Pollutant Emissions, Environmental Governance And Economic Growth

Environment and development are the focus in the world. To realize thecoordination between environment and economic is the pursuit of the world. As thelargest developing country, China has created a “Chinese miracle” with an averageannual economic growth rate of9.8%since the opening up reform. At the same time,however, rapid economic growth causes the over consumption of the resource and alot of pollutants have been emitted which lead to a series of environmental problems,and gradually evolved into an obstacle to sustainable development of economic andsociety. The Chinese government takes higher attention to govern and protectenvironment in the process of economic development, and do her best to upgrade theeconomy in order to obtain a coordinate development among economic andenvironment. Especially since the21century, Chinese government opens a newthinking to coordinate economic development and environmental development whichfully opens a way to explore the policy and practice of economic and social reform. Inthis context, deeply study the relationship among pollutants emissions, environmentalgovernance and economic growth not only can give references from the side of theoryand experience to governance to correctly understand and effectively solve theconflict among pollutant emissions, environmental protection and economic growth,but also can give right suggestion to governance to optimize future economicenvironmental policy, then accelerate the process of coordination between economicand environment. The part of this paper is as follow:First, the structure of this paper is according to the route of “literature review-mechanism analysis-situation study-modeling-results analysis-policy suggestions”.We review the representative literatures about pollutants emissions, environmentalgovernance and economic growth from the perspective of theoretical and empirical,and then point the limitations of model setting, research perspective and quantitativeanalysis that exist in the literatures.Second, we study the relationship among pollutants emissions, environmentalgovernance and economic growth from the perspective of theoretical. And wedescribe the status of pollutants emissions, environmental governance and economicgrowth by using China’s data. Then we measure the coordination degree betweenenvironmental system and economic system by using a coupling coordination degreemodel. The results show that the coordination degree between environmental system and economic system is at a low level in most provinces, and we also find that thecoordination degree between environmental system and economic system is verystability among provinces. In addition, the results also show that coordination degreeof developed region is more than developing region.Third, we build spatial dynamic panel data models to re-examine the EKC curverelationship between carbon emissions and economic growth from the perspective oftotal emissions and life’s emissions. The results show that:(1) in the part of totalemissions, we find an inverted "U"-shaped curve relationship between carbonemissions and economic growth, and spatial effect and dynamic effect are significantpositive. The spatial effect means that there is a “race to bottom” behavior in areaswhich tells us that if a region’s development company high carbon emissions, then theother region will take the same mode. However, the further study find that therelationship between carbon emissions and economic growth exists only in the leftinflection point of the EKC, and the possibility to cross the inflection point i s verysmall, so the relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth may will bein or long in period of approximate positive linear correlation, and that economicgrowth accompanied by high carbon emissions.(2) In the part of Life’s emissions, theresult shows that there exists a U-shaped relationship between residential carbonemissions and income, but now the level of income in all provinces has been gotthrough the turn-point which means a positive relationship between them.Fourth, we construct a BM productivity economic growth accounting index tomeasure environment’s contribution to economic growth, for which is to study therelationship between pollutants emissions and economic growth. First, this paperdivided fixed capital stock into domestic and foreign fixed capital stock, respectively,then computer the contribution of them to economic growth. With this way, the paperestimates the contribution of TFP, labor, domestic invest, foreign invest andenvironment to Chinese economic growth by using the data from1998to2011inChina. The results show that the contribution from TFP, labor, domestic fixed capital,FDI and environment is4.33%,3.67%,48.1%,18%,25.9%respectively. Thecontribution of Capital to economic growth is up to66.1%(the total of domesticcapital and FDI) suggest that capital is still the main driving force to economic growth,and this finding is the same as the current literature. Reginal statistics found that theeast was the most cumulative economic growth area, followed by the west and central.East’s TFP contribution to economic growth was significantly greater than the others.Fifth, we construct an environmental performance measurement model that quantitative evaluate Ecological level of regional economic development andenvironmental performance includes economic and environmental benefit. This papercombining the characteristics of BM direction distance function, non-radial DEAmodel and Luenberger productivity indicators, we develop a non-radial BML-DEAmodel to measure Environmental Performance. And by using the panel data of30provinces from1997to2011in China, we measure and analysis the regionalindustrial eco-efficiency. The results show that the overall growth of industrialEnvironmental Performance at the annual growth rate of4.1%, which comes mainlyfrom technological progress rather than efficiency improvements. From the view ofindividuality, the growth rate of industrial environmental performance is closelyrelated the level of economic development, the highest average annual growth rate isBeijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Guangdong. The effect from three pollutants onindustrial Environmental Performance by descending is SO2, CO2and Smoker, andthe contribution of the three pollutants deal more balanced. There are significantdifferences among industrial Environmental Performance and its decompositioningredients in different regions. The growth rate of industrial EnvironmentalPerformance in east is significantly higher than other regions, but the growth rate ofefficiency is not superior to the center and west, and even slightly lower than thecenter.Finally, following the main route of "emissions environmental governance andeconomic growth", we study the experience of major developed countries or regionsin change mode of economic growth and environmental management policies, andcombined with empirical findings of this paper, we put forward the policy ofenvironmental governance.