological processes, and cause changes in ESV [15,16,17].

Results

Discussion

Conclusion