Regional Integration Of Economic And Environmental Development Mechanism

Nowadays, being one of the major concerns of the sustainable development, the coordination of the economic and environmental development has been given close attention by the developing countries due to its vital importance to them. This is true with China, which marvels the world with its rapid economic development, has been encountered with the accompanying deteriorated environmental conditions and subsequent challenges to its sustainable development. To be more specific, in the process of implementing the policy of opening up to the outside world and reform, China witnesses the dilemmatic situations, namely, one the one hand, such regions as the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta in East China, and the development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province have played their significant role to Chinese economic and social development. On the other hand, the above-mentioned regions have been faced with the ever-escalating trans-boundary environmental pollution which may or does constitute a potential threat to the furtherance of their sustainable development. Against the background, the present dissertation will be focused on exploring the coordination of economic and environmental development in terms of regional integration.First, based on a through reviewing of literature concerning the coordination of economic and environmental development, the dissertation reveals that relevant studies at home and abroad have been conducted from two perspectives. From the first perspective, attempts have been made to investigate whether the economic development gives rise to the environmental deterioration and to explain the phenomenon. From the second perspective, endeavors have been made to explore the possibility whether the economic development or economic growth will be restricted owing to the environmental problem.Second, the dissertation analyzes the interaction of economy and environment and trans-boundary environmental pollution in theory. The dissertation shows, the economy exerts its influence on the environment via the joint efforts of the four factors, namely, the economic scale, economic structure, technology and system, or, scale effect, structure effect, technology effect and system effect. The environment impacts the economy with the help of the direct and concise functions of economic growth, i.e. the environment plays an indirect role in influencing the economic growth by providing basic factors for economic growth as well as needs for human development. The dissertation points, environment will be decisive factor of economic growth in long time and on whole earth. And the dissertation maintains that cross-boundary environmental issues involve a strong externality. Externality influences pollution emission and inhere relationship between economic growth and environment. Third, by taking for example the coordination conditions between economy and environment of Yangtze River Delta, the dissertation shows that phase of economic development of Yangtze River Delta lie in transformation from middle industrialization to last industrialization, environmental quality of Yangtze River Delta doesn't improve but worsen. This indicates that imbalance development between economic growth and environment in Yangtze River Delta likely to emerge. Based on the empirical research which aims at investigating the relationship of economy and environment in Yangtze River Delta by using space econometric technique, the present dissertation attests to the fact that there is correlation between the environmental quality and economic growth in terms of space in the Delta. Besides, the dissertation further shows that correlated with cross-boundary environmental pollution, the environmental growth not only has a bearing with its own economic growth but also has connection with the economic growth of neighboring administrative regions. This shows that imbalance between economic growth and environment in Yangtze River Delta relates with space effects.Fourth, the dissertation analyzes reasons of imbalance development of regional economy and environment in terms of system. The dissertation shows that the fundamental reason accounting for the imbalanced development of regional economy and environment lies in territory division and territory competition induced by a series of such system factors as the public finance system, the national economic statistical and accounting system, the appraisal system of local governments. Territory division and territory competition result in externality of trans-boundary environment, further result in imbalance development of regional economic growth and environment.Finally, the dissertation probes into approach of solving problem of imbalance development of regional economic growth and environment. The dissertation shows that concerted development of regional economic growth and environment lies in reforming interest of territory and relationship between different regions in order to eliminate externality of trans-boundary environment. The dissertation points that based on the benefit-sharing mechanism and benefit-compensating mechanism, regional integration influences concerted development of regional economic growth and environment with its integration effect,scale economics effect,exchange costs effect and competition or supplement effect by integration of the appraisal system of local governments,regional environmental supervision and regional environmental pollution disposal.