Qingdao Economic And Environmental Research On Coordinated Development

Since the beginning of the 1960s, the world's population and its total economy gained so rapid growth that the total scale of the resources dropped and the living environment of mankind worsened. More and more attentions were paid to the environmental degradations caused by the economy development. Two environmental revolutions have contributed to the further research on the relationship between the economy and environment in order to balance the economy development and environmental protection more effectively. From the existing research at home and abroad, the relationship between economy and environment are studied theoretically and empirically, of which theoretical researches dominate in the abundant and depth. Since the implementation of reform and opening up policy, Qingdao has made great achievements in economic and social development while inevitably brought about environmental pollutions, ecological degradations and so on. At present, Qingdao, in accordance with the requirements of the scientific outlook on development, is speeding up the implementation of "protection along the bay, development around the bay" strategy to build a prosperous and civilized and harmonious modern international city. How to fulfill the harmonious development of the economy and the environment is important and urgent for further development. During my participation in "the research on the coordinated development between the'development around the bay'strategy and the environment in Qingdao"(Soft Science of Qingdao in 2008), I find the study on the harmonious development of Qingdao's economy and environment is of theoretical and practical significance.This thesis studies the following aspects:This approach first analyzed the current coordinating development of Qingdao's economy and environment. It pointed out that Qingdao achieved rapid economic development and industrial structure upgrading and the economic aggregate growth on the economic front and that it also improved the quality of the ecological environment on the environmental front by energy-saving and emission reduction and developing recycle economy. However, there are still a lot of problems, such as serious industrial sewage and over-exploitation of aquatic resources, demonstrating that the economic and environmental coordinating development is problematic.Then the approach analyzed Qingdao's environmental Kuznets curve and found its economic growth and environmental pollution were not fully consistent with the typical characteristics of EKC. The industrial waste water showed non-EKC characteristics while the industrial solid wastes and industrial emissions clearly showed the characteristics of cubic curves. Thus, Qingdao, during the transition to the post-industrialization, has made great achievements in the industrial wastewater treatment. But the management of exhaust gases and industrial solid wastes has not been so successful.Third, applying Granger causality and impulse response function, this thesis analyzed the relationship between Qingdao's economic development and environment and found that there was a one-way Granger causality of economic growth to environmental pollutions while this causality was affected by time lags. Economic growth, lagged in the fifth period, Granger causes environmental pollutions. This effect is gradual and long-term and the impulse response model shows fluctuations.Forth, coupling degrees of the coordination of Qingdao's economy and environment were analyzed by the coupling theory. Using Qingdao's economic and environmental data, this approach calculated the coupling degree indexes of economy and environment and found that in 1982-2007, Qingdao's coupling relationship evolved from"unconvincing reconcile " to "incompatible", and then to " unconvincing reconcile ". Thus its economy and environment did not coordinate very well.Finally, this thesis presented the problems in the coordinating development and pointed out that the unreasonable growth mode, irrational industrial structure, failure to form a well-functioning recycle economy system contributed to these problems adversely. Based on the above analysis, reasonable and comprehensive measures are proposed to promote the coordinated development.In this paper, the study was conducted by applying qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, combining theoretical analysis and empirical research and using relevant theories of both economics and environment planning. Qualitative analysis was mainly applied to analyze the current situation and existing problems of Qingdao's economic and social development; quantitative methods, such as the principal component analysis and Granger causality analysis, were conducted to undertake the empirical analysis of economic and environmental development.