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

Abstract

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, SO 2 and CO 2 ) 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 (SO 2 and wastewater) decoupling, but better than that of the CO 2 emission. Additionally, the decoupling performances of energy consumption and related pollutant emission (except CO 2 ) are better than that of water usage and wastewater discharge; (2) The decoupling performance of energy consumption, SO 2 and CO 2 , has substantially improved from the 10th Five-Year Planning Period (FYP) (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) to the 11th FYP (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(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 SO 2 and water usage in most of regions shows an improving trend. Inversely, the decoupling performance of energy consumption, CO 2 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.

The Use of MIVES as a Sustainability Assessment MCDM Method for Architecture and Civil Engineering Applications

“…The general expression of the value function V i used in MIVES to assess the satisfaction of the stakeholders for each indicator corresponds to Equation (2).…”

“…During the last decade, some countries have seriously tackled these ecological problems [2] but their measures have been insufficient partly due to the high rate of development, resources consumption and environmental impact in developing countries [3].…”

Decomposing the Decoupling of Water Consumption and Economic Growth in China’s Textile Industry

“…Wang et al [26] developed the environmental pressure (including water resource) decoupling analysis to obtain the corresponding decoupling state in Tianjin, China, and put forward policy suggestions to promote further sustainable development. Zhang et al [27] evaluated the resource decoupling (energy and water consumption) and environmental impact (wastewater, SO 2 , and CO 2 ) from the economic growth in China. They obtained the results that the decoupling state of resource consumption is worse than the wastewater and SO 2 decoupling, but is much better than CO 2 decoupling.…”

Simulation of the Core Technology of a Greenhouse-Monitoring System Based on a Wireless Sensor Network

“…In 2003, the National Natural Science Foundation of the United States invested $100 million to develop a sensor network research program [2]. Research on WSN in China began in the late 1990s, with foreign basic synchronization.…”

“…Research on WSN in China began in the late 1990s, with foreign basic synchronization. Since 2003, the National Natural Science Foundation of China has established key technology research projects related to sensor networks [3]. From 2005, long-term strategic development plans have been formulated for WSN combined with other technologies [4].…”