The Relationship Between Environment And Economic Sustainable Development

Following the 8 Millennium Development Goals, The United Nation has already set 17 Sustainable Development Goals for the next 15 years (2016-2030). As many countries in the world, China has also put sustainable development in an important position. Given that background I have studied the relationship between environmental and economic sustainable development in China.However, given the traditional growth pattern, it is a challenge for China to develop in a sustainable way. Since the Opening Up in 1978, China has experienced rapid growth. Meanwhile, environmental problems have arisen, especially air pollution, which has drawn a lot of attention in recent years.Economic and environmental sustainable development are the main parts of the sustainable development. In order to achieve the sustainable development goal, we need to achieve them both. In this paper I did empirical case studies of China, described the meaning and current situation of the environment and economic sustainable development in China, and combined the existed studies to analyze the relationship between the environment and economic sustainable development. My conclusions are environment efficiency is the necessary condition of the economic sustainable development; economic and environmental efficiency, i.e. eco-efficiency, can improve simultaneously, and eco-efficiency could be improved by establishing proper environmental targets and implementing proper environmental regulation, which can help us to find suitable ways for China to achieve the sustainable development goal as well as the goal to build a comfortably-off society.This paper includes five parts. In the first part Introduction I stated the background and significance of the study. The second part is the literature and theoretic review of the environment and economic growth. In the end, from the above literature review, we could conclude that economic and environmental efficiency, i.e. eco-efficiency, can improve simultaneously, and eco-efficiency could be improved by establishing proper environmental targets and implementing proper environmental regulation. In the third part I analyzed the current situation of the environment and economic development in China, which includes the introduction of the Chinese traditional growth pattern, the variation trends of GDP growth rate, TFP and environment pollution in China, the eco-efficiency trend in China. Then I concluded as environment is an important part of the sustainable development, in order to achieve the sustainable development goal, there is no doubt that China has to change the traditional growth pattern. Also, from the empirical analysis of the environment pollution and economic growth trends we can conclude that the traditional growth pattern could not lead to the economic sustainable development. In the fourth part, according to the above analysis, I did the empirical analysis of the relationship between environment and economic sustainable development in China. In this part, I selected the newest economic and environmental panel data of the provinces in China, analyzed the relationship between environment and economic sustainable development power and verified that (1) environmental pollution will reduce the ability of economic sustainable development, (2) governments can improve the ability of economic sustainable development by investing in the environmental pollution treatment, (3) pollution is the reason of the reduce of the ability of the economic sustainable development, and the invest in the pollution treatment may be the self-save behavior of the local government after achieving a particular level of economic development. The fifth part is the conclusion and policy proposals. We could conclude that in China, economic and environmental efficiency, i.e. eco-efficiency, can improve simultaneously, and eco-efficiency could be improved by establishing proper environmental targets and implementing proper environmental regulation. This result can help us to find suitable ways for China to develop sustainably. From these conclusions, I drew some policy proposals to achieve the sustainable development goals.